Banks

Eyeing the CPI

Feb 11, 2025 3 min read paid

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's congressional testimony today confirmed that the Fed remains in a dovish pause mode. The FOMC is in no hurry to lower the federal funds rate (FFR). That's even though many of the committee's participants believe that the FFR remains relatively restrictive. So when they finally move again, it will most likely be to lower rather than to raise the

Eric Wallerstein
Ed Yardeni

Make Manufacturing Great Again!

Feb 3, 2025 3 min read paid

Markets were abuzz with headlines from Washington today. The S&P 500 opened 1.7% lower on the weekend's news that President Donald Trump announced that he would slap 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada on Tuesday. But losses were pared significantly after Trump's call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum resulted in a one-month delay of tariffs as well as bilateral cooperation on fentanyl, immigration,

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Today Was A Good Day

Jan 15, 2025 3 min read paid

Both stocks and bonds benefitted from good news across the earnings, macroeconomic, and geopolitical fronts today. Financial stocks jumped as big banks kicked off Q4 earnings season with better-than-expected results, and the S&P 500 rose 1.8%. Treasuries rallied, as December's CPI was a bit cooler than feared. And Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire after 15 long months of fighting. We anticipated that

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

From Election Uncertainty To Policy Uncertainty

Nov 12, 2024 3 min read paid

The NFIB survey of small business owners was released today showing a record high in their uncertainty index during October (chart). That's not surprising since the polls showed that the presidential race was too close to call, raising the prospect of a contested election. The same happened prior to the previous two elections. The uncertainty index will undoubtedly fall when November's survey is released. However, it

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Big Bank Earnings Are Rip Roaring

Oct 16, 2024 3 min read paid

The third year of the current bull market in stocks got off to a good start this week. It's likely that the Q3 earnings reporting season will be better than expected as suggested by the results reported yesterday and today by some of the major companies in the S&P 500 Financials sector. On Sunday, we wrote that industry analysts expected S&P 500 earnings to

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

The Economic Week Ahead: August 5-9

Aug 4, 2024 3 min read paid

The week ahead is relatively light in terms of economic reports. It's also light on talking Fed heads. But, we won't be surprised if one or two of them pops up on CNBC. We think they might push back against the rate-cut mob that is calling for a 50bps cut in the federal funds rate in September. It would be a shame if they joined in

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Banking on Looser Regulation

Jul 9, 2024 3 min read paid

Bank stocks popped today after Reuters reported that the Fed is considering relaxing a regulation, i.e., the GSIB Surcharge. It requires big banks to hold additional capital due to the systemic risk they pose to the global financial system. Tweaking the GSIB surcharge would free up big banks to lend more. The S&P 500 Financials stock price index had already been doing well. It is up 37.

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Powell On "60 Minutes"

Feb 5, 2024 2 min read paid

Fed Chair Jerome Powell wants to make sure we all get the message he delivered at his presser last Wednesday. So he appeared in an interview on "60 Minutes" Sunday night. His simple message is that almost all the members of the FOMC expect to be cutting the federal funds rate (FFR) this year. They are happy with the progress that has been made in bringing inflation down

Ed Yardeni

The Economic Week Ahead: February 4-9

Feb 4, 2024 2 min read

Now that the latest meeting of the Federal Open Mouth Committee is over, we can expect lots of chatter from its members. They are likely to echo Fed Chair Jerome Powell's comments in his presser last Wednesday. In essence, he said that the Fed is done raising the federal funds rate further, but is in no rush to lower it either. According to the 12-month federal funds rate

Ed Yardeni

Market Dives As Powell Pushes Back

Feb 1, 2024 2 min read paid

As we expected, Fed Chair Jerome Powell pushed back on market expectations of a federal funds rate cut in March and more to come over the rest of the year. He was less dovish than the market expected. If he had been more dovish, he would have risked inflating a speculative asset bubble. Instead, stocks took a dive today in response to his press conference (chart). Stock prices were already

Ed Yardeni

The Economic Week Ahead: November 6 - 10

Nov 4, 2023 2 min read paid

It's a light week for US economic indicators. However, the FOMC's blackout period is over, so there should be lots of erudite remarks coming from the members of the Federal Open Mouth Committee. They are likely to be less hawkish following last week's batch of somewhat weak economic indicators--though the batch wasn't weak enough to cause more than a tiny decline in

Ed Yardeni

Rolling Recession Rolling Over Commercial Real Estate (CRE)

Jul 24, 2023 2 min read paid

The rolling recession is rolling over the commercial real estate market (CRE), especially the market for urban office buildings. In our opinion, the challenges facing that market are serious but shouldn’t cause an economy-wide credit crunch and a recession. The Fed’s May 2023 Financial Stability Report included a review of the CRE credit market. The report observes: “The shift toward telework in many industries has dramatically reduced demand

Ed Yardeni

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