President Donald Trump has been calling on Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. The Fed chair has been the object of intensifying schoolyard jabs from the President. “We have a stupid person, frankly, at the Fed,” Trump told

The stock market held up remarkably well today considering that President Donald Trump abruptly left the Group of Seven meeting in the Canadian Rockies this morning. On his way home, he warned Tehran’s residents to get out of town

Stock prices rose this morning as oil prices fell a bit on news reports that the Mullahs want Israel to stop pounding them and are willing to resume nuclear talks with the US as long as the US doesn’t

The moment Fed watchers have waited for is finally here—albeit with less drama than many believed a few weeks back. As we’ve long said, the two-day June Federal Open Market Committee meeting (Tue-Wed) should come and go with the

Israel is in the middle of the Middle East. Iran’s Mullahs have been threatening Israel’s existence since they overthrew the Shah of Iran in February 1979. There has been a covert war between the two since then. It turned

May’s PPI inflation report, released today, was lower than expected as was May’s CPI inflation report yesterday. The PPI final demand for personal consumption edged down to 2.6% y/y in May, while the CPI rose only 2.4% during the

The stock market didn’t do much today. Neither did the bond market. But the price of a barrel of crude oil rose, and so did the price of an ounce of gold. President Donald Trump announced another deal with China.

In recent months, the “soft” economic data releases have been weak, while the “hard” data have been strong. The former includes surveys of consumers, small business owners, and purchasing managers. We’ve been betting on the resilience of the economy, as confirmed by the hard data. Stock investors seem

In the hilarious comedy movie “What About Bob?,” Bill Murray, who plays Bob, tells his shrink that “there are two types of people in this world: those who like Neil Diamond and those who don’t.” There also seem to

Many of the questions the Fed has about how Trump’s trade war is impacting the inflation outlook will get timely answers this week. Well, updates at least, since only President Donald Trump knows how long Trump’s Tariff Turmoil (TTT)

The stock market has become tariff-scare-proof now that the S&P 500 is only 2.3% below its February 19 record high despite Trump’s Tariff Turmoil (TTT) since then. After Friday’s better-than-expected employment report, the stock market has also become recession-scare-proof.

President Donald Trump said today that he had a “very good talk” with China’s President Xi Jinping for an hour and a half mostly about trade. They also agreed to visit one another. The financial markets yawned. Stock, bond,

The 10-year US Treasury bond yield fell to 4.36% today on a batch of weaker-than-expected economic indicators. Bond investors weren’t fazed by Elon Musk’s attack on President Trump’s “big beautiful bill” on Tuesday afternoon. Musk thinks it’s ugly: “This massive,

President Donald Trump didn’t raise any tariffs today. So it was a good day. Instead, Reuters reported today seeing a draft letter sent by the Trump administration asking countries to list their best proposals in a number of key

Executive Summary: Chinese automaker BYD’s rapid cornering of the global EV market is shifting into high gear with a 34% price cut. That’s bound to present tough choices for automakers everywhere. The situation is mirrored on the economic level, William

So is the economy slowing or speeding up? Yes, it is doing both according to today’s batch of economic indicators. No wonder that neither stocks nor bonds did much today. The calm in the stock market was notable given

There’s no question that President Donald Trump is stress testing the resilience of the economy with what we’ve been (objectively) calling Trump’s Tariff Turmoil (TTT). The latest developments on Friday: Trump declared that China is violating terms agreed upon

We now have LSEG’s I/B/E/S data for S&P 500 companies’ revenues per share and earnings per share during Q1. Both edged down on a q/q basis but showed solid gains on a y/y basis (chart). The profit margin edged

The US is a federal republic. It isn’t a democracy, where the majority always rules. The constitutional system was designed by the Founding Fathers, who were mostly lawyers, to provide checks and balances to avert the concentration of political

In imposing his tariffs in early April, President Donald Trump called the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his doing so. This evening, the Manhattan-based Court of International Trade said the US Constitution gives Congress exclusive authority to regulate

As Nvidia’s stock price soared during 2024, the naysayers compared its ascent to Cisco’s roundtrip performance during the Tech Bubble of the late 1990s, which was followed by the Tech Wreck of 2000 and 2001 (chart). Cisco was the

Today is a happy day for stock investors. They are pleased that President Donald Trump had a pleasant phone call with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over the weekend. So he postponed his threat on Friday to

The week ahead is starting with another tariff whiplash. On April 2, President Donald Trump imposed hefty reciprocal tariffs on America’s trading partners but postponed them for 90 days on April 9. On Friday, he threatened new tariffs on

President Donald Trump is frustrated about his trade negotiations with the European Union: “Our discussions with them are going nowhere!” He said so on Friday morning, threatening to slap a 50% across-the-board tariff on America’s largest trading partner in

The elephant is as good a metaphor as there is for the US government bond market. Its scale, power, memory, emotional intelligence, and tendency to live in complex family groups—just like the broad array of debt instruments—are right on the

Stock investors have been less “tarrified” about President Donald Trump’s tariffs since April 9, when he postponed most of his proposed reciprocal tariffs by 90 days (chart). However, they may now be getting spooked that the bond market might

As the world turns, so do risk-on and risk-off trades around the world. Some are for the short term and based on technical factors. Others are for the long term and based on fundamentals. Let’s take a quick tour around the world: (1) Japan. While pessimists have

Walmart warned last week that it will have to raise prices because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. On Saturday, the President advised the country’s largest retailer that it should “eat the tariffs.” Retailers operate with very thin profit margins

The meltup scenario is making a dramatic comeback. It was one of our three scenarios until March 24 when we wrote the following in our Morning Briefing: “We’ve decided to fold our 1990s meltup/meltdown scenario into our Roaring 2020s scenario. The current

The week ahead is light on economic indicators. Fed officials undoubtedly will make some headlines. They are likely to reiterate Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s basic message during his May 7 presser: “We may find ourselves in the challenging scenario