Economy & Markets

The corporate earnings season for the first quarter is underway and about one-fifth of S&P 500 companies have reported results.

The U.S. dollar has been in the headlines due to an anticipated pause in Fed policy and concerns over the currency's place in the global financial system.

Equity markets, using the S&P 500 index return as a proxy, at first glance appear to have shrugged off the mid-month drama of multiple domestic, regional bank failures and the forced sale of a massive Swiss bank.

The monthly Fed/CPI/Employment headline-market movement industrial complex was rudely shouldered aside in the last week by a much bigger and faster-moving story.

If there’s an aphorism for February that you could embroider on a pillow, it would be, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Markets appear to have finally started taking Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s warnings seriously and caught up to the rhetoric that the Fed has been consistently pushing out. Ra

The market adage is “as January goes, so goes the year.” Is it true? According to an analysis by Fidelity, January returns are positive about 75% of the time the full year turns out positive.

The markets are starting to feel like Groundhog Day. Almost every month, it’s a cadence of employment numbers, CPI, Fed — market reacts.

While the equity markets, as measured by the S&P 500 index, was up in the third quarter, December was a disappointment from the gains seen in October and November.

We’re on the home stretch of a year in which “unprecedented” doesn’t even begin to capture it. Nothing went according to plan, for anyone, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the Fed’s domestic attempts to combat inflation.

Economic data showed some movements in the right directions, both up and down. The Federal Reserve responded by talking about letting the economy catch up to the rate increases already enacted. Does that mean that the path forward will be smoother and potentially skirt a recession?

The Fed raised the key short-term interest rate by another 75 basis points at the September FOMC meeting, but the big news wasn’t the well-anticipated rate increase. It was Chairman Powell’s remarks at the press conference.

After the bear market rally in July was extended for the first few weeks of August, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell used the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium to clarify the Fed’s position on future rate increases. Powell was clear that there would be no “Fed Pivot” until improvements in the inflation rate are sustained.