Podcast: Clues In The News – Inflation, Interest Rates, Stocks, Bonds, and Layoffs
Record inflation, trouble on Wall Street, a hemorrhaging bond market … And a wave of corporate layoffs to start off 2023 …
Record inflation, trouble on Wall Street, a hemorrhaging bond market … And a wave of corporate layoffs to start off 2023 …
Mortgage rates fell sharply Thursday after a government report showed that inflation had cooled in October, prompting a decline in bond yields.
The U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates Wednesday by 75 basis points for the fourth straight meeting while hinting at a potential slower pace in the future as the central bank continues to try to tame multi-decade highs in inflation.
The stock market has long been the go-to choice for people looking to invest their money. But that could be about to change as a younger generation enters the scene.
The Fed’s next crisis is already brewing. Unlike 2008, where “subprime mortgages” froze counter-party trading in the credit markets as Lehman Brothers failed, in 2022, it might just be the $27 Trillion Treasury market.
Stocks fell in choppy trading on Thursday as investors weighed several key earnings reports and kept an eye on the bond market, where Treasury yields continue to climb.
In a market environment where the only hope left is a central bank pivot away from rate hikes and back to QE, any slight detour by any central bank in the west is now put under a microscope with excitement as if stocks are about to be saved. The Bank of England’s minimal intervention in long term gilt purchases to stave off a collapse in the UK pension system recently had investors buzzing with dreams that this was the beginning of a pivot by other central banks back to stimulus. This is not the case.
The unraveling of the bond market will continue to batter stocks over the coming months, according to a Friday note from Bank of America. Bonds are experiencing their worst decline since 1949 as interest rates soar amid a global central bank campaign to fight inflation. The US Aggregate Bond ETF is down 15% year-to-date, while global bonds are down even more.
Tl;dr: For the 3rd meeting in a row, The Fed hiked 75bps as expected but signaled a much more hawkish than expected future trajectory of rates (higher for longer).
The massive beat in the payrolls print has removed any hopes of a Fed Pivot and sent rate-hike expectations soaring…