Financial Floyd Blogspot

Good Afternoon, The Holiday Season is supposed to be a season of giving and generosity, but according to reports from Reuters , the President is considering firing Fed Chairman Powell. This has been a negative week for news and this announcement doesn't make it any better. During this week the following things happened: 1. The major stock market indices (Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500) continued their slide, creating the possibility that we will have the worst December since 1931 (The Great Depression) 2. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates another 25 basis points and signaled that they would do two rate raises in 2019 3. The Government ended the week with a partial shut-down because of the inability to pass a new spending budget While none of these events are positive, they are bumps in the road. On the other hand, the discussion of possibly firing the Fed Chairman should raise some eyebrows. The Federal Reserve is apart of the Government but is ...

Good Morning/Afternoon, The Holiday Season is upon us but the stock market has been taken over by the Grinch. The news and articles over the past couple of weeks have been negative but yesterday Bloomberg produced an article that presented a more balanced tone and was very informative. A couple of points from the article that stood out were: 1. The 4th quarter has been horrible for stocks this year 2. Investment professionals think that the markets both domestically and internationally are too pessimistic 3. Potential Tradewars, Fed tightening and Brexit (the UK leaving the European Union) are still present within the market throughout the year What was intriguing about this article is that context matters. The author points out that Wall Street typically leans bullish and that as a whole the economist polled have a horrible track record at predicting recessions. I've been more cautious this year because I did not see the headwinds subsiding and the data released by governm...