Weekly Technical Reviews

Frequently the words hearing and listening are used interchangeably as if they are basically the same which isn’t accurate. Hearing is a passive, involuntary, sensory process in which our minds perceive words because our ears are functioning. Listening is an active, voluntary, and intentional...

In his opening statement after the FOMC meeting on November 1 Chair Powell discussed Financial Conditions specifically. “ Financial conditions have tightened significantly in recent months, driven by higher longer-term bond yields, among other factors. Because persistent...

The Federal Reserve released the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS) last week and the results were interesting. The percentage of banks increasing their Lending Standards fell from 50.8% for the second quarter to 33.9% for the third quarter. On the surface the drop in the number of...

The economic data last week can be summarized as follows - Softer data, but not too weak to question the No Recession narrative. Chair Powell’s press conference went as I expected. He reiterated the same points he has for more than a year. The FOMC will continue until they are confident that...

Consumer Price (CPI) inflation peaked in 1981 and then trended lower for 40 years, and after 1997, Core Consumer inflation held below 2.5%. In April 2021 inflation broke out of this 24 year base with the headline CPI pushing above 4.0% and the...

I thought the GDP report would make the economy looks stronger than it really is and it did. GDP grew 4.9% in the third quarter according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s first estimate. The increase was led by an increase of 4.0% in consumer spending that contributed 2.69% of the total. As...

As discussed in the Weekly Technical Review in recent weeks, TLT was approaching the end of a 5 Wave decline from its peak in March 2020 at 179.70. There is a chance that TLT could drop below 80.00 in response to the third quarter GDP report showing the economy growing at 3.5...

The FOMC will increase the Funds rate at their July 26 meeting by 0.25% to 5.25% - 5.50%. Chair Powell will do his best to convey that every meeting will be a ‘live’ meeting and that the FOMC hasn’t adopted an every other meeting increase format. He will emphasize that the FOMC remains data...