Weekly Technical Reviews

After surging to 60.13 on April 7, Volatility as measured by the VIX, spent the remainder of 2025 below its long term average of 19.5 since its introduction in 1990 (Blue horizontal line is at 20.0). The VIX experienced a brief spike higher on October 20 after China said it was enacting export...

Economic data from the government has been sketchy since reports for August were released. Although the government collected data during September, no one was working during the government shutdown in October to process the data. The shutdown ended on November 12, so no data was collected in...

As expected the FOMC lowered the Funds rate by 0.25% and there were 3 dissents. Stephen Miran wanted a cut of 0.50%, and two district Presidents didn’t think a cut was warranted. Austan Goolsbee (Chicago) joined Jeffrey Schmid (Kansas City) who had dissented at the October 29 meeting (I...

The current structure of the FOMC was established in 1935 and for decades transcripts of the FOMC meetings were published with a lag of 5 years. In 1995 the FOMC began to publish the minutes of a meeting after the subsequent meeting which was usually 8-9 weeks later. This change was prompted by...

On December 1 a Governor for the Bank of Japan indicated that the BOJ would likely increase their policy rate at the next meeting on December 19. Inflation has been consistently above the BOJ’s 2% target, with the Headline CPI at 3.0% in November and the Core CPI at 3.1%. On November 20 Japan’s...

The S&P 500 topped on October 29 and then pulled back as expectations for another rate cut at the December 10 FOMC meeting dimmed. In his statement before the press conference after the October 29 FOMC meeting, Chair Powell threw cold water on the prospects of a rate cut at the December...

The Great Pyramid of Giza took about 26 years to build and was completed in 2560 BC, give or take a few years. It was 481 feet tall, the base was 756 feet, and was constructed with 2.3 million blocks of limestone with some of them weighing 70 tons. The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest of the...

On Sunday 8 Democrats voted with 52 Republicans to move forward and presumably end the longest government shutdown in history. The vote on November 9 came after 14 previous attempts failed. Five additional Democrats agreed to join the three Dems who had voted yes in the prior 14 votes. The...

As expected, the FOMC voted to end its Quantitative Tightening program on December 1, so it will no longer allow $5 billion of Treasury debt a month roll off. The FOMC did vote to continue allowing $35 billion a month of Mortgage-Backed-Securities (MBS) to roll off. The $35 billion will be...

The FOMC will lower the Funds rate by 0.25% when the FOMC meets on Wednesday October 29, which won’t be a surprise to anyone. Financial markets will react positively if the FOMC announces they will be ending their Quantitative Tightening program since this move represents another easing of...