Robert Barone

There was good news on the inflation front from both the CPI and PPI. Because of the timing, it doesn’t look like the Fed’s FOMC had the full benefit of the results.

The Fed is normally a leader in setting interest rates worldwide; first to raise or lower rates, quickly followed by the world’s other central banks. Not so this time

Rampant CRE Foreclosures Portend Something More Sinister. Financial markets closed the week mixed with the Nasdaq rising +1.4% and closing at a record high.

There were several important news events this week including the Fed’s January minutes. But this took a back seat to Nvidia’s blowout top and bottom-line numbers.

As we entered 2023, households were still flush with the cash from government handouts, the economy was healthy, the federal government was still running a significant...

Last Friday (March 10), seemingly out of the blue, the financial world was rocked with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), then Signature Bank. This week we saw the contagion spread to Europe (Credit Suisse).

Financial market volatility continued this past week (ending March 3). . The market hesitancy, however, comes from an analysis of the underlying data, i.e., the headline data appear to be misleading.

Having eased financial conditions through much of January and early February, the financial markets now believe that taming inflation might not be the slam dunk that Q3 and Q4 data had suggested.

There were three major data releases this week – the Consumer Price Index (CPI), Retail Sales, and the Producer Price Index (PPI), all for January. The CPI met expectations, rising +0.5% for the month of January.

It was a light week for economic data, giving markets time to digest and analyze the prior week’s Fed meeting and the unexpected jobs numbers.