by Kimberly Kirchner, Sponsored Content Editor, The Berkshire Eagle 21 years in business is no small achievement, but Berkshire Money Management CEO and Chief Investment Officer Allen Harris prefers to measure his company’s success with a different metric. “I’ve worked with folks in this area, with businesses that are literally going on a century. And there’s something to be said for that kind of longevity,” Harris said. “But I’ll also say that longevity isn’t the only reason business should be celebrated.” Harris is focused less on the last 21 years of BMM’s history, and more on the next 5 years…
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Investors prepare for the Fed
Investors are preparing for the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) scheduled for Wednesday, May 3-4, 2022. Stocks have been sold down to a level that may have discounted some of the bad news most expect. Is it enough? Could a couple of days around May 4th see a re-test of this year’s lows? It depends on how hawkish the Fed is prepared to be. Expectations are now for a 50-basis point hike in the week ahead, and two more in the next two monthly meetings. The markets are also expecting a substantial reduction in the Fed’s multi-trillion-dollar balance sheet. That…
Does this look smaller to you? Shrinkflation is here.
By now, you may have noticed that something doesn’t look quite right on your grocery shelves. Could it be that bag of chips, or maybe that roll of toilet paper, seems to have shrunk? Let me assure you it is not your eyes; we have all come down with a bad case of shrinkflation. Shrinkflation is an actual term, according to Wikipedia, which means “a rise in the general price level of goods per unit of weight or volume, brought about by a reduction in the weight or size of the item sold.” I must admit that, until recently, the…
Make up your mind, already!
Hey, stock market. Are you going up, or are you going down? Pick one side of the 200-day moving average and stick with it, would ya? What is the 200-day moving average? The 200-day moving average (DMA) is a key indicator that investors (traders?) use to gauge whether an investment is in an uptrend or a downtrend. The 200-DMA is typically represented by a line chart and represents the average price of the past 200 days. When the price of an investment is above the 200-DMA, it’s considered in an uptrend. And, when it’s below the 200-DMA, it’s considered…
Earnings matter, but the Fed trumps everything
The first quarter 2022 earnings season kicked off this week with mixed results. Thus far, the standouts were Netflix and Tesla. The two companies’ results could not have been more different, but in the end it didn’t matter. Netflix disappointed, reporting its first loss in subscribers in recent memory, while investors were expecting a gain in subscriber growth. There were many reasons for this including the loss of 700,000 Russian customers as a result of the Ukraine War. At last count, the stock lost 37% of its worth in three days and took the NASDAQ index down along with it….
The U.S. dollar hits two-year highs
The Federal Reserve Bank’s tightening of monetary policy has driven up interest rates, while causing investors to sell stocks. It has had another impact—a steep rise in the U.S. dollar. The U.S. bond market has already priced in a 96% chance of a 50-basis-point rise in the Federal funds rate at the next FOMC meeting in May 2022. The fixed income markets are expecting a cumulative 2.15% rise in interest rates by the end of 2022. In the meantime, the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield hit 2.90% this week on its way to 3%. As interest rates continue to rise, so…
A dud of a stock market
“If stocks don’t fall, the Fed needs to force them.” —Bill Dudley, former NY Federal Reserve Bank President (2009–2018), on how far the Fed should go to get inflation under control, in his Bloomberg op-ed. Dudley may no longer be a member of the Fed, but I believe he is communicating a message from them. It is not that a stock market crash would deflate inflation. Dudley refers to a concept I introduced in a previous column describing the death of the “Fed put.” As I said in January 2022, and as Dudley noted on April 6, 2022, the Federal Reserve…
Food, famine, and global unrest
More than a decade ago, the Arab Spring roiled the Middle East from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen. Massive protests demanding freedom, equality and bread were met with repression and conflict. Could today’s growing scarcity of food spark another Spring of discontentment? The origins of the name “Spring,” whether Arab or otherwise, was a term historians used to describe the Revolutions of 1848, known as the “People’s Spring.” It was a series of upheavals that swept through Europe at that time. Republican revolts took place first in Sicily, spreading to France, Germany, Italy, and the Austrian Empire. They all ended…
Can the Federal Reserve engineer a soft landing?
Can we talk about how crazy the first quarter of 2022 was? From Volodymyr Zelensky to Will Smith. The so-called “Don’t say gay” bill and the woefully mislabeled “Billionaires’ tax.” From the vetting of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Olympics (well, maybe not the Olympics), the world was buzzing about serious news and outright nutso news. Perhaps that’s why many people didn’t realize that the S&P 500 fell more than 10% from a closing high during that quarter. Later, the index traded 10% higher than its intra-quarter closing low. But it did. Since World War II, there have only been…
The Fed tightens further
It is called “Quantitative Tightening,” or QT, a term used to describe how momentary authorities are planning to shrink an $8.9 trillion balance sheet. The U.S. Federal Reserve is the only central bank in the world (and in history) that has attempted to implement a reduction in assets. The first time they tried, things did not go so well. “Quantitative Easing,” or QE, may be a more familiar concept to readers since we have been experiencing some form of QE (monetary stimulus) since the Financial Crisis of 2008. QT is the opposite. The Fed first tried to reduce its balance…