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…
Insights & Advice
Tag: sell-off
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…
Crypto crashes (again)
While investors focus on the losses that are piling up in the stock market, the cryptocurrency space has suffered far more. The bears say it has further to go, but that may depend on what happens to stocks. Bitcoin, the grand daddy of crypto currencies, is trading around $38,400 per coin as of January 25, 2022. It has suffered a 50% decline since its record high in November 2021. Ethereum, the second most popular coin, has dropped from almost $5,000 to $2,400. In total, the combined crypto market has lost $1.4 trillion over the past week. At one time, crypto…
The ‘Fed put’ is dead
“Is this it? Is this the start of a 10-15 percent correction?” asked Dana, a client of mine. At the time of the question, the S&P 500 was down just about 5 percent from its recent high. Trying to sound empathetic and not cavalier, I shrugged and said, “Maybe.” I gave her the stats — that type of garden-variety, 10-percent correction happens about every year-and-a-half. The last such drop was 16 months ago. So, sure, we’re “due” for a correction. Following each previous such stock market decline, prices returned and achieved higher highs. Stock prices have been able to do…