Guarded Confidence in Financial Community October 21, 2025 Investors are looking ahead with a modicum of hope. Specific events of special interest in the near term are the rare earths trade deal between Australia and the United States, Friday’s delayed release of U.S. September consumer price data, trade talks this week in Malaysia between Treasury…
Spotlight on China October 20, 2025 (169) In contrast to 38 years ago when the DOW plunged 22.6% on October 19, 1987, week four of this October kicked off on a hopeful note following upbeat U.S. official comments about prospects for averting worst-case trade scenarios after October 31 when the current trade truce with China runs…
Next Week’s Menu: October 18 – 24, 2025 October 17, 2025 Central Banks: Interest rate policy meetings are scheduled in China, Indonesia, Hungary, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia and South Korea. Some of the central bankers with scheduled speaking engagements are ECB President Lagarde, Bank of England Governor Bailey, Nagel and Cipollone of the European Central Bank,…
News of Regional Bank Credit Strains Inject Fresh Fears into the Marketplace October 17, 2025 The report of distressed loans by Zions Bancorp and Western Alliance Bancorp sent their share prices crashing 13.1% and 10.8% today and created an unsettling deja vu from 18 years ago. According to AI Overview, On August 8, 2007, the…
Bias of Monetary Stances Easing in Many Economies October 16, 2025 Money markets are becoming more confident that the Federal Reserve will cut its interest rates several times in coming months, as the risks of weakening labor market conditions outweigh perceived risks of excessive inflation. Yesterday’s published Beige Book yielded five districts recently experiencing flat…
Equities Well-Bid in Spite of Persistent Global Growth Concerns October 15, 2025 Today was the scheduled day for U.S. consumer price data to have been released, but that didn’t happen due to the continuing shutdown of the federal government. The Fed is left to assess growth and price trends from non-government sources, and such are…
Risk Aversion in Spite of Gaza Ceasefire and Trump’s “It Will All Be fine” Comment on Trade Tensions October 14, 2025 Equity markets and long-term sovereign debt yields faltered anew this Tuesday. China is lifting port fees against U.S. imports and accusing Trump of reigniting trade tensions between the two countries. In the middle east…
Dollar Mixed and U.S. Stocks Positioned to Trim Friday Losses October 13, 2025 (170) Today is a holiday in Japan (Health Sports Day) and a federal holiday in the United States (Columbus Day a.k.a. Indigenous People’s Day). While U.S. banks and thus Treasury market trading are closed, the U.S. stock market will observe its normal…
Next Week’s Menu: October 11 – 17, 2025 October 10, 2025 Central Banks: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will release it semi-annual Monetary Policy Statement on Tuesday. Unlike most other central banks that target an interest rate, MAS orients monetary policy by targeting the weighted value of its currency. Three variables are targeted: the…
Larger-than-Expected Interest Rate Hike by National Bank of Kazakhstan October 10, 2025 Kazakhistan faces a far different inflationary situation than Peru, and officials at the National Bank of Kazakhstan today made a statement of serious intention to counter price pressures by hiking their reference interest rate to 18.0%, higher than such has been in over…