Federal Reserve
There is simply no way to sugar coat the first 293 days of 2022 for investors. The S&P 500 is currently down just over 23% year-to-date. The major international stock index, the MSCI EAFE, is down…
In March 2020, my wife, Margaret, and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary and we had planned to celebrate with a vacation to Italy. Needless to say, that trip was postponed – several times. The trip finally…
In this presentation, Chief Economist John Norris discusses the current state of affairs in relation to the economy and potential future moved by the Fed that may impact business operations and success. This presentation is hosted…
In this short series, the Investment Committee at Oakworth Capital Bank explored what might happen if, and when, interest rates rise. The first section focused on the bond market. The second analyzed what it could mean…
Through dumb luck and sheer happenstance some 30 years ago, I found myself working at a buy-side, bond trading desk in Baltimore. To say I didn’t really know what I was doing would be an understatement,…
This week, a client told me my recent newsletters have taken the tone of a frustrated poet. I laughed and told them there was an element of truth to that. After all, the markets seem to…
I can’t remember with certainty all the various Literature courses I took in college, but it safe to say it was more than the core curriculum required. In truth, we didn’t have a lot of patsy,…
The Federal Reserve met this week, and, as far as I can tell, it pretty much telegraphed a rate increase in September. What will this mean for the US economy? If one 0.25 percent increase in…
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve another round of what it calls ‘quantitative easing.’ This is an academics way of saying: “buying bonds with money the Fed created as though out of thin air.” Obviously, the former sounds…