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Showing posts from October, 2018

"Fed" up?

The market turmoil continues and President Trump and everyone on street started talking about how Federal Reserve Bank (FED) is keeping its blinders on and intent on keeping up with its chosen path of increasing interest rates. Basically they are "Fed" up and wants FED to change its stance on interest rates. We had seen this movie before. Interest rates start going up, markets have tantrum hoping fed will chance its stance. Then monthly and quarterly economic indicators start coming and everything looks ok giving fed ammunition to keep up its course and then markets adjust back to normal. It's almost like markets have 10-year itch (there is 7-year itch term in relationships). It happened in 1987, 1998, 2008 and now 2018. While there would be some hit to confidence, recent market turmoil also helps take out the excesses and set a good foundation for further upside movement. Mid-term elections also add to the uncertainty even though most of the polls are predicting that co

October "NO" Surprise!

In politics "October Surprise" means  any political event orchestrated (or apparently orchestrated) in the month before an election, in the hopes of affecting the outcome (from Wikipedia). In stock markets, October is known for sharp market corrections as seen during so many times(1929, 1987, 2008 and so on). So this October, its no surprise that we are having some gut-wrenching correction which exactly started on first day of October. Today and next couple of days would be critical in terms of momentum selling before it settles down and get ready for year-end rally. President Trump is calling fed "crazy" which almost feels like Turkey President directing its central bank what to do. (another similarity: both these presidents have their son-in-law in key government position). Last few weeks interesting political drama unfolded in which both parties tried to score some points with their constituencies by using Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation to Supreme Court. Mi