BRIEF COMMENT ON THE BROAD STOCK MARKET (3:30 pm EST)
Today the minutes of last month's FOMC meeting were released revealing more detail about the discussions of Fed officials during that meeting. The Fed's public policy statements from last month were rather hawkish as they emphasized the imminent need to reduce bond buying (QE) and increase interest rates. Today's minutes softened that rhetoric a bit by saying that any policy decisions would ultimately depend on a meeting-by-meeting analysis of data. This gives the Fed a little wiggle room to soften their hawkish stance and be a little more accommodating with monetary policy if necessary.
A pessimistic broad stock market fell into the afternoon, but the release of the Fed minutes at 2 PM seemed to lighten things up, and equities bounced up sharply from there. At the time of this writing the market has recovered its early day loss. Where it goes from here is debatable. I don't think a slight softening of Fed rhetoric is going to change investor sentiment right now. Tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine is a much stronger factor influencing equities now. If that situation continues to escalate, it will likely send this market back down. We are still holding our short position in the the NASDAQ.
Today the minutes of last month's FOMC meeting were released revealing more detail about the discussions of Fed officials during that meeting. The Fed's public policy statements from last month were rather hawkish as they emphasized the imminent need to reduce bond buying (QE) and increase interest rates. Today's minutes softened that rhetoric a bit by saying that any policy decisions would ultimately depend on a meeting-by-meeting analysis of data. This gives the Fed a little wiggle room to soften their hawkish stance and be a little more accommodating with monetary policy if necessary.
A pessimistic broad stock market fell into the afternoon, but the release of the Fed minutes at 2 PM seemed to lighten things up, and equities bounced up sharply from there. At the time of this writing the market has recovered its early day loss. Where it goes from here is debatable. I don't think a slight softening of Fed rhetoric is going to change investor sentiment right now. Tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine is a much stronger factor influencing equities now. If that situation continues to escalate, it will likely send this market back down. We are still holding our short position in the the NASDAQ.
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