Once again stock market investors have borne witness to a significant selloff, occurring soon after equities reached record highs! So why, you may be asking yourself, is the owner of a title insurance company writing and opining about investing in any asset class other than real estate? Because, said owner needs to vent a little […]
The conventional wisdom among fixed income market seers is that the Federal Reserve will continue to tighten credit, raising the fed funds target rate multiple more times before they are finished! This is due to a stronger economy, inflation under control and unemployment at low levels suggesting full employment. This scenario presents the Fed with a […]
(Article originally appeared at LinkedIn here) Our two political parties in Washington could not look out the window, check the sky, and then agree with each other about whether it’s raining or bright sunshine! That fact is particularly true for the four in the photo at the top of the page. And yet, Pelosi, Schumer, […]
Back in the 1980’s when working as a municipal bond analyst, I would keep investors informed about the shape of the tax-free yield curve! If the yield curve was positive and steep, or in other words a significant difference between short and long-term yields, then investors would be getting compensated for taking on the additional […]
Depending on your perspective as an investor in stocks, bonds or real estate, the post-election action in the financial markets has either been phenomenally great or dismally destructive! Of course if your portfolio is well diversified as the experts suggest that it should be, then that makes for an entirely different story altogether. Bond Market […]
As 2016 quickly winds down, the question now on the minds of homebuyers and home sellers is what 2017 will portend for the residential real estate market in the United States… Early on a Monday morning these are some points pondered by Hallmark Abstract Service with the thoughts from real estate industry giants Zillow and Realtor.com offered […]
In my first job as a municipal bond analyst and strategist a key datapoint to consider was the steepness of the yield curve! When the curve was at its steepest, investors would be ‘getting paid’ in the form of higher yields to assume the price and reinvestment risk of moving out to longer maturities. When flat, meaning […]
The Federal Reserve, after raising its benchmark fed funds rate .25% in December 2015, yesterday left rates unchanged! The December increase was implemented despite inflation remaining well below the Fed’s target rate of 2% and in the face of an economic recovery that could be, at best, termed tepid. At the time some speculated that […]
Summary: Real estate and stocks have been doing very well but… Economics 101 says we should have inflation after the amount of money the Federal Reserve has put into the system! But we don’t and this article explains why… The global central banks have injected many trillions of dollars into their given economies looking for […]
Will the Fed or won’t the Fed raise its benchmark rate 1/4 of 1% sometime this year or next? That singular question has transfixed and captivated the world’s markets, politicians and corporate decision makers since the ‘great recession’ and the subsequent Fed move to bring the target fed funds rate down to a range of 0-.25%. […]
