September 4, 2024 @ 6:33 pm | Breaking News |
Coincidence? On Tuesday September 3 Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda reiterated that the central bank will continue to raise interest rates if inflation continues in Japan. And on Tuesday U.S. stocks plunged. Sure seems like a replay of the August rout when U.S....
August 6, 2024 @ 6:20 pm | Breaking News |
oday, Tuesday August 6, the Nikkei 225 index closed up 10.23% in Tokyo. That erased most of Monday’s 12% loss. And it led to the U.S. futures market opening higher and U.S. stock indexes moving up today. At the close in New York, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was...
August 6, 2024 @ 6:11 pm | Breaking News |
Okay, the correction in the NASDAQ and the near correction in the Standard & Poor’s 500 isn’t all about Japan. U.S. stock valuations are stretched. Air is coming out of the AI bubble. The U.S. economy is slowing But to me those factors don’t explain the stunning...
June 25, 2020 @ 10:24 pm | Breaking News, FXY, Jubak Picks Portfolio |
A while back I sold the Invesco Currency Shares Japanese Yen ETF (FXY) out of my Perfect Five ETF Portfolio because I was looking for more diversification in that limited five ETF portfolio. (I replaced it with the iShares Large Cap China ETF (FXI) on April 20, 2020....
March 17, 2020 @ 7:41 pm | Breaking News |
The Japanese yen soared 2% Monday after the Federal Reserve announced that it would cut interest rates and add $700 billion to its balance sheet by buying Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. The dollar was down 0.66% Monday against the DXY Spot Index, a basket...
February 5, 2019 @ 6:54 pm | Breaking News, Buy, FXY, Jubak Picks Portfolio |
Earlier today in a post “One consequence of change in Fed policy likely to be a weaker dollar” I noted that a number of Wall Street and big international banks have forecast a drop in the dollar as a result of the Fed’s decision to back off on...
February 5, 2019 @ 6:48 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
A number of Wall Street and big international banks are forecasting a drop in the dollar as a result of the Fed’s decision to back off on raising interest rates in 2019. Morgan Stanley, for example, says that the dollar has peaked and has forecast the yen...
January 3, 2019 @ 7:22 pm | Breaking News, FXY, Jubak Picks Portfolio, Volatility |
On December 27 I switched to the Invesco Currency Shares Japanese Yen ETF (FXY) from the Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF (VEA) in my Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio (on my subscription sites JugglingWithKnives.com and JubakAM.com) in an effort to get more yen exposure...
July 20, 2018 @ 7:53 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
For a second straight day President Donald Trump has tweeted out criticism of the Federal Reserve’s policy decision to raise interest rates. In his tweets today the President wrote: “China, the European Union and others have been manipulating their...
May 29, 2018 @ 7:20 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down as much at 505 points today–before rallying to a loss of “just” 391 points or 1.6%–on fears that a crisis in Italy could once again put the entire EuroZone project in danger. Italian stocks were down...
March 15, 2018 @ 10:27 pm | Breaking News, Dividend Income Portfolio, Jubak Picks Portfolio, You May Have Missed |
If you spend a significant part of your day staring at your computer to watch the markets, you know that, perplexingly, the traditional safe havens for mitigating portfolio risk haven’t been working very well. For example, gold, which is supposed to go up when...
August 9, 2017 @ 12:12 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
Not surprisingly haven assets such as gold and the Japanese yen are up today. So are volatility measures such as the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX.) Surprisingly, the rush to safety hasn’t been as strong as you might expect after a day when...
April 11, 2017 @ 7:00 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
It’s a classic risk off market today as of 4 p.m. New York time. All the safe havens are up. The yen is ahead 1.2% to 109.65 to the dollar, breaching the 110 level for the first time since November. Gold is 1.73% higher to $1275.60 an ounce. The 10-year U.S....
March 1, 2017 @ 7:00 pm | Breaking News |
Today, March 1, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index jumped 0.4%. That was a fourth straight daily gain and let the dollar close in on its highest level since January 27. With the dollar climbing, the yen fell 0.8% and the euro dropped 0.3% to $1.055. Yields on the 10-year...
January 17, 2017 @ 7:53 pm | Breaking News |
The U.S. dollar fell today after President-elect Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. currency was too high–in part because China holds down the price of the yuan. On the comments the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was down 1.1% as of noon New...
December 28, 2016 @ 7:59 pm | Breaking News |
The Bank of Japan continues to go where no central bank has gone before. We’re talking “Let’s make it up” territory. The basic problem is that the Bank of Japan’s massive buying of government debt has failed to either raise the inflation...
December 19, 2016 @ 6:57 pm | Breaking News |
With trading volumes already starting to slip–trading in Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks was running about 25% below its average for this time of day at noon today–traders and investors are locking in some gains and seeking safety for the week...
December 16, 2016 @ 7:29 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
Yesterday the dollar rose another 1.2% against the euro to $1.0415, the highest since January 2003. And the US. currency climbed by another 1.4% against the yen. The Dollar Index added to its gain to hit a 15-year high. Today the dollar has backed off a bit. Not...
October 19, 2016 @ 7:57 pm | Breaking News, Leading Indicators, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
If this market is vulnerable, what should I do? I’ve been asked that question repeatedly since I first called this market vulnerable back in my October 11 post “Suddenly U.S. stocks seem vulnerable.” To answer that–the what should I do...
October 13, 2016 @ 7:49 pm | Breaking News, Important Stuff |
On the surface and if you look only at the market wide indexes, nothing much happened today. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, for example, finished just 0.31% lower–that’s 6.63 points–to 2132.55. But look at which assets and sectors...
October 12, 2010 @ 3:19 pm | Leading Indicators |
Now that worked out just swell, didn’t it? Remember way back on September 15 when Japan intervened in the currency markets to drive down the soaring yen. The yen had just stormed through the 83 yen to the dollar level that a number of large Japanese exporters had...
September 24, 2010 @ 12:29 pm | Leading Indicators |
Japan isn’t the only country to intervene in the markets in an attempt to drive down the price of its currency. Brazil’s central bank has moved to buy dollars and to sell the Brazilian real repeatedly in the last week. Until it fell on September 20 and 21, Brazil’s...
September 21, 2010 @ 8:30 am | Leading Indicators |
It’s starting to feel a little bit like June 1930. And that’s worrying. In that month President Herbert Hoover, despite deep misgivings, signed the Tariff Act of 1930, known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff after its two authors, into law. By raising U.S. tariffs, the act...
September 1, 2010 @ 12:15 pm | Leading Indicators |
Talk about a no-win situation: Japan’s central bank is damned if it doesn’t intervene to weaken the yen and quite possibly double-damned if it does. The Japanese yen climbed yesterday, August 31, to 83.92 to the U.S. dollar. That’s near the 15-year high for the...
January 26, 2010 @ 12:00 pm | Breaking News, Leading Indicators |
Expect the dollar to keep moving higher in the near term. Credit rating worries in Japan and disappointing economic numbers in the United Kingdom pretty much guarantee that the U.S. dollar will continue to gain on the yen and the pound. On January 25 Standard &...
December 21, 2009 @ 1:30 pm | Leading Indicators |
I’m seeing the first signs of a new relationship between stocks and the U.S. dollar. Ever since Lehman Bros went into bankruptcy in the fall of 2008, the dollar and stocks have been negatively connected. When the dollar went up, stocks went down, as investors saw any...
December 16, 2009 @ 4:55 pm | Leading Indicators, You May Have Missed |
The rising dollar (and the falling euro and yen) has been enough to stall the emerging economy stock markets that have outperformed the U.S. Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index since this huge rally began on March 9. The “stall” is just that. Emerging economy stock...
December 14, 2009 @ 3:30 pm | Breaking News, Leading Indicators |
Trying to figure out whether the dollar is headed up or down over the next six months? That’s not exactly a purely academic exercise since a rising dollar has been linked lately to falling stock and commodity prices and a falling dollar has corresponded to rallies in...