April 2020 We open this monthly commentary with a discussion of the year-to-date performance of our Reserve Cash Management composite. We manage the underlying portfolios of that composite in a highly conservative fashion and that’s reflected in the performance. Through April, the total return has been 0.45%, net of fees. That compares favorably to PIMCO’s […]
March 2020 Since we penned our last monthly update, the unthinkable has come to pass. The Coronavirus death toll, which just a month ago seemed an abstract concern, has come to cripple the daily activities of the entire world. Social distancing, face mask demand, shortages of staples such as paper goods, pasta, and flour have […]
February 2020 We’re going to start this monthly update by focusing on the positive because there is so little of it in the media lately. The most notable news was the February employment report which astounded investors with a gain of 273,000 net new workers joining the workforce, 100,000 more than had been forecast. Moreover, […]
January 2020 The Treasury Department is the agency assigned the responsibility for issuing government debt, among other varied responsibilities. Since the financial crisis, the Treasury has been tasked with financing the enormous debt burden of the United States. Initially, criticism of profligate deficit spending was heard from the “Tea Party” politicians, but over the course […]
November 2019 As we ease into year end, the Fed has managed to avoid upsetting the capital markets as it did last December. Fed Chairman Powell, at the recent post-FOMC press conference sounded a tone of neutrality with regards to policy and despite repeated questions about the next move in the overnight lending rate, he […]
December 2019 The bullish stock market that generated such outsized returns last year continues its upward trajectory in the opening days of 2020. Undeterred by a supposed Iranian plot to kill Americans, the United States’ removal of the supposed plot mastermind, the Iranian missile attack response, including the Iranian attack of a Ukrainian passenger aircraft, […]
October 2019 Last month we wrote of the technical hiccup in the Repo market, the financing mechanism Wall Street utilizes to borrow money to pay for securities. We identified it as a symptom of too much government borrowing as the U.S. runs wider and wider deficits. To reiterate, the repo market is a little-followed, but […]
September 2019 An esoteric segment of the Fixed Income market not normally followed by the broad investment community is the Repo market (Repo is short for Repurchase Agreement). Repurchase agreements are the mechanism in which U.S. Treasury note and bond positions are borrowed or lent; the so called “grease” of bond market leverage. During the […]
August 2019 Since the interest rate cut at the end of last month, economic data has continued to suggest that the economy is growing moderately despite some trepidation in the manufacturing sector over trade tensions. Despite that fear, services and consumption continue to drive the economy. Moreover, with the workforce at full employment and wages […]
July 2019 The Federal Reserve lowered the overnight Fed Fund rate by 25 basis points as expected, at the conclusion of last month’s FOMC meeting. As is the case following every FOMC meeting, the Fed Chairman gave a press conference with the goal of ensuring market participants understand the thinking of the committee. Typically, the […]