Gold prices ended Wednesday’s session nearly unchanged after shuffling between gains and losses following the sharp drop seen on Tuesday. The market continued to digest Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s testimony that revived fears about more interest-rate increases than expected this year. The Fed is expected to push through the first rate increase of 2018 at…

With the first stock market correction in over a year, having occurred in early February, there were many media narratives about what caused the selloff. We think it was driven by the unwind of the short VIX trade. Buying protection wasn’t considered important with the VIX at record lows in 2017. However, when nobody thinks there’s…

Twenty years ago, Paul Krugman warned that the liquidity trap was not just an issue in the economic history of the 30s. He noted there was every sign that Japan was in the liquidity trap in the 90s, then argued that a liquidity trap was theoretically possible. I guess one lesson is that economists even…

Did we just see the proverbial kiss of death? OK, “death” might be a bit of a strong word, though “extreme frustration” wouldn’t mischaracterize what the market has been doing, and still is doing. Just when it looks like stocks might ready to make a meaningful move, something gets in the way. The kiss in…

Or, should I say, mini freak-out? After all the Dow Jones Industrials and S&P 500 indices were only down 299 and 35 points respectively (a mere 1.16% and 1.27%). This certainly was not a rout and it was very predictable. This is what you would expect from the market when a newly-minted Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, made…