It's Friday and Nothing Much Going Is On

Today’s a kind of boring day. No major news on the market front, other than the price of oil. Oil and gold are both up a bit today, so the negative feeling from yesterday carried forward to today. Although markets are off there is no major selling. The Dow at the moment is down only 30 points and Nasdaq is down 16 points.

Looking at my portfolio, CLRK is down a penny and SCUR is down 3 pennies. Man I am starting to feel like the markets. I don’t feel like doing much today. I can’t see anything going on today to change the mood. We’ll just have to ride it out until Monday and start over with a fresh good feeling. Today feels like the focus should be on the weekend and taking a break from all this talk of markets and inflation.

One interesting thing going on today is that the treasury prices in the U.S. are rising, bringing the yield on the 10 year note to 4.61%. Does this suggest that the markets think that the economy may be slowing faster than the Fed thinks? I say it does. We have to remember that all of the statistics that the government uses to measure economic output are usually at least a month old or more before we see them. So although the Fed says that the economy is showing signs of slowing, it has likely gone beyond that point by the time of the Fed statement. But being old, senile bankers, the Fed’s ability to anticipate is, much like their sex drives, greatly diminished.

So we will see the economy slow, then the Fed will react as the economy comes out of the slowdown. Then the recovery will pick up even more steam from the Fed’s late reaction and everyone at the Fed will pat themselves on the back.
Oh well, back to anticipating the week end that lies before me.