- One piece of positive economic news ISM Non-Manufacturing Index for July surged to 60.3 – highest number in 10 years
- The ADP Employment Report came in at 185,000 jobs, well below the consensus
- June Trade Deficit rose 7.1% – in line with expectations
- June Layoffs rose to 105,696 biggest layoff number in 6 years
- Consumer Comfort Index down to 40.3 second lowest number since November
- The Atlanta Fed dropped a bombshell forecasting Q3 at just 1%
- Given this slowdown, could we possibly have a rate hike?
- The stock market has had 6 consecutive down days
- The stocks with no earnings are doing the best
- Very reminiscent of the dot com era
- The “story stocks” are selling in 2015
- Companies that actually have earnings are experiencing the greatest pressure on their share price
- Every time we have a dip in the stock market, the Fed always comes to the rescue
- Why wait until the economy is slowing down to raise rates?
- They can’t do that this time, unless they want to abandon their rate hike rhetoric
- They will have to take the rate hikes off the table
- Janet Yellen continues to say rate hikes are data dependent
- The data has been bad for quite a while
- The economy is growing at the slowest pace of the entire “recovery”
- All the Fed can do is go back to the drawing board with more QE, because they can’t admit that it never worked
- The money printing is just getting started
- Not that it is going to work, but it is the only policy remedy the Fed has
- Some stocks are really getting beaten up as earnings continue to disappoint
- This topping pattern has got to worry the Fed
- Any rate hike will accelerate the decline
- We have a stock market bubble and raising rates will prick that bubble
- Ben Bernanke created the stock market bubble thinking the “wealth effect” would cure the economy
- Bernanke would not acknowledge that bubbles weaken the economy because it was not politically advantageous
- The First Republican Debate was held tonight, so please follow me on Twitter for my comments
- Donald Trump is far and away the leader in the polls and he is one of the few candidates who have been critical of the Fed
- The only other candidate in the race who knows anything about the Fed is Rand Paul
- Tomorrow could be a big day – the question is, if we get a bad jobs number, will we finally have a reaction in the currency markets?
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