Yields have been on the rise this week in the midst of a bond market sell-off.
Two-year borrowing costs hit their highest level in a decade Wednesday. The yield on the 2-year Treasury climbed to 2.816%. Meanwhile, the 10-year Treasury yield hit a four-month high of 3.07%.
What’s going on here?
The trade war between the US and China escalated again this week. The US slapped an additional $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods. The tax starts at 10% and will increase to 25% by the end of the year. China retaliated by announcing another $60 billion in tariffs on US goods.
As Peter Schiff noted in his most recent podcast, people still think the US will win this trade war.
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
The US stock markets had another big day Wednesday with a number of the indexes, including the Nasdaq and the S&P 500, in record territory. So, what’s with the recent move up in US stock markets?
Donald Trump and a lot of Republicans have been taking credit for it, saying their economic policies are causing a boom. But in his latest podcast, Peter Schiff thinks the real impetus for this leg up is the dovish tone of recent Federal Reserve comments.
Friday was an active day in the markets. The S&P 500, the Russell 2000 and the Nasdaq all hit record highs. The Dow Jones didn’t quite crack into record territory, but it was up over 100 points. Meanwhile, the dollar fell and gold was up more than $20.
In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff said he thinks the dovish speech by Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell at Jackson Hole drove all of this. And it could have longer-term ramifications.
We are well into the third quarter of 2018. In our perpetual fast-forward world, analysts are already looking toward Q4. What will the last quarter of the year bring?
It’s virtually impossible to predict the short-term. Who knows what kind of political event, natural disaster or emerging trend will drive the markets over the next few months?
Of course, we can’t predict the future at all. We’re not fortune tellers or Old Testament prophets, but as Dan Kurz notes in his latest post at DK Analytics, it is a bit easier to project what will happen to the economy in the long run because we can clearly see the big-picture dynamics and fundamentals underlying it. As he put it, he’s less sure where America is headed in Q4 than ‘down the road’ in general. The whole thing (political, financial, economic) could fall apart at any time.”
We are now officially in the longest bull market in US stock market history. Yesterday took out the record set in the 1990s. As Peter Schiff pointed out in his most recent podcast, the old record run ended in 2000.
And we all know how badly it ended. It ended with a 50% collapse, an 80% collapse in the Nasdaq, and the Federal Reserve had to slash interest rates to 1% and inflate a housing bubble in order to prop the market back up.”
Peter said he believes this bull market will meet a similar if not worse fate.
Through the last several presidential administrations, the US has maintained a “strong dollar” policy. As Peter Schiff pointed out in his most recent podcast, it wasn’t so much that you could pinpoint the specific tenets of the policy. It was more about the rhetoric that came out of Washington D.C. Everybody talked about the strong dollar being in the national interest.
Having the belief that there was some kind of hidden strong dollar policy helped to create confidence in the dollar. Even periods where the dollar was declining, perhaps it would have declined even more had it not been for the belief that there was some kind of strong dollar policy.”
But times have changed. As Peter put it, “It should be pretty obvious that Donald Trump has a weak dollar policy.”
