Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

Almost 27 percent of U.S. consumers have applied for a new credit card in the past 12 months, according to an October survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most since 2019 and far surpassing 2020’s record low rate of 16 percent. “Many things are slowly returning to more normal times,” Wilbert...

The U.S. economy created a meager 210,000 jobs in November, according to the U.S. labor department, less than half of the 550,000 to 573,000 that analysts had predicted. At the same time, the unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent from the 4.6 percent notched in October and is down almost 1.8 percentage points over the...

In November, prices of high-yield or “junk” bonds fell and saw their sharpest decline in more than a year as investors feared the Omicron virus would disrupt the economy to the degree that risky companies would not be able to repay their loans. ICE Data Services’ high-yield bond index slumped more than 1 percent last...

It comes as no surprise to Trends Journal subscribers. When the COVID War was launched last year there was an unprecedented spike in stocks of businesses that benefited from the lockdowns… with tech stocks and riskier issues leading the charge. Now, with many aspects of the COVID War in place, or slowing down, these hi-flyers...

The U.S. Federal Reserve is prepared to end its monthly bond-buying program of economic support sooner than the mid-2022 date it had earlier set, Fed chair Jerome Powell said in 30 November testimony before Congress. The Fed voted to taper its $120-billion monthly bond purchases by $15 billion in each of November and December; continuing...

As if the OMICRON Hysteria evaporated, and there were no new lockdowns, travel restriction, vax mandates, protests and other COVID War 2.0 battles being fought, yesterday, the U.S. equities snapped back with the hope that the OMICRON will be a mild variant.  The S&P 500 gained back nearly all its losses of last week, the...

On 1 December, U.S. equity markets retreated on news that the first case of the COVID virus’s Omicron variant had appeared in the U.S.  The Dow shed 461 points on the day, about 1.3 percent. The NASDAQ had gained 1.8 percent earlier in the day but gave it all back by the market’s close.  The...

JITTERS BUG U.S. MARKETS’ FIRST WEEK OF DECEMBER    U.S. markets began December with a broad tech-sector sell-off and bond yields plummeting as steeply as they did during the early days of the COVID War. Still digesting news that the U.S. Federal Reserve will begin closing down its $120-billion monthly bond-buying program, investors learned that...