The Fed has a tough job. We used to understand that. We used to give experts the benefit of the doubt, because we understood that doing things is hard and requires a certain set of knowledge and skills. We understood that because we were a nation of doers, so we naturally understood the difficulty of doing. Today we are increasingly a nation of spectators. Spectating is easy, and whatever it is we are spectating looks a lot easier than it actually is.
Last fall we had a market sell-off because the groupthink on Wall Street says that we are due for a recession. There was absolutely no sign of a recession in the U.S., but that didn’t matter. The data for the fourth quarter came in and not only are we not in a recession, but the U.S. economy grew at the fastest pace in more than a decade. Did they learn?
The market rally that greeted us in the New Year has hit a speed bump. Now we are down one week and up the next. So is the rally over and another downturn around the corner, or is the rally just getting started? In other words, which way do we go from here?
Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Jerome Powell has a communication problem. It must be incredibly frustrating because the problem really isn’t with anything he says; the problem is that the people he is talking to – market participants mostly – don’t actually listen.
We are still in a market downturn even after Santa tried to come to town on the second day of Christmas. We are even hovering right at bear market territory. This is happening in spite of record low unemployment and real wage growth. All signs are that the real economy within the U.S. is actually doing very well. So, what has the market so upset?
