Last week was a very bad week for the bond market, with some reprieve on Friday after a better-than-expected inflation report. This is a 5-day chart for the 10-year Treasury. Yields shot up by 0.20% after the Fed cut rates on the 18th and in the aftermath of Jay Powell’s press conference.
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A few months ago, we started the process to refinance a few of our variable-rate loans into 7-year, fixed-rate loans. The fixed rates are based on the 7-year Treasury plus a spread which has been in the range of 1.50%. Here is a chart of the 7-year Treasury that goes through September 16th.
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There’s an old joke about economists that asks what happens when you put 10 economists in a room. You get 10 opinions. Well, in predicting whether the Fed would cut the Federal Funds Rate by 25 basis points or 50 basis points, they were virtually unanimous in their opinion,
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It’s been a challenging couple of years for apartment owners, but, as I have been writing about over the past year or so, there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel. This is because apartment construction while having been at historically high levels,
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After the chaos in Japan led to a pretty massive unwind of the yen carry trade, which spilled over to stock market losses and Treasury market gains (yields dropping), last week reversed some of that carnage. The stock market rebounded sharply, and bond yields went up,
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I think this headline last Friday from CNBC tells us much of what we need to know about the economy.
Up until recently disappointing economic news was generally good for the stock market because it has led to lower interest rates and more pressure on the Fed to cut rates.
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In The Lion King there comes a pivotal moment when Simba has to claim his rightful place on the throne and confront Scar. His mentor/guardian Rafiki reacts to this crossing of the threshold by Simba with the line “It is time!”. This is how I feel about Jay Powell and the Fed in terms of cutting interest rates.
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Now, I go down to Speaker’s Corner, I’m thunderstruck
They got free speech tourists, police in trucks
Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong
Industrial Disease by Dire Straits
Interest rates came down quite a bit and then shot up after the non-farm payroll report was released on Friday,
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Last week I had my annual cardiologist appointment which involves having an echocardiogram and EEG. I have been doing this for a number of years because I had mitral valve prolapse and a corresponding leaky valve which required annual monitoring. For many years the situation was stable until 2020 when the valve started leaking much more than it had been and was starting to enlarge the heart.
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The Grateful Dead have a song called The Eleven. In many ways the lyrics are unintelligible. It was written during their psychedelic phase so the lack of comprehension makes some sense as their senses were non-sensical.
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