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When Markets Fall, Who do you Listen to?

When markets fall, who do you listen to? This may seem like an odd title for a blog post, but it is an important one from a pyschological, health and financial well being standpoint. When markets fall and the economy experiences a down turn, the mainstream media highlights worst case scenarios and how bad everything can get. It can make your stomach churn if you have money in the markets, even if you have gone through such events in the past. The media is highly trained on how to illicit response with headlines that make you want to read them. That is how they make their money. It is also built into human pyschology that any danger signals trigger the pre-historic or primordial functions of the brain that are about survival. Add a terrible war in Ukraine and ongoing economic cold-war with China and you have a recipe for doom and gloom.

Reading the daily media headlines can be bad for your health. As Baron Rothchild once said "Buy when there is blood in the streets". That is of course much harder to do for the very reasons we are just referencing. Our brains and bodies are trained to "flee" danger, and not walk into it for good reason!

Who do you listen to or turn to when markets are falling is an important question. When you have a professional seasoned financial advisor, you have an objective party to speak with who can share their perspectives about bear and bull markets over decades of experience. When you are in the midst of a bear market, it seems like it will never end. Likewise when you are in a bull market it seems like it will never end. Both statements are false however. No Bull or Bear market is permanent.

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Recession or Not? That is the Question

The speed at which the economy has nose-dived from optimism to pessimism has taken a lot of people by surprise. That's the impact the Federal Reserve can have on the markets. Consumer confidence is fickle so when the daily news is filled with fears of recession and declining markets it impacts people in a way that causes people to spend less: The Nasdaq is down over 31% from it's highs and this along with all the media headlines of "recession" is generating a more fearful and less optimistic mood.

SNAP just anounced a significant revision in its profit forecasts due to macro economic conditions. Advertising revenue is down.

The mood on the street is somber and consumers are concerned. The critical question is what impact will this decline in consumer confidence and demand have on inflation? Will inflation numbers trend down? If they do, the current economic news may provide sufficient impetus for the Federal Reserve that they need to walk and talk a softer line and send some easening signals, such as for example, that rate increases may be sufficient.

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A Federal Reserve in Reverse. How Far Will It Need to Go?

The markets were riveted on one man on Wednesday as 2.30pm EDT rolled around. Chairman of the Fenderal Reserve, Jerome Powell was to provide a state of the market or more to the point "a state of inflation" update. A 0.5% increase in interest rates was already baked in. The unknown was whether the tone of the Federal Reserve Chairman was going to be increasingly hawkish or more in line with market expectations.

As we have said in previous blog articles, the goal of the Federal Reserve is to curb spending and bring inflation back down into its 2% per annum goal. The Federal Reserve is well aware that acting too hawkishly could send the economy into a recession and not acting agggresively enough could let inflation run amock. They are are having to walk an intricate balancing act to send the message that they will take aggressive action while at the same time keep an eye on the health of the economy.

In summary, Powell communicated exactly that on wednesday and that their primary intent is to dampen demand to bring inflation down while at the same time allowing the economy enough bandwidth to keep growing. At this juncture, the Fed projects a target of 2.4 percent by year's end. The markets responded by continuing to sell-off as they try to digest the impact of rising rates on the economy. A more pessimistic outlook will need to be swayed by market forces that point to "more light" at the end of the tunnel.

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Technical Analysis - Volume Metrics

We have covered a number of technical analysis indicators in our blog articles. Today, we are going to look at a volume indicator that measures the quantity of buy orders or volume versus the quantity of sell orders or volume.

One such indicator is "On Balance Volume" which as it's title suggests is measuring a running total of buy and sell volume that translates into a trend line that is moving up or down and can be used to correlate or measure against price. It can also be used to spot trends in price as well as price reversals.

For example, if price is moving up but the "on-balance-volume" is trending down - meaning their is more selling volume than buying volume - this may indicate a potential "price" reversal. The same is true in reverse. If "price" is moving down but the "on balance volume" indcator is trending up this can indicate a potential reversal in price.

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Navigating The Rising Tide of Interest Rate Hikes

The Fed is Waking Up and Is putting its foot on the brakes!

“Hindsight says we should have moved earlier. . . . But there really is no precedent for this.”  Fed Chair Powell, March 3, 2022

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Phone: 925-906-9800
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