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Joel Elconin – Market Trends Post Fed Rate Hike And Quad Witching Options Expiration

Joel Elconin, Co-Host of the Benzinga PreMarket Prep Show and Editor of the PreMarketPrep.com website, joins us to break down the continued volatility in the markets after the quadruple witching options expiration. We discuss the interest rate markets reaction now that Fed has initiated their first rate hike, and with the flattening of the yield, and being so very far behind the high pricing inflation readings, we also question whether this late start is a policy error, and may lead to recession.

 

We review the commodity sector’s corrective move across the board from last week into this week, and that now the market is ignoring the geopolitical tension in Ukraine that it was so focused on for a few weeks.   The big tech sector is taking back off to the upside, as is the smaller growth stocks in tech over the last few trading sessions, which Joel saw as a good tradable rally, but thinks its premature to suggest it will simply break to new all time high in the near future. 

 

Another stock investors are piling into as a type of safe haven is Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, due to his cash holding, diversified portfolio, and consumer staples held with.  We wrap up with some thoughts on the moves in the cryptocurrencies, and how Joel is trading the general stock  markets.

Click here to visit Joel’s PreMarket Prep website to keep up to date on when he’s seeing in the markets. 

Discussion
7 Comments
    Mar 22, 2022 22:28 PM

    It’s amazing that Gold futures have been all over the range today, but ended up closing in afterhours at $1921.35 (there’s that $1921 number…. yet again…. after seeing it one day last week holding steady, and to close up the week on the futures on Friday).

    https://www.investing.com/commodities/gold

    Mar 22, 2022 22:31 PM

    Wall Street Stocks, Treasury Yields Rise On Hawkish Fed Comments

    Reuters – Mar 22, 2022

    “Treasury yields marched higher on Tuesday, bringing U.S. stocks with them, as investors digested the increased likelihood of swift interest rate hikes following hawkish comments from the U.S. Federal Reserve.”

    “The Nasdaq led Wall Street’s main indexes higher, rising nearly 2%, as investors bought the dip in technology stocks, including Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Meta Platforms Inc and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc.”

    “Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Monday the central bank could move “more aggressively” to raise rates to fight inflation, possibly hiking by more than 25 basis points at one or more meetings this year.”

    https://www.investing.com/news/economy/miners-lead-gains-as-war-and-rate-hikes-rattle-nerves-2789013

    Mar 22, 2022 22:33 PM

    Wall Street Gains, With Tech, Growth Shares In The Lead

    Reuters – (Mar 22, 2022)

    “U.S. stocks ended higher on Tuesday, led by a 2% gain in the Nasdaq, as shares of technology and other big growth names rebounded from recent losses and Nike rose after it reported upbeat results.”

    “Financial shares also were among the day’s best performers as the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 2.368%, with the S&P 500 bank index up 2.5%…. While higher borrowing costs are a negative for consumers and many businesses, they help to boost the profit outlook for banks.”

    https://www.investing.com/news/economy/futures-tick-higher-nike-jumps-after-solid-quarter-2789230

    Mar 22, 2022 22:43 PM
      Mar 23, 2022 23:40 AM

      Yes, inflation has remained persistently higher, and has actually continued trending higher for over a year now, and it’s unlikely the Fed raising the their rates by a 1/4th of a percent is going to do much to tame inflation, when the CPI reading for January came in at 7.9%.

      What Powell and his crew of central banksters are hoping for is that when the year over year numbers from last year to this year come in, that the CPI numbers will start trending down due to base effects of the really high numbers from 2021, so we’ll eventually see more muted Y.O.Y. figures. This would happen regardless of whether the central bank had done anything or not, but I’m sure they’ll take a victory lap and suggest that this is due to their rate hikes fighting inflation.

      Like Peter S. mentioned, these dinky 1/4 point rate hikes are like them fighting inflation with a squirt gun. The real source of the inflationary pressures are all the new money creation from the central bank as well as government fiscal spending, so if they really wanted to “fight inflation” they’d have nipped that in the bud years ago. Let’s remember that these are the same people that claimed they wanted inflation and that it was a good thing (even though it is a theft of every citizen and business by eroding their purchasing power and thus forcing everything to cost more).

      Well, of course they want to inflate their way out of the mess they are in, and they’re petrified of a deflationary spiral, but back in 2020 most people that spent even a minute mulling over the massive monetary deluge, knew inflation was never going to stay under or near 2%. That was a fantasyland sales pitch to the markets, and we had stated repeatedly on here that once they let the inflation genie out of the bottom that they’d have near an impossible time getting that genie back in the bottle.

      Bottom line: They’ve got the inflation they were working so hard to create, and people should recall that they wanted this inflation. Many market commentators and economic historians may look back on this period of time as the biggest Fed policy error of all time, as Jesse Felder outlined on the weekend show. By sitting in the corner cowering in analysis paralysis for the last 2 years, instead of starting to hike rates over a year ago when there was the enthusiasm over the reopening trade and the markets were hitting new all time highs every few days is a stunning fail. Why the central bank decided to wait until pricing inflation was so extreme and GDP growth estimates were so poor is as terrible of a decision on their part as it was a deliberate decision.

      Now let’s see how many hikes they can pull off and how high they can get the Fed funds rate before something in the market breaks… (or until the break under the strain of the rising interest on debt repayments)

        Mar 23, 2022 23:18 AM

        I have been talking about how huge the edifice of debt is in The Western World for at least ten years. The debt is honeycombed with speculative credit that is breaking under it’s own weight. The economic structure is crumbling fast, there is no foundation for raising rates except to act as a Ponzi scheme to make people feel good about what they can’t understand.

        Fear will not be delayed by anything that is happening now with The Fed. DT

          Mar 23, 2022 23:41 PM

          DT – Very well stated:

          “The debt is honeycombed with speculative credit that is breaking under it’s own weight.”

          And as this Honeycomb Cereal commercial from the 1980’s sang.

          “Honeycomb’s big, yeah, yeah, yeah…. It’s not small, no, no, no.”

          https://youtu.be/yDZK6H3d5bk