1/TrackRecord's Market Musings😎: Fed Puts Ball Firmly In Congress’ Court
22nd Sep, POWELL: “Many of our programs rely on emergency lending powers that require the support of the Treasury Department and are available only in unusual circumstances.”
2/23rd Sep, POWELL: “Have done basically all of the things that we can think of”
3/24th Sep, POWELL: “While households are spending now, perhaps using what's left of money from the $2.3 trillion package passed by Congress in Mar, the risk is they will go through that money, ultimately, and hv to cut back on spending and maybe lose their home or their lease...
4/...That is the downside risk of no further action. We don't see much of that yet, but it could well be out there in the not-too-distant future"
5/Powell is clearly cognizant of the risks and the U.S. government is not holding up its side of the bargain between the "Fed-Gov marriage" of twin bazookas. We believe the stimulus will eventually arrive and motivations for hiccups are purely political at this point in time.
6/Average Americans are growing restless and as we have been advocating, "Print The Money Or Trigger The Revolution". Powell has clearly thrown the ball into the Govt's court when he declared on the 2nd day of hearing that "We've done basically all the things we can think of".
7/That's not the kind of thing you say out loud. Even when you're out of ammo, you need to pretend the opposite. The context of what Powell is saying is that he wants fiscal policy to do more.
4 NOTABLE LEGAL OPINIONS OF U.S. SUPREME COURT PICK: AMY CONEY BARRETT
This is important because Amy Coney Barrett will sit on the Supreme Court for decades, long after Trump is gone and shaping constitutional policies that will define America and what it stands for.
Amy Coney Barrett’s induction will tilt the Supreme Court towards a Conservative majority, hence her decisions will carry more weight than usual as it will more often than not be a “swing vote”.
As a result, the potential for political and social divide just ratcheted higher as Democrat voters will try to neutralize the skew in the Supreme Court, making a politically charged election a certainty. This might translate to extreme volatility in markets.
TrackRecord's Market Musings😎: 5 Risk Factors We See Affecting Markets Leading Up To Nov 3rd Elections.
Thread Below ⬇️
1⃣: China Blacklists: China is threatening to blacklist US companies in retaliation for Huawei, Tiktok and Wechat bans. For now, China seems to be waiting till the next President is confirmed...
... Chinese consumer and manufacturing base is still key for some Big Tech U.S. companies. And Big Tech makes up a sizable portion of U.S. market capitalization.
1/TrackRecord's Observation of the Day 💭: Winter Is Coming
We are on the precipice of a perfect confluence of forces that will result in unprecedented volatility in the coming months.
2/As winter is literally coming, there is a good chance Covid-19 will come back with a vengeance, can governments afford the economic brunt of another lockdown?
3/One of the reasons for yesterday’s selloff was this fear and main street is well aware of the economic impact (Jobs gets decimated).
1/The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg less than two months before the presidential election tosses one more lit match into the tinderbox of national politics in 2020:
2/It will surely inflame a deeply polarised country already riven by a deadly pandemic, a steep economic downturn, and civil unrest in its major cities.
In Washington, the vacancy fight could ratchet up tensions to a level unseen even in the tumultuous Trump era.
3/He could also become the first president since Richard Nixon to install three justices on the high court in a single four-year term.
A successful GOP effort to replace Ginsburg with a conservative before or immediately after a Democratic victory will almost certainly lead to..
1/TrackRecord's Market Observation of the Day 💭: Quad Witching Friday
Quadruple witching occurs on the third Friday of the month of every quarter (highest volatility occurs in the last hour of trading between 3:00pm - 4:00pm EST) , in March, June, September, and December.
2/It refers to the simultaneous expiration of single-stock options, single-stock futures, and stock-index options and stock-index futures which are settled at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
3/Options volumes tend to be particularly elevated during quad-witching periods, which may also account for some of the choppiness anecdotally associated with September as the worst-performing month (for stock markets).
The consensus is for the US economy to have added another 1.4 million jobs in August, which would push the unemployment rate down to 9.8%, from 10.2% previously.
That would still leave the unemployment rate just beneath its peak from the 2008 financial crisis, so even though this is a step in the right direction, there are still miles to go before the labour market truly recovers.
More importantly, this report will capture the mid-July to mid-August period, when infections were on the rise and several states rolled back their reopening plans, causing high-frequency indicators to lose steam.