![]() They have two mandates they balance, and they've been treating a 2% inflation target, especially over the last decade or so, more like a ceiling. For the past 40 years or so, ever since Volcker raised rates and turned us from structural inflation to disinflation period for 40 years, they've been kind of emphasizing inflation over unemployment. I think Powell kind of set the stage last year at Jackson Hole by pointing out their shifting emphasis. Would you agree that's what you're looking for now? Are you watching the monthly jobs reports going forward? And how should investors be preparing for what's to come? Because it seems like the focus has gone from inflation to unemployment. He has a pretty high threshold for, especially, raising rates, but even still remaining non-committal on asset tapering. Also emphasized that, if you look at broader employment measures, there's still pretty high levels of overall unemployment, low labor participation rate. Whereas Powell himself came out a little on the dovish side, didn't commit to a tapering plan, discussed how interest rates are very disconnected from tapering, right, so just because they're planning on tapering doesn't mean they're planning on raising rates anytime soon. They kind of did a "good cop, bad cop" routine, where a number of Fed officials came out hawkish, some had specific tapering dates they'd like to see, generally starting later this year and then ending in the first half of next year. The big question that a lot of people had going into Jackson Hole was, "Would Powell announce a specific date for tapering or not?" My base case was that he probably would not, especially with the whole delta variant happening, the Jackson Hole was then moved virtual. ![]() So, they're getting all these signs that it's getting near time to start discussing tapering. ![]() It's spilling back over to the Fed anyway. Also, all this reverse repo activity kind of shows that there's, ironically, too much liquidity in the system. So, they're getting the foundation in place. But they're still looking forward to putting those repo facilities in, which could prevent some of the things that happened back in 2019 when they were doing quantitative tightening. For example, they put in two standing repo facilities, even though at the moment there's no demand for repo. Prior to the meeting, we were seeing early signs that they were planning on laying the foundations to get ready for tapering their asset purchases. Everyone had their eyes on Powell's comments to analyze whether he's still dovish or ready to move on tapering and interest rates. ![]() So, let's dive into Jackson Hole, which happened at the end of August. Today we're covering the recap of Jackson Hole, Amazon ( AMZN) and Walmart ( WMT), and the world of crypto, reduction of margin, is Apple ( AAPL) still worth its valuation, and is gold still the flight to safety asset? Lyn, how are you doing today?ĭoing well! I can't think you enough for coming on to share your knowledge of the macro environment and market. Today, we are joined by Lyn Alden, one of the contributors for Stock Waves, a Marketplace service found here on Seeking Alpha. Hey everyone, I'm Daniel Snyder from Seeking Alpha. ![]() The following text is a transcript for our readers who would like to follow along: Lyn Alden Schwartzer Seeking Alpha Author Profile Start Your 14 Day Free Trial of Stock Waves Now ![]()
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