Economics & Markets

The Internal Revenue Service made its biggest moves yet to stop what officials say is a wave of fraudulent and overstated claims for a pandemic-era tax break, including an immediate halt to processing new refund requests. New claims for the employee retention credit, or ERC, won’t be processed until at least 2024, the IRS announced

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) that started trading on Thursday offers investors a new way to participate in the hot market for short-dated equity options, a risky trading strategy that has enthralled markets over the last year. Miami-based ETF sponsor Defiance ETFs LLC launched the Defiance Nasdaq-100 Enhanced Option Income ETF on Thursday, the first ETF

Our research questions the complacency surrounding employment growth, suggesting an impending downturn as cyclical job losses loom. This counters the popular belief in a soft-landing, underpinned by the expectation of job market stability. To resolve the contradictions, we delve deeper into the U.S. employment outlook.  Evaluating ECRI’s insights To understand the state of the labor

It’s human nature…or perhaps investor nature…to be myopic at times and focus on the short-term; especially recently with hyper-sensitivity to all things inflation and the labor market, given uncertainty regarding Federal Reserve policy. Every day, the probabilities around what the Fed will do at the next one or two Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings

A breakout system triggered a new buy signal for the Dollar Index. After similar alerts, the DXY rallied 79% of the time over the next three months.  The dollar becomes a problem for stocks once the 6-month ROC shows a gain of 10% or more.

Of all the surprising casualties of the Fed’s massive rate hikes–regional banks! SVB!–could the private equity industry find itself on the list?  After all, the industry’s massive growth–from less than $2 trillion to $4.4 trillion in size as of last year–came during the past nearly-fifteen years of “ZIRP,” or zero interest rate policies. Ultra-low interest

Kudos to @jessefelder and @ErikSTownsend on an excellent MacroVoices podcast/chartpack recently.  Two charts stand out to me: 1. Jesse’s amalgam of Leading Indicators predicts a SIGNIFICANT earnings cliff coming. 2. This second chart shows the ratio of Reported Earnings: NIPA Profits (as reported to BEA).  Corporations are using every financial gimmick they can (like extending

This is only the 8th time over the past century that the underlying yield of a standard 60/40 portfolio of stocks and bonds has fallen significantly below the yield on cash. As those with a good memory of market history can see in the chart below, each of the seven occurrences prior to this year

There are nascent signs the market is splitting. Since May on the Nasdaq, there has been a cluster of days with too many split conditions. The 50-day average is coming off the 3rd-highest reading in history. 2nd highest was 1999. Highest was 2007. The indicator signals days when the index was at a 52-week high,