Articles authored by Sonu Varghese

Another month, another solid employment report. Employment rose by 311,000 in February, on the back of 504,000 in January and 239,000 in December. It’s certainly been a warm winter. This is the labor market that refuses to give in, despite the Fed throwing almost 500 bps (5%-points) of rate hikes at it and gearing up …

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s comments this week during his semi-annual testimony in front of Congress did not inspire much confidence with respect to the path for monetary policy. It seems like Fed officials’ are confused as to what they want to do next. Case in point: last month, Powell said that the “disinflationary process …

Last year the MSCI EAFE Index, which represents a basket of developed market stocks, fell 14.5%. Meanwhile, the MSCI Emerging Markets (EM) Index lost 20.1%. It turns out the returns for these baskets were higher in local currency terms, and there was a big drag from a stronger dollar. In local currency terms, the MSCI …

TINA, or “There is No Alternative,” was the theme of the last decade as interest rates were close to zero. Yields on long-term bonds weren’t much above that. So, stocks were the “only alternative” if someone wanted reasonable returns. But now it looks like there is an alternative, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate …

Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire shareholders is always a must-read. This year’s version didn’t disappoint, with some great takeaways, as my colleague Ryan Detrick discussed the other day. What’s particularly great is that he’s not shy to show the numbers. They’re the first thing you see, following the table of contents. From 1965 to …

We’ve seen volatility come back into equity markets over the last few weeks. Ironically, this has come amid a slew of stronger-than-expected economic data, including payrolls and consumption. Consumer confidence is also rising. The problem is that inflation numbers have stopped decelerating as fast as they were a few months ago. We wrote about this …

The US national debt is about $31 trillion right now, which is equivalent to about 120% of GDP (as of the third quarter of 2022). Massive, but also note that this is down from a peak of 135% in the second quarter of 2020. As a point of clarification, the US government typically racks up …

“American Consumers: Have money, will spend“ That, in a nutshell, is the story of the economy right now. Retail sales and food services surged 3% in January, making a mockery of expectations for a 1.7% gain. This is the largest monthly increase since March 2021, but that came on the back of stimulus checks. So …

January inflation data hit the nose on expectations. Headline CPI rose 0.5% and is up 6.4% year-over-year, while core CPI (ex-food and energy) rose 0.4% and is up 5.6% year-over-year. The fact that inflation is coming in at expectations is in and of itself a victory. That’s a sharp contrast to last year when inflation …

Putting the Tech layoff announcements in perspective It’s hard to get away from all the headlines about layoffs in the Technology sector these days. The most recent was Yahoo, which announced they were laying off 20% of its workforce, about 1,600 people. The firm, Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc., tracks layoff announcements and their most …