Articles authored by Sonu Varghese

Inflation has been top of investors’ minds this year, especially since it’s resulted in the most aggressive rate hike cycle in four decades. Since the beginning of the year, many people (including me) thought it would be simply a matter of time before inflation starts heading back to earth. But it was not to be. …

Inflation has been on everyone’s mind this year, whether it’s households, investors, and the Federal Reserve. Surging inflation has weighed on consumer sentiment, though arguably, this is primarily because of gas prices. And as gas prices fell after the summer, consumer confidence started moving higher once again (I wrote about this back in September). We …

A big story this year has been the US dollar, which has surged. The chart below shows the sharp rise of the ICE US dollar index, which measures changes in the US dollar against a basket of other currencies, including the euro, yen, British pound, and the Canadian dollar. However, it pulled back by just …

The big headline for the November payroll report was that 263,000 jobs were created last month, well above expectations for a gain of 200,000. Job growth has slowed since the beginning of the year, but make no mistake, this is still a very strong pace of job growth. As Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted in …

A political strategist once said that if there were reincarnation, he would want to come back as the bond market. “You can intimidate everybody,” as he put it. With good reason, investors watch bond markets carefully for all sorts of signals about the economy, monetary policy, and inflation. And right now, a key signal from …

Last week I wrote about how economic growth is set to accelerate in the fourth quarter on the back of solid consumer spending. But the big question is whether consumer spending will remain strong in 2023. This is important because consumption, or lack thereof, will determine whether or not the US will experience a recession …

We just got some positive data regarding the consumer, in the form of a really strong retail and food service sales report. Retail sales rose 1.3% in October, beating expectations for a 1% gain. On top of that, sales for prior months were also revised higher. Now, one big reason was stronger gasoline sales, which …

It’s been a tough year, both for stocks and bonds. Perhaps the bonds piece of it has been tougher, mostly because you typically expect bonds to zag when stocks zag. Instead, they’ve gone down together. And as stocks and bonds have gone down, negativity has increased. Don’t get me wrong – there’s enough to be …

What a day for markets yesterday. The S&P 500 Index gained 5.5%, its best day since April 2020. Here’s a chart from my colleague Ryan Detrick, showing some historical perspective for days that saw more than 5% gains. A year later markets were up 91% of the time, with an average return of almost 28%. …

One month does not make a trend, but today’s consumer price index (CPI) report was very positive. Dare I say, it’s probably the best inflation report we’ve seen in about 15 months, especially because there were so many encouraging signs in it. This is a huge relief, and markets appear to be responding in kind. …