by Mark Chandik | Sep 11, 2023
Weekly Market Commentary Mortgage rates soared last year, rising from nearly 3% for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage to as high as 7.08%, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly mortgage survey. Predictably, housing sales fell sharply last year, and there were plenty of...
by Mark Chandik | Sep 5, 2023
Weekly Market Commentary It sounds like a contradiction. Jobs increased last month, but the unemployment rate also rose. What happened? Nonfarm payrolls rose by 187,000 in August, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), while the unemployment rate rose...
by Mark Chandik | Aug 21, 2023
Weekly Market Commentary Recession talk earlier this year and a belief that the Federal Reserve was nearly finished hiking interest rates kept a lid on longer-term Treasury yields. That’s changed. Last Thursday, the 10-year Treasury yield closed at 4.30%, according to...
by Mark Chandik | Aug 14, 2023
Weekly Market Commentary Fed Chief Jay Powell, along with other Fed officials, have been open about discussing the lessons they learned and the errors made during the 1970s. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) jumped to an annual rate of over 12% in 1974 before falling...
by Mark Chandik | Aug 7, 2023
Weekly Market Commentary Fitch Ratings downgraded U.S. government debt last week by one notch from its prized top rating of ‘AAA’ to ‘AA+.’ Fitch said its decision “reflects the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general...
by Mark Chandik | Jul 31, 2023
Weekly Market Commentary Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a very broad measure of the value of goods and services in the economy over a certain period. Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that GDP rose at an annual pace of 2.4% in Q2, accelerating...
