The new top cop at the U.S. Federal Reserve hardly fits the presidential mold. Michelle Bowman, Donald Trump’s pick to be the central bank’s vice chair of supervision, has indicated that she believes in aligning federal rules with Europe and the rest of the world. If so, it would mean largely conforming to Basel 3, the sort of international accord the White House is trashing most everywhere else. Bowman should be a welcome choice to the eight systemically important U.S. banks, which include Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon led the charge against her predecessor, Michael Barr, who initially proposed

The U.S. economy is still running too hot for comfort. Prices rose in January by 0.5% from the prior month, nudging the annual increase up to the psychologically testing 3% threshold. It’s another roadblock for further rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. More importantly, it leaves even less room for President Donald Trump, whose tariff plans could stoke inflation further. Something must give – raising the specter of recession. Inflationary pressure is the result of a gaggle of disparate causes: egg prices were up 15% over the prior month; car insurance is nearly 12% more expensive than last year. Sure, prices for

U.S. government bond markets are feeling the squeeze from all sides. Yields on 10-year government debt have dropped in recent weeks amid signs of slowing growth and investors’ reflexive flight to safety following President Donald Trump’s tariff talk. But buyers should beware a false sense of security: blown-up deficits, a major trade war, and something going haywire in tech tycoon Elon Musk’s forceful takeover of U.S. government payment systems all introduce major and sometimes opposing risks, making the future direction of yields hard to predict. The only guarantee is volatility. In the month after Trump’s election victory in early November, yields

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell faces a central banker’s most difficult task: cooling out-of-control price rises without choking the labor market. Conventional wisdom holds that these goals are in irrevocable tension. But now, labor is doing its part to reconcile the two. A steady flow of new workers and an uptick in productivity mean still-high wage and job growth isn’t stoking inflation, as evident in figures released Thursday. With the Fed eyeing further rate cuts, the risk now is that an immigration-hostile administration or fading output gains topple the balance. The September consumer-price index report shows inflation falling to

Jerome Powell has given the next occupant of the White House an early boost. The Federal Reserve chair’s double-sized rate cut on Wednesday shows the central bank has shifted from battling rising prices to the second part of its dual mandate: the pursuit of full employment. The Fed’s actions come with a lag, meaning the expected increase in home sales, stock purchases, and capital investment will probably only kick in following November’s U.S. presidential election. But whoever wins has a better chance of inheriting a soft landing. The Fed’s long-term projections are the closest the central bank is likely to come to formally declaring victory.

Stocks may have recovered from their big dip, but they’re still on a rollercoaster. Equities around the world had by Tuesday regained most of the losses they suffered the previous week, after a concatenation of economic and market events triggered a dramatic sell-off. Yet expectations of volatility are still higher than they were, which suggests more ructions lie ahead. Markets have mostly calmed down after the mini-crash that started when Japan raised interest rates and U.S. data showed unemployment at a near-three year high. The Bank of Japan has since vowed to tread more carefully, and the U.S. job market

Warren Buffett has dropped so much investment wisdom over the past six decades, it would be amazing if even he could keep it all straight. For example, he has scoffed at the idea that cash is king. And yet his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway now sits on a war chest bulging with some $275 billion of it. It should be helpful as stock markets wobble. The logic of the Nebraska billionaire’s aversion to excess cash is hard to dispute. It’s “always a bad investment,” he said in 2009, because inflation erodes its value over time. As recently as February, he conceded that Berkshire had more of it

Money can’t buy love, and when inflation soars it’s harder to purchase a lot of other important things, too. The frustration is more pronounced for poorer shoppers than richer ones. Even as some companies start slashing prices to bring back customers, a $5 value meal and discounted T-shirt will hardly be enough to make Americans feel much better about the economy. When The Beatles sang about the uselessness of currency when it comes to affairs of the heart, they started the refrain with “I don’t care too much for money.” It’s a sentiment that feels even quainter 60 years after

The data in the article below is sourced from Lipper’s Global Fund Flows application. GFF can be found on LSEG Workspace (“FundFlows”). During LSEG Lipper’s fund-flows week that ended April 17, 2024, investors were overall net redeemers of fund assets (including both conventional funds and ETFs) for the fourth week in five, removing an astonishing $143.5 billion—the largest weekly outflow since the week ending September 16, 2009. Alternative investments (+$117 million) was the only group to attract inflows since last Thursday. Money market funds (-$118.5 billion), equity funds (-$19.5 billion), taxable bond funds (-$3.2 billion), municipal bond funds (-$1.5 billion),

Big banks benefit from higher interest rates. So the market’s assumption that stubbornly high consumer prices will delay rate cuts from the Federal Reserve is no bad thing for investors in JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Citigroup. All three report first-quarter earnings on Friday, and are likely to say that shifting monetary policy is working in their favor. Smaller rivals, though, will struggle to turn inflationary lemons into lemonade. The bulk of mega-banks’ business is simple. They make money from interest on loans and securities, and they lose money on interest paid to depositors and other funding providers. The pocketed difference, dubbed net

The data in the article below is sourced from Lipper’s Global Fund Flows application. GFF can be found on LSEG Workspace (“FundFlows”). During LSEG Lipper’s fund-flows week that ended April 10, 2024, investors were overall net redeemers of fund assets (including both conventional funds and ETFs) for the third week in four, removing a net $29.7 billion. Taxable bond funds (+$6.0 billion), alternative investments (+$571 million), and tax-exempt bond funds (+$415 million) reported weekly inflows. Money market funds (-$35.3 billion), equity funds (-$1.0 billion), commodities funds (-$207 million), and mixed-assets funds (-$168 million) suffered outflows over the week. Money market

  Equity mutual funds and ETFs celebrated their fifth quarterly gain in six—with the average equity fund (+6.92%) posting its second straight quarterly plus-side return. LSEG Lipper’s U.S. Diversified Equity Funds (+9.07%) outpaced the other seven equity and mixed-assets macro-classifications for the first quarter since Q2 2023. Q1 2024 had actively managed equity funds (+7.09%) outperform their passive (+5.95%) counterparts by 114 basis points (bps), marking the fourth largest quarterly outperformance by active management since the start of 2013. In this segment, I provide a market recap plus highlight the quarterly and monthly performance results for conventional equity mutual funds