Weekly Market Update

President Trump announced he is nominating former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh to be the next Fed Chairman when Jerome Powell’s term expires in May. Warsh comes from Wall Street (Morgan Stanley) but sat on the Fed Board from 2006 to 2011 during the depths of the Great Financial Crisis. At that time, I recall Kevin…

Meeting Highlights As expected, the Fed kept the funds rate range unchanged at 3.50% – 3.75%, with two Fed governors dissenting (Miran and Waller who wanted a 25bps cut). It’s not really surprising the pair dissented as Miran has done so at every meeting he’s attended, and Waller is still holding out hope that President…

The first FOMC meeting of 2026 concludes today with a rate decision at 2pm ET. Alas, the suspense on this one is nearly nonexistent. The Fed is widely expected to pause rate cuts for the first time since July, with the post-meeting Powell presser the highlight. Questions about his successor and/or the subpoena matter are…

This week will be dominated by the first FOMC meeting of 2026 with a rate decision on Wednesday afternoon (2pm ET). While a rate cutting pause is widely expected, Powell’s post-meeting press conference will certainly get attention and no doubt questions around his successor, and his unusually direct video response to the subpoena matter. We…

This week was dominated by geo-political events, culminating in the President’s address at the annual Davos World Economic Forum. While the issue of Greenland sovereignty was front and center Trump relented on his earlier demand for the island and that allowed some space for improved trading, both equities and fixed income. However, while yields are…

The range trade for the past month was decisively broken yesterday, driven by geopolitical events, and the resolution has been for higher yields as the Greenland dust up rekindled another round of the “Sell America” trade. With Trump scheduled to speak within the next hour at the Davos World Economic Forum, there’s potential for more…

With first-tier economic reports done for a while, and a holiday-shortened week upcoming, there’s little on the horizon that could be identified as a possible catalyst to upset the range trade we’re in. That means more emphasis on potential geopolitical events to upset the apple cart, and, if anything else, this administration knows how to…

Cooler heads seem to be prevailing in the Powell/Subpoena dust up, and inflation seems to be cooling a bit too, according to the latest CPI release. We talk about that report in more detail below, along with a glance at the just released November Advance Retail Sales Report. The Supreme Court is set to issue…

This was supposed to be Inflation Week, but our regularly scheduled programming has been pre-empted by an assault against the Fed’s independence. In a remarkable video released yesterday (watch here), Chair Powell revealed the Fed had been served Grand Jury subpoenas on Friday, ostensibly over statements Powell made to Congress last June regarding the Federal…

Examining Bond Portfolio Trends: Fourth Quarter 2025 Beginning in May 2012, we started tracking  portfolio trends of our bond accounting customers here at SouthState Securities.  At present, we account for over 130 client portfolios with a combined book value of $11.9 billion (not including SouthState Bank’s portfolio), or $91 million on average per portfolio.  Twelve…

December nonfarm payrolls rose 50 thousand, missing the 70 thousand expected and 56 thousand gained in November (revised lower from an initial 64 thousand).   Two-month revisions cut 76 thousand jobs from previous estimates with October revised 68 thousand lower and November 8 thousand jobs lower. Private sector job growth was 37 thousand which was…

So far, the weekend events in Venezuela have failed to catalyze meaningful volatility, perhaps an indication that markets remain fixated on the state of the labor market to drive yields from here. To that extent, the rest of this week will begin to deliver some of the requisite data points that have either been missing…