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The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average closed up nearly 4 percent, with the Dow gaining more than 600 points.

Myles Udland August 26, 2015The rally stuck. After markets surged early on Wednesday, the market started to give up its gains and a replay of Tuesday's action — when the Dow gained more than 400 points but closed down 200 — seemed in the cards. But in the final hour of trading stocks rocketed higher, finishing near their highest levels of the day. On a points basis, this was third-largest daily gain for the Dow ever, while the S&P 500 had its best day since November 2011. But the main story of markets in recent weeks — which is that...

Bob BryanAugust 26, 2015The stock market has been on a wild ride the past few days, but if you look beyond that, the US economy is doing just fine. There are numerous explanations for the sell-off in the markets, but none of them are because of the American economy. Unemployment is still down around its pre-recession levels, the housing market is still improving with more being built and increasing values, consumer confidence is very healthy, and gross domestic product is still growing. None of that has changed. In trying to explain the chaos, most analysts have noted that, for the...

David Scutt, Business Insider Australia August 26, 2015Despite further monetary policy easing from the People's Bank of China and restrictions on some forms of futures trading, Chinese stocks fell yet again on Wednesday. Whatever word you choose to describe it — chaotic, wild, skittish, or others — the movements during the session were ridiculously rapid. Stocks opened higher, then tanked, then roared higher again before sliding into the close. It's truly head-spinning stuff, but increasingly familiar for those who have been watching closely. (snip)

China’s stuttering economy might come more strongly into view from the Rocky Mountains at this week’s Jackson Hole meeting of central bankers following the chaos in the stock markets. Many economists still expect the Federal Reserve to stay the course and start raising interest rates this year. Despite the wild see-sawing of US stocks after China’s “Black Monday” meltdown, the bet is on the central bank to move soon and start weaning the US off rates that have stayed near zero since 2008. The annual policy conference in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, starting onon Thursday, has traditionally...

Myles Udland August 26, 2015 For the second day in a row, US stock futures are surging. Near 7:15 a.m. ET, Dow futures were up 300 points, S&P 500 futures were up 39 points, and Nasdaq futures were up 84 points. Wednesday morning's rally in US futures follows an ugly day on Tuesday, which saw stocks rally sharply early in the day before a huge sell-off in the final hour of trading. All told, the Dow fell more than 600 points from its peak on Tuesday to the market close. On Tuesday, all three major US indexes closed in the...

If you want to understand what’s going on in the stock market and what you should do with your own investments, don’t assume the past three trading days have been rational. And don’t talk about a market “correction.” Doing that will rot your brain. And don’t panic. Although this is an ugly market, this isn’t anything like the 2008-09 meltdown that wiped out millions of homeowners’ equity and put the world’s financial markets at risk. This is a stock market decline that, as we’ll see in a bit, has a serious impact on only a relatively small number of Americans....

LONDON (Reuters) - Americans and Britons bracing for their first interest rate rises in almost a decade are puzzled: why are rates about to go up when there's no inflation? Both the Federal Reserve and Bank of England are proclaiming that they are on the cusp of raising interest rates for the first time in almost a decade. It may take a few months, but the message they are sending still heavily-indebted households either side of the Atlantic is clear: 'be warned'. It's not hard to see why near-zero interest rates should be 'normalized' when you do a quick economic...

China froze share offers and set up a market-stabilization fund on Saturday, the Wall Street Journal said, as Beijing intensified efforts to pull stock markets out of a nose-dive that is threatening the world's second-largest economy. Beijing's reported suspension of initial public offers (IPOs) came a few hours after extraordinary announcements by major brokers and fund managers, which collectively pledged to invest at least $19 billion of their own money into stocks. China's government, regulators and financial institutions are now waging a concerted campaign to prop up the nation's two main share markets, amid fears that a meltdown would rock...

The Federal Reserve could well raise interest rates as soon as June, two top U.S. central bankers said on Friday, so long as economic data strengthens as expected from a dismal first quarter. That view—from the hawkish-leaning chief of the Cleveland Fed and from the centrist head of the San Francisco Fed—is at odds with the view of many traders, whose bets in the interest-rate futures markets suggest they have all but discounted a June rate hike and now expect the Fed to wait until December before raising rates for the first time since 2006. The Fed has kept interest...

Mike Bird March 13, 2015 The dollar is set for its strongest quarterly strengthening since 1992, according to Bank of America, a good sign that a rate hike is around the corner. When markets expect that US interest rates will be hiked, it typically strengthens the dollar. That's because people rush to change other currencies into dollars — they can make more money in dollar-denominated investments. The higher demand for the US currency drives its value up. In the past, significant dollar gains against other currencies have pretty much happened only during periods of extreme financial or geopolitical distress. The...

The Bank of Israel lowered its benchmark interest rate on Monday to an all-time low of 0.1 percent on Monday. The move came as a surprise, after 11 of 12 economists polled by Reuters had expected the central bank to stand pat. The central bank cut the rate to signal its determination to push back against the negative inflation holding down the market towards its intended annual target of one to three percent. Lowering the interest rate theoretically leads to an increase in demand within the market and helps increase prices towards the inflation target which the Bank of Israel...

Sweden has cut interest rates below zero and launched quantitative easing to fight deflation, becoming the latest Scandinavian state to join Europe’s escalating currency wars. The Riksbank caught markets by surprise, reducing the benchmark lending rate to minus 0.10pc and unveiled its first asset purchases, vowing to take further action at any time to stop the country falling into a deflationary trap. The bank presented the move as precautionary step due to rising risks of a “poorer outcome abroad” and the crisis in Greece. Janet Henry from HSBC said the measures are clearly a “beggar-thy neighbour” manoeuvre to weaken the...

February 08, 2015 Chris Mayer writes: That chill in the air? This is what deflation feels like... Right now, the 10-year U.S. Treasury pays just 1.8%... oil is $50 a barrel... commodity prices drift near to chilling lows... and the dollar is near multiyear highs. These are all deflationary trends. What deflation means for you as an investor is what I want to explore today. As an investor in stocks, there is a safe path through a deflationary Ice age. I'll get to that in a moment. But first... what exactly is deflation? The economic word deflation, says the Oxford...

Sam Ro January 3, 2015January 2015 is looking a lot like January 2014. The US economy has been improving, the unemployment rate has been coming down, and the Federal Reserve has been increasingly prepping the world for tighter monetary policy. For most bond market experts, all that means US interest rates are going to head up, especially considering the fact that rates have been falling for three decades. But Jeff Gundlach is not like most bond market experts. A year ago this month, Gundlach, the head of DoubleLine Funds, went contrarian and correctly predict rates would fall. In a new...

China’s central bank unexpectedly slashed interest rates on Friday to re-energize the world’s No. 2 economy, joining a growing list of major economies that are trying to encourage growth in the face of a global slowdown. On top of the rate cut, Chinese authorities promised to inject credit into the financial system if needed. Meanwhile, the president of the European Central Bank said Friday he was ready to step up stimulus for the 18-country eurozone economy, whose performance continues to disappoint. And Japan’s government this week delayed a tax increase after the country slipped back into recession. News of China’s...

I wrote an article recently over at Voices of Liberty that lays out the very dire picture for those of us who have yet to retire. The gist of the article is that the Fed has effectively robbed the retired class of any hope for having enough of a nest egg to live off through the end of their lives if they want to retire at 65. Some may argue well this past 10 years has just been an anomaly of low interest rates but they will come back i.e. normalize to higher levels here in the next couple...

Deutsche Skatbank, a division of VR-Bank Altenburger Land, which was founded in 1859, is not the biggest bank in Germany, but it’s the first bank to confirm what German savers have been dreading for a while: the wrath of Draghi. Retail and business customers with over €500,000 on deposit as of November 1 will earn a “negative interest rate” of 0.25%. In less euphemistic terms, they have to pay 0.25% per annum to the bank for the privilege of handing the bank their hard-earned money or their business cash. Inflation has had a similar effect in the zero-interest-rate environment that...

Federal Reserve is losing control. They cannot keep interest rates low forever. Nobody can. And when rates rise, the results will be devastating In the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando) utters, “the horror, the horror,” on his deathbed. He might as well have been talking about the U.S. dollar. Central banks maintain a nation’s currency. As the world’s largest central bank, the United States Federal Reserve, or “Fed,” sets the rate of interest in worldwide lending. It also has major influence on monetary policy. For instance, the Fed’s $85 billion per month in...

August 17, 2014 DailyWealth Dr. Steve Sjuggerud writes: A new record was set in Germany yesterday... The interest rate on a 10-year government bond in Germany fell below 1%. This number is shocking... Interest rates have never been this low in German history. What does it mean? Why would people agree to lend money to a government for 10 years with almost no return on that money? What is the message that we should take from this? Aren't things supposed to be getting back to "normal"? And doesn't "normal" mean something like this: By 2020, the Federal Reserve has short-term...