The Buzz on Business for March 15th 2024

There’s no getting around it. The economic news that was released before the bell yesterday was pretty bad. Retail Sales missed expectations and were grim regardless of expectations. The Atlanta Fed’s GDP Now missed expectations—and both have been surprising to the upside in recent months.

But it was big, bad inflation that, well, made us think we were back in 2022 again.

Stock Market Report

Stocks were down, interest rates were up, as you might expect, given the news, but the markets took the data way more calmly than we expected.

• The Dow Jones Industrials were down but just four-tenths of a percent. They closed at 38,905, off 138 points.
• The S&P 500 was off 15 points, that’s three-tenths of  percent, and closed at 5,150.
• The Nasdaq Composite was off just forty-nine points—three-tenths—and it closed at 16,129.
• The small-caps had a tougher go of it. The Russell 2000 was off 39 points, almost two percent and they start the day today at 2,036.

Bond Market Report

• The 2-year treasury was up six basis points and closed at 4.700%
• The 20-year was up ten ticks and closed at 4.541%

Oil, Gold, and Bitcoin

• Oil was up a $1.47 and closed back above $80 a barrel at $81.00 even.
• Rates are headed up so gold must be down, and it was. It closed $2,167.50, off $13.30.
• Bitcoin likewise took it on the chin. It was down $2,669.08 and at 4:00 pm ET stood at $70,752.65.

Fed Meeting on Tap

We are literally days away from the Federal Reserve Board’s meeting. It was Wednesday, this coming Wednesday when the revised schedule for rate cuts was supposed to begin. Well, maybe if your humble podcast host wins the lottery! And probably not even then.

The Producer Price Index, that’s inflation at the wholesale level, for the month of February came in at, are you sitting down? The PPI for February came in at over a 7%. Expectations were for 0.3% or at about a 3.6% rate—So double.

If Wall Street was assuming, expecting, counting on lower interest rates in 2024, they were wrong. It is possible, perhaps even likely that yesterday’s number was an aberration but even if it is, the inflation dragon is hardly slayer and the question that occurred to us is, “What if it’s not?” What if it’s not?

And then there is the rest of the economic data, which is hardly robust. A weakening economy? And rising inflation?

That is not good.