financial planning

This week’s US data is perfectly focused on the two objects of our desire: declining inflation and continued, robust economic growth. Preliminary reports on economic activity in January will be followed by the Fed’s favored barometer of inflation,

As the likelihood of an economic "soft landing” is increasingly accepted by investors, businesses and consumers, attention is shifting to the challenges of profitability, sales growth and geopolitical threats.  The US market headwinds echo the same

The US nonfarm payroll figures released on Friday were largely positive, certainly in terms of forecasts for a “soft-landing. The 216,000 net new jobs added in December is a number consistent with low or falling unemployment rates and the jobs were

Happy 2024. What can this year possibly do to top the extraordinary economic stories of 2023? A good start would be a soft landing driven by the kind of productivity improvement that leads both to wage growth and decelerating inflation. 2023 ended

As is often the case following Federal Reserve/FOMC meetings, the past few days have seen considerable re-evaluation of the first quick-take outlook for interest rates in 2024. Little doubt has emerged that the FOMC announcement on December 13

The most recent reading on fourth quarter US economic growth by the Atlanta Fed GDPNow model has fallen consistently and now hovers at 1.2%, which may cause most of the press conference questions to focus on economic activity, not inflation. On

Entering the final four weeks of 2023, there is a palpable sense of being at a turning point; the denouement of an economic story written across 2022 and 2023. Although Fed Chairman Jay Powell counseled, as recently as last Friday, that talk about