The U.S. Federal Reserve announced today that it will not be raising interest rates following this month's meeting.
Markets were choppy following the Fed interest rate decision. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 56 points following the news, but quickly swung 100 points in the other direction. By 2:30 p.m. when Janet Yellen began her press conference, the Dow was back up five points.
We're just hours away from Janet Yellen's 2:00 p.m. press conference, and investors are still in the dark on whether interest rates will rise following the Fed meeting today (Thursday).
U.S. markets were flat this morning ahead of the Fed meeting, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down six points in early trading.
Investors are waiting anxiously, because the decision will have a huge impact on stocks...
The U.S. Federal Reserve began its two-day September meeting this morning (Wednesday), and investors are wondering whether Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen will decide to raise interest rates now.
And even though we're just a day away from Janet Yellen's press conference - which will take place Thursday at 2:00 p.m. - we're still in the dark about whether an interest rate hike is coming.
Here's what investors need to know now...
Market observers continue to give short shrift to the fact that the Federal Reserve is the perpetrator of the "Red Wedding" in the markets. The Federal Reserve doesn't trust the markets. It thinks it knows better than the markets how to set the price of capital and create the conditions for economic growth.
Every once in a while, we get an errant number like the revised second quarter GDP number of +3.7% to tease us into thinking that they know what they are doing. But once we look below the headline number, we find the same weakness that has plagued the economy since the financial crisis. Years of ZIRP and QE have suffocated the economy in too much debt that will continue to smother growth for years to come.
Find out what's ahead for the Dow Jones Industrial Average today.
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The central bank circus was on full display this week as the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee held a two-day meeting only to emerge with another mind-numbing series of excuses for keeping interest rates at zero when the economy is not in crisis.
One such claim was that inflation (as measured by economists) is insufficiently high, despite the fact that the price of real-world goods and services (including gasoline again) are steadily rising. The Fed stated that it's afraid raising interest rates - for the first time in nine years by all of 25 basis points - could send the economy into a tailspin. That isn't only bad policy, it is pathetic.
Perhaps it is time we learned this one vital lesson...
Good morning! For Friday, May 22, Dow Jones futures forecasted a 14-point gain ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's speech at 1 p.m. this afternoon. Although both the Dow Jones and the S&P are hovering near record levels, investors can expect lower volumes today as the Memorial Day holiday approaches and the quarterly earnings season ends.
One of Apple's core strengths is its ability to develop and market products that consumers don't even realize they need yet.
The DJIA Index added 33 points Friday to end a four-day losing streak. The cause? Biotech and healthcare stocks rebounded to pull markets upward as investors search for value after this week's sell-offs.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen gave a speech on monetary policy in San Francisco 15 minutes before the closing bell. Yellen indicated that rate increases this year are likely, but the pace will be gradual.
Here are the other top stories from today, plus our new profit tip...
If you want to lose all of your money, you could do worse than tune in to CNBC on a regular basis.
The network is a cheerleader for an overvalued stock market and the Federal Reserve policies that have pumped it up - and which are steering the economy straight into another recession.
Seven years after the financial crisis ripped across the globe, the world is mired in debt. This is particularly worrying since the "Debt Supercycle" that began 30 years ago is now supported only by the largesse of increasingly shaky central banks.
Today the world is buried in more than $100 trillion of debt. Hanging over that is another roughly $700 trillion of derivatives. Is it any wonder many economies can't grow when they have to service all of that debt and face such systemic risk?
Of course, the cheerleaders on CNBC have absolutely no clue about what is going on... and the dangers of this ignorance are too important to ignore.
Yes, there are some thoughtful, experienced journalists working at CNBC like David Faber and Steve Liesman- whose pained expression when enduring his colleagues' hyperbole tells a story in itself. And Rick Santelli continues to point to the dangers of what the Fed is doing.
Unfortunately much of the substance of Mr. Santelli's excellent reporting gets lost in his proclivity for ranting rather than reporting.
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen topped the news this week - but she didn't actually say anything...
And the markets went wild Wednesday trying to parse Yellen's remarks and the language of the latest FOMC meeting policy statement.
Yellen's word games mess with how markets are supposed to operate. It leaves investors guessing about what's ahead.
Janet Yellen triggered a move in oil prices on March 19. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) soared 3.7% and Brent jumped 4.4%.
The talking heads jumped on their chance respond. "Nothing the Fed Chair said indicated a retreat from any pending rate hike!" cried the pundits.
So why all the market exuberance? Here what "Yellen's Effect" really means for oil prices...
The Fed's Chairwoman Janet Yellen spoke of "bad bank culture" on March 18. Apparently, it's not the Fed's concern.
"While changing the culture of organizations is not something that we can achieve through supervision, we will make sure that the banks that we supervise have appropriate compliance regimes in place."
At the recent central banker conclave in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the two most powerful central bankers in the world, Janet Yellen, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), gave back-to-back addresses on the same subject.
It was like a controlled experiment in the attitudes and capabilities of the two leading financial powers in the world.
The contrast could not have been more striking. Draghi was nuanced, technically proficient, and had some excellent policy suggestions. Yellen was rigid, backward-looking, simplistic, and made disastrous policy prescriptions.
Today's stock market news, August 22, 2014: With members of the U.S. Federal Reserve and notable economists meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyo., investors await new insight today (Friday) into when the central bank might raise interest rates and plans to sustain growth in the U.S. economy. For the first time, protesters have descended on the small ski town, questioning the Fed's policies and the "so-called" strength of the U.S. economic recovery. Fed Chair Janet Yellen will speak this morning.
Here's a list of today's top stock market news...
