What we’re reading (5/9)
“Stocks Slide To Lowest in 2022 As Rout Continues” (Wall Street Journal). “The most punishing market selloff in years showed no signs of abating Monday, with U.S. stock indexes sliding to new lows for 2022 and other assets, like oil and bitcoin, tumbling as well.”
“The Dollar Is Stronger. Who Wins? Who Loses?” (New York Times). “Fundamentally, a flood of foreign money into U.S. businesses and investments has been driving up the value of the dollar. In fact, a variety of actions that have unsettled the stock and bond markets have worked together to boost the greenback’s value against other currencies. These include the Fed rate increases, Russia’s war in Ukraine, global sanctions on Russia, soaring commodity prices, China’s lockdowns, and Europe’s and Japan’s economic slowdowns.”
“Contra Simpleton Pundits, ‘The Fed’ Didn’t Cause The Stock-Market Correction” (Forbes). “A Federal Reserve that projects its well-overstated influence through the most risk-averse financial institutions on earth is the all-weather explanation for everything stock-market related. Never explained is how. The stock market is risky, banks studiously avoid risk, but minor Fed fiddling with the short rate for credit supposedly tells the market story. What’s sad is the narrative rarely even rates the most basic of interrogation.”
“Fed Warns Of Worsening Market Liquidity In Stability Report” (Bloomberg). “‘According to some measures, market liquidity has declined since late 2021 in the markets for recently-issued U.S. cash Treasury securities and for equity index futures,’ the U.S. central bank said in its Financial Stability Report.”
“Wait, Trader Joe Was A Real Guy?” (CNN Business). “Joe Coulombe, a struggling convenience store owner in Los Angeles, decided in 1967 to open a grocery chain to appeal to the small but growing number of well-educated, well-traveled consumers that mainstream supermarkets were ignoring. ‘I have an ideal audience in mind,’ he told the Los Angeles Times in 1981. ‘This is a person who got a Fulbright scholarship, went to Europe for a couple of years and developed a taste for something other than Velveeta’ ordinary beer and Folgers coffee, he said.”
