What we’re reading (6/25)
“Americans Chasing High Interest Rates Risk Falling Into A ‘Cash Trap’” (Wall Street Journal). “Americans have poured money into cash-like investments since the Fed began raising interest rates, driving assets in money-market funds to a record $6.12 trillion earlier this month, according to the Investment Company Institute. Now, Wall Street traders are betting rates have peaked and those investors face a choice: keep sitting on their cash as interest payments shrink, or figure out how to redeploy the money.”
“Bond Traders Boldly Bet On 300 Basis Points Of Fed Cuts By March” (Bloomberg). “Traders in the US rates options market are embracing a nascent wager on the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate path: a whopping 3 percentage points worth of cuts in the next nine months. Over the past three sessions, positioning in the options market linked to the Secured Overnight Financing Rate shows an increase in bets that stand to benefit if the central bank reduces its key rate to as low as 2.25% by the first quarter of 2025.”
“Fed Officials Are Talking Down The Chance Of Rate Cut This Year” (CNN Business). “At the beginning of the year, Federal Reserve officials projected they would cut interest rates three times this year. By June, they had lowered that projection to just one cut. Now some key policymakers say it won’t happen at all. On Tuesday morning, Fed governor Michelle Bowman said that she’s expecting no rate cuts this year.”
“Julian Assange Pleads Guilty To Espionage Charge, Ending Years Of Legal Deadlock” (Washington Post). “WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty Tuesday to a felony charge of violating the Espionage Act after his organization obtained and published classified military and diplomatic documents in 2010.”
“Elon Musk Argues Twitter Flip-Flopping Not Manipulation Because His Legal Case Was So Bad” (Dealbreaker). “Late last week, Elon Musk’s attorneys from Quinn Emanuel offered a new theory for tossing an investor suit claiming that his public bad-mouthing and eventual litigation over his Twitter acquisition was an effort to drive down the share price: no one reasonably could be dumb enough to believe him.”
