It was another week of strong economic news.  The manufacturing rebound is still strong, the jobs market is reporting extremely low Jobless Claims and Retail Sales were strong for the month of August and on a year-over-year basis. You wouldn’t know any of that from the headlines which were all about the price of gas and the Fed raising rates by 0.25%. Overseas, the consumer also looks still solid in Japan, Germany and Brazil. The S&P 500 ended the week at -0.08% with Foreign Developed at -1.58% and Emerging Markets at -0.56%. In the US, Small Caps were down a substantial -1.47% on fears that Fed rate hikes will lead to a recession. Those fears led Large Cap Growth, with the aid of an AI Tech rally, to post a positive return against a loss for Large Cap Value.... (click for more)

The Fed watching game played out in a frenzy of parsing every word from the new Fed Chairman Warsh. A weak July Jobs Report and a slowdown in July Retail Sales beat back the drum beat for a September rate hike. Then the hawks jumped on Warsh’s speech from Jackson Hole and presto, through tortured reasoning, a rate hike in September was back on the table. With that, in the last week of the month, traders wiped out almost 60% of the gains in US Small Cap Equities for the month. The hard economic news showed a solid growth economy with growth accelerating in the manufacturing and services sectors and the consumer remaining resilient. Housing remains sluggish, constrained by a low supply of existing homes for sale and mortgage rates ..... (click for more)