Word: hikes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...after a wild week and tentative heading into a holiday, investors are nonetheless armed with some of the news they've been waiting for: The economy is cooling off and Alan Greenspan might be too. After hearing Thursday that rising mortgage rates were finally cutting into home sales, rate-hike-weary investors got more good news Friday: Orders for durable goods like refrigerators and airplanes, which tend to rise when people are feeling wealthy enough for big-ticket purchases, dropped precipitously in April, with savings on the rise. Investors' message to the Fed: OK, Alan, you can stop...
...future, they said, and the future is always bright for geeks. Now, two months and a staggering 37 percent later, NASDAQ is the wisp in the Fed's wind. Tuesday, week-old worries about another interest rate raise in the wake of last week's half-percent hike comments hit the Dow for 120 and the NASDAQ for 200 (to 3164, low for the year), a disproportion that is becoming old hat for index watchers...
...took the Dow down more than 250 points before both markets recovered in late-afternoon trading - the Dow finishing down 84 points down and the Nasdaq shedding 26.2 points. While analysts struggled to pinpoint a precise reason for the market's stormy Monday, the specter of more interest-rate hikes was a recurring theme, particularly in light of record trade-deficit figures released last week that signaled the economy is still expanding at a pace that has Fed chairman Greenspan nervous. "The dominant view had been to expect a further one-quarter percent rate hike in June...
Alan Greenspan's implacable program of interest rate hikes may have its disbelievers in Congress and on the CNBC pundit scene, but the financial markets are not among the heretics. So it was that Wall Street continued to rally as the Fed voted to raise short-term rates not just 25 but 50 basis points at its meeting Tuesday, the latest attempt to hamstring the swaggering U.S. economy just enough to keep inflation at bay. Businesses, especially capital-intensive ones like the dot-coms, have no love of more expensive money. But Father Greenback has sold the markets...
Moved PermanentlyMoved PermanentlyFortune Investor DataNot that inflation is actually apparent; witness Tuesday's pre-opening announcement that consumer prices were unchanged in April. "The markets are taking it on faith," says Baumohl, that Greenspan is right about lurking price pressures, and a half-point hike is seen as welcome proof of his vigilance. "Fifty basis points means the Fed is in charge again and inflation is under control," he says. "The markets have already discounted it. They're happy about it. Anything less would have be met with disappointment." A half-percent increase also raises the hope that this hike...