The Fed blinked – but didn’t flinch away from another rate hike. On Wednesday, Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policymakers rejected President Donald Trump’s call for a pause. They raised their benchmark rate by a quarter point to a range up to 2.5%.

The only concession Fed chairman Jerome Powell offered to Trump and nervous stock market investors was a revised, less hawkish outlook for 2019. Powell and company now indicate they intend to hike just twice next year.

They claim the additional hikes are needed to bring rates further into “neutral” territory.

But with economic data and inflation indicators dipping over the past few months and the stock market not taking well to the Fed’s latest actions, the FOMC may be eying the other side of “neutral” by the time it meets again in late January.

I ... Read more »

Over a year ago in this space, you may have read my rationale for not closing out core metals and mining stock positions after the May 2011 intermediate top (which turned out to be a longer term!) in the resource sector. (By the way, David Morgan called that top to his subscribers -- to the day.)

I held those positions in spite of having written down on paper a decade earlier my intent to do so, "win, lose, or draw." (This essay can be accessed in the Money Metals archives  ... Read more »