Insights

September 20, 2026 THE FED INCREASES INTEREST RATES: The Federal Reserve announced a 0.25% increase to its key interest rate, the first rate hike since 2023. The decision was unanimous. The federal funds rate now stands at 3.75%-4.0%. The Fed's statement included the following: "Inflation remains elevated. Today's policy action will support a timelier return to the Committee's 2% goal." The Fed also revealed that most of the committee members see at least one more rate

September 13, 2026 NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN: I wrote this five years ago on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11: Twenty years ago, I was driving north on the New Jersey Turnpike toward Edison, NJ for a financial planning meeting with my client Ray, a utility executive. The meeting was set to begin at 9:00. On the way, I heard a report on the radio about a plane going into the World Trade Center towers. It did not yet sound ominous. I walked to my client's office complex and a

September 6, 2026 STRONG JOBS REPORT: No one was expecting a six-figure jobs gain for August, and yet the U.S. economy added 162,000 net new jobs. This, and some revisions to prior months, make it appear that the job market is strengthening. The fears of an AI-induced labor market disruption have not come to fruition. Growth was broad across categories including construction and manufacturing. The unemployment rate remained at 4.1% because over 600,000 were added to the l

August 30, 2026 STOCKS RISE A LITTLE: All eyes were on Nvidia mid-week as the tech giant reported its earnings. Would they disappoint? They did not. Nvidia reported not only strong earnings, but expected revenue growth of 70% in the company's next fiscal year. Salesforce stock rose 23% on Thursday after the software company reported its second quarter earnings. Its earnings per share rose 103% year-over-year. The upward momentum for stocks were slowed when Federal Reser

August 24, 2026 BONDS TAKE CENTER STAGE: Investors were watching the bond market carefully this week. As you can see below, the overall bond market has been treading water this year, and it decreased again last week. In last week's MacGray Matter, we discussed the U.S. selling some European debt to buy Japanese debt in order to prevent Japan from selling its U.S. bonds. This week, the U.S. Treasury acted again by announcing plans to at least double its plans to buyback lo

August 16, 2026 U.S. RETAIL SALES DOWN IN JULY: U.S. retail sales decreased by 0.6% in July, the worst monthly number in a year. Declines in auto sales and non-store retailers dragged the reading down. Amazon moved its Prime Day sales event to June this year, which impacted the non-store retail number (down 2.2%). The first half of the year has been strong, and so we will watch future months to see if this is a blip or a trend. (Did the end of the World Cup have an impac

August 9, 2026 A DECLINE IN JOBS: In July, jobs in the U.S. declined by 23,000. There was an unusual drop of 50,000 government education workers in July. The unemployment rate decreased to 4.1%, but that was because over 260,000 people dropped out of the labor force, which is never a positive sign. Strict immigration enforcement and our aging population is going to slow growth without raising the unemployment rate, and July was a perfect example of that. Private payrolls

August 2, 2026 THE U.S. ECONOMY: As measured by gross domestic product (GDP), the U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 1.5% in the second quarter. The consensus expectation on Wall Street was 2.0%, so this was a disappointment. U.S. GDP grew at an annualized rate of 2.1% in the first quarter. The key driver for growth was personal consumption which grew at a 3.2% annualized rate. Data center construction grew at a 15.2% rate. Business investment in information pro

July 19, 2026 OIL PRICES BACK ABOVE $100 PER BARREL: With renewed vigor in the Iran war, oil prices have shot back up above $100 per barrel for the first time since June 3. U.S. STOCKS DECLINE: U.S. stocks across the board were negative last week. The S&P 500 registered its second consecutive negative week for the first time since March. With little in the way of economic reports, geopolitical events and their impact on oil prices took center stage as well as a general se