…..FOMC minutes show Fed on track for 3 hikes. Mortgage apps slip. Obamacare first order of business. Auto sales record for 2016. Sears closing stores. Amazon the 800-pound gorilla of holiday shopping. Kohl’s, Macy sales dip. J&J halves hip award. Barclays trader pleads guilty to Forex rigging. US big banks on hook for Euro derivatives. Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 01-04-2017   DOW + 60 = 19,942 SPX + 12 = 2270 NAS + 47 = 5477 RUT + 30 = 1387 10 Y un = 2.45% OIL + 1.02 = 54.31 GOLD + 4.80 = 1164.10 What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? The Federal Reserve released the minutes from its December meeting; that’s the meeting where the Fed raised interest rates for only the second time in a decade. Almost all Federal Reserve policymakers thought the economy could grow more quickly because of fiscal stimulus under the Trump administration and many were eyeing faster interest rate increases to counteract. Trump’s promises of tax cuts, infrastructure spending and deregulation could boost inflation and might set the stage for a confrontation between a president seeking to boost economic growth and the Fed, which is tasked with keeping the economy from overheating. The minutes showed policymakers might signal an even more aggressive path of rate increases if inflationary pressures rose. At the same time, Fed policymakers “emphasized their considerable uncertainty” about future economic policy changes. The Fed expects Trump’s election might result in slightly faster economic growth over ...