Recorded August 20, 2019

The Day the Yield Curve Inverted

I am finally back in the United States - well, in Puerto Rico, technically is part of the United States, it's a territory - after my extended trip through Italy. I recorded that one podcast, and on the very next day, we had probably the most volatile day in memory. What happened that morning was that we got some weak economic data that came out of China and then we got some more weak economic data that came out of Germany and that immediately caused yields to drop around the world. In the United States, for the first time, the yields on the 10-year treasury dipped below the Fed funds rate. So the entire yield curve, out to 10 years was inverted. In fact, the 30 year yield hit a new low for this whole "quantitative easing - zero percent interest rate" cycle. The 10-year did not quite do that yet, but the 30-year did, and as soon as this happened, as soon as the curve inverted, I think it triggered a lot of sell programs in the stock market.

The Media was Waiting to Flip the Narrative

Stocks got clobbered, in fact, by the end of the day the Dow Jones was down 800 points; one of the worst point drops in Dow Jones history - not one of the worst percentage drops, but 800 points is a lot of points. And of course, as soon as this happened, the media began to cover the possibility of a recession to a much greater degree than they had in the past. If you remember, I said that this was coming. I said that I thought that maybe the media was waiting to flip the narrative on Trump, which is exactly what they've done.

Fake News?

All of a sudden, a media which was pretty much buying the booming economy narrative now is questioning whether the economy is actually strong. In fact, now you have Donald Trump accusing the media of being involved in some kind of conspiracy to make the economy look bad. In other words, a lot of the data that's been coming out indicating that the economy is weak, that it is slowing, that this is just Fake News.