Friday/ the Fed spooks the markets 👻

We will keep at it until we are confident the job is done.
– Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, at the end of his speech in Jackson Hole, WY today.


It had to happen, of course: Fed Chair Powell reminding investors that there are several interest rate rises and probably some pain ahead, before the Federal Reserve Bank will be sure that inflation is under control.

Hopefully the selling today was mostly done by fund managers— not individual investors. The best advice on down days like today: do nothing.

Investors had a nice run off the low of Jun. 16. It is easy to look back now and realize that was a low point. As Jeff Sommer writes in the New York Times: ‘The very best advice would have required a crystal ball: You should have sold precisely on Jan. 3, when the S&P 500 stock index was at its peak, and bought on June 16, when it hit bottom. (Then, quite possibly, you should have sold again on Aug. 16, before the market turned rocky. The verdict is still out on that one.)’
[Graph from the Wall Street Journal]

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