Made it over the big water hazard and arrived safely in Hamburg, Germany last night.
With the bond market being closed on Monday, equities meandered aimlessly and closed at or within a few points of the unchanged line.
There simply was no driver in sight to provide momentum in either direction; it almost looked like the calm before the storm. The storm could very well come in form of today’s release of the minutes of the last FOMC meeting, which will contain discussions on some of the Fed’s options.
Bearish news was released by the National Association for Business Economics as this group lowered its economic growth forecast for 2011 to 2.6% from 3.2%, which is still very optimistic in my view. Furthermore, they see unemployment remaining above 9% all of next year with a weak Holiday spending season ahead.
I wonder if Wall Street, with its unrelenting focus on the recovery, even considers the possibility that an economic slowdown has merit and is very likely to show up over the next few months.