To The Moon

In the past month, something that once seemed impossible suddenly became likely. After four years of upheaval, the U.S. now seems to have low inflation, low unemployment, and solid economic growth.The popular term for this is soft landing. A better word is "normal." This is what an economy is supposed to look like.Until Wednesday, one thing still looked abnormal: the Federal Reserve's interest-rate target, which at 5.25% to 5.5%, was much higher than economic conditions called for.The Fed has begun to rectify that abnormality with its half-point rate cut. This vastly improves the odds of a soft landing. It might even leave the economy and interest rates looking more normal a year from now than before the pandemic.To be clear, "normal" doesn't mean idyllic. Some people will be unemployed. Some people's wages will not keep up with inflation. Prices will rise gradually but won't go back to where they were before the pandemic. Normal simply means sustainable, without the excesses that lead

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Kamala Harris declared that her "values have not changed" on key issues such as climate change and immigration despite shifting policy stances, as she and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, sat for their first major television interview of their 2024 campaign Thursday.Harris and Walz, who have faced criticism that they have avoided tough questions, spoke to CNN's Dana Bash as they took a bus tour through Georgia. In the sitdown, Harris defended herself on her changed stances on issues such as fracking compared with her first campaign for president in 2019.Republicans have accused Harris of ducking reporters and said she was incapable of sitting for a solo interview. Trump sai

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday expressed concern that holding interest rates too high for too long could jeopardize economic growth.Setting the stage for a two-day appearance on Capito

Stalled inflation this year hasn't derailed the Federal Reserve's plans to eventually cut interest rates. That's because it expects a slowdown in housing costs to eventually drag inflation close to its 2% target.The problem: It has been waiting for that slowdown for 1 1/2 years now, and it still hasn't arrived. The slowdown might simply be delayed. But some analysts worry it's not going to happen because of changing dynamics in the housing market. If so, that would significantly weaken the case for lower rates.Housing has played a large role in the inflation of recent years because its cost rose so much and carries such large weight. It is one-third of the consumer-price index and around one-sixth of the price index of personal-consumption expenditures, the Fed's preferred inflation measure.It is also, in theory, predictable. Government statisticians don't use home prices to calculate inflation because a home is partly an investment. Instead, they use monthly rents to capture what tena

U.S. stocks have been unaffected by higher interest rates from the world's most powerful central bank over the past few years, as incremental earnings growth gives investors ample reasons to pour money into equities even amid an increasingly gloomy policy-rate outlook, according to DataTrek Research.Corporate earnings growth matters more to stock prices than the Federal Reserve's interest-rate policy over the longer run, Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, said Monday in a client note.U.S. stocks have "entirely" ignored structurally higher Fed-funds rates since 2019 and moved almost exactly in line with corporate earnings power, said Colas. The yield on the 2-year Treasury note BX:TMUBMUSD02Y, a proxy for the market's expectations of the central bank's future monetary policy, has risen to 4.747% on Monday from around 1.6% at the end of 2019, while the S&P 500 index SPX has advanced 58% over the same period with its earnings up 46%, according to data compiled by DataTrek."E

Singapore home sales fell in February on a lack of new project launches, adding to evidence that the market is cooling.Developers sold 149 new private homes last month, figures released Friday by the

Stocks to WatchSembcorp Industries (U96): India’s SJVN, a state-owned power producer, has awarded a 440 megawatt (MW) wind-solar hybrid power project to Sembcorp Industries’ wholly owned renewables su

A bright outlook for air travel and tourism could lift the fortunes of these four stocks.

Singapore’s retail sales rose 4 per cent on year in August, climbing from the revised 1.3 per cent growth recorded in July, Department of Statistics (Singstat) data showed on Thursday (Oct 5).The mont

TSM is strategically expanding globally, solidifying its position as a leader in the semiconductor industry.The Arizona plant delay is a short-term setback, but the company will have a stronger intern