Author: Innovative Income Investor

I see that the 10 year treasury yield is now at 3.89% after closing yesterday at 3.84%. The Producer Price Index came in a bit hot yesterday, but it wasn’t until later in the day that equities reacted negatively to comments from Fed yakkers Bullard and Mester that they were in favor of 50 basis point rate hikes (they are not voting members of the FOMC committee this year).

Today we only have the Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) to deal with at 9 a.m. (central). Of course now every piece of news is scrutinized very closely and markets can react to news that in the past was ignored. Any news that shows the economy is stronger than anticipated is going to keep nudging interest rates higher.

Yesterday once again I did nothing at all–just watched. While income markets have been red I noticed that I had quite a few dividend and interest payments hit on the 15th (at least at Fido–eTrade is a day later) which helped brighten the month.

Did you see the Scorpio Tankers (STNG) earnings report yesterday? All I can say is WOW. Incredibly strong earnings–$12.66/share earnings for last year! I don’t invest is shippers, but certainly they are money good (for now at least)

Monday we have no stock or bond trading for Presidents day.

Every week we have at least 2 days with significant economic news and of course today is one of the days.

In days and years of the past the weekly initial jobless claims was just a number no one paid much attention to–now we are searching for signs of weakness in the economy and the Federal Reserve has targeted employment as one of their key data points. Given the number of job openings (11 million) it doesn’t seem like we are going to see weakness anytime soon. Claims are estimated to be at 200,000 last week versus 196,000 last week.

Also we have the producer price index (PPI) being released – with the forecast at .4% versus -.5% last month. On top of this we have building permits and housing starts being released. Tomorrow we have leading economic indicators (LEI) with the forecast at -.3% versus -1% last month.

This morning I see interest rates are flattish at around 3.8% versus yesterdays close at 3.81%–I’m hoping that the PPI is at forecast–upside surprises could kick rates up a few more basis points. Equity futures–which are near meaningless prior to economic news are essentially flat.

Did you see the earnings report from lodging REIT Hersha Hospitality (HT)? Pretty darned good–you can see them here. I have little allocated to the lodging REITs–but certainly there are plenty to chose from out there.

Yesterday I did nothing – which is the norm in recent weeks – I looked at some CDs and some agency bonds, short term of course. I am not too motivated to pull the trigger on more of these given the 4.5% or so I get on some money markets