Today the Fed Chair begins a couple of days of testimony before congress–today is the senate with house testimony starting tomorrow. I would expect the message to remain the same–‘we need to see more economic data relative to inflation’ and of course we will get more of that data on Thursday and Friday with CPI and PPI news. Honestly today and tomorrow some members of congress will ‘hammer’ the Fed Chair about lowering interest rates–I’m always amazed that any member of congress thinks they have the ‘answer’. We’ll see what happens but generally these events bring some volatility to the markets. At this moment the 10 year treasury is trading at 4.30% and equity markets are calm.
Today or tomorrow I will be doing some buying of baby bonds (or terms preferred)–most likely a BDC (business development company) baby bond or one of the CLO owner companies issues (i.e. Eagle Point Credit (ECC), Oxford Lane (OXLC) or Carlyle Credit Income (CCIF)).
I’m not at a point where I want to wade back into the community and regional bankers, although some of the small bankers still are offering some great current yields. “Extend and Pretend’ is a fear I have – being played out now with Sachem Capital (SACH) where 26% of their loans have matured but either are in pre-foreclosure or they have been ‘extended. Sachem will likely survive, but their financials are atrocious and I could not own any of their baby bonds when there are so many other alternatives.
Well let’s get the day going and see what Jay Powell brings us.
I use this to catch some live TV for a bit on my PC. It is only free for like 30-60 minutes per day.
https://www.bloomberg.com/live/us
How can the fed reach 2% inflation target if the federal govt keeps spending and increasing the deficit? Isn’t that just creating money out of thin air? It is like the federal reserve is fighting Washington. Not “us”. Yet they are in the same room together and these Senators probably won’t mention the ?real issue?
Thought I would play it safe so I bought ETI PR yesterday at 22.80
With two million without power due to storms, Summer is just starting and stock is past last dividend payment so I probably got in too early and a better entry point may be when it hits a 6% yield. Long term I expect everything to recover.
Entergy is one of the power companies likely to benefit from AI datacenter electricity demand.
Per Morningstar: “The data centers that train and host AI programs require electricity, and lots of it.”
https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/4-utility-stocks-benefit-data-center-growth