You can help veterans
I know that many
of you may not read my newsletter from next week because you will already be on
vacation for Memorial Day.
This year, I
wanted to honor Memorial Day in a very special way. Two years ago, I lost my father
Dan Cunningham. Let me tell you a little story about a man that was a huge
impact in my life. Dan was a hero. He fought with honor in Vietnam, received
two Purple Hearts and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He came back from Vietnam
and married my mom who had me and my older brother (4 and 6 at the time). He
accepted us as his own and we were blessed to have him in our lives.
In our area we
are blessed to have The Pathway Home for Veterans. This is an amazing program
to help veterans deal with many PTSD issues that is nearly 100% funded from
private donations.
This past week
they screened a documentary “Of Men and War” that tracks the lives of some of
the participants in the program. I hope to be able to see this film soon.
To honor all of
our veterans and especially my father, I will match any donations in any amount
up to a total of $1,000.00 during the next week.
If you donate
directly on their website in the dedication section please put “Dan Cunningham”
so that I know you have made your contribution.
You can also get
a check to me made out directly to “The Pathway Home” at:
Kristofer Chun
Real Estate
513 Lincoln Ave
Suite A
Napa, CA 94558
I hope to present
a check to The Pathway Home on Memorial Day (5/25/15) to let all of them know
how much we appreciate and support them.
Thank you.
-Kris
Watch rates closely
Interest
rates have really been volatile in the last three weeks, rising over .25% in
most cases. But do not expect this to continue. This is a GREAT article from
Bloomberg Business by Lisa Abramowicz.
Go ahead,
Federal Reserve, keep trying to prepare markets for an interest-rate increase
this year.
It isn’t
working.
The longer
U.S. central bankers wait to initiate their tightening cycle, the more traders
push back their expectations for when borrowing costs will start rising. On
Thursday, futures contracts were implying that traders saw the fed funds rate
at about 0.3 percent rate by December. That’s the lowest estimate of the year,
and about half the forecast for the overnight lending benchmark that the Fed
gave in March.
The market is
essentially calling the Fed’s bluff. Traders are betting that policy makers
won’t be able to raise rates this year without disrupting stocks and bonds,
something that they’d really rather not do. So either U.S. policy makers will
have to risk another market-wide tantrum, or they’ll give in to traders who
embrace the idea of these historically low borrowing costs sticking around for
longer.
“In the end,
the Fed is more likely to ‘cave’ to the market as opposed to ‘fight it’ by
hiking when the market does not have it priced in,” Jim Bianco, president of
Bianco Research LLC, said in an e-mail. The Fed still sees low rates “as
beneficial and does not want to undermine all the work they have done over the
past several years.”
Hike Timing
In the
meantime, Fed members are amping up their rhetoric that yes, a rate hike is
coming, yes, it’ll probably be this year, and no, it may not be an easy ride
for markets.
Liftoff
“feels most probable somewhere in the late summer than the early summer, but
early summer is not out of the question,” David Altig, research head at the
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said in an interview in Madrid on Wednesday.
A day
earlier, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams said the
U.S. central bank could decide to begin raising interest rates at any policy
meeting, and that he is in “wait and see mode” headed into the next gathering
in June.
The New York
Fed’s William C. Dudley had some starker words for traders that same day: when
central bankers make their move, they’ll usher in a “regime shift” that will
stir markets. Dudley, who is vice chairman of the policy-setting Federal Open
Market Committee, said the timing of a hike is uncertain.
Data
Disappointment
While the
U.S. economy is showing signs of recovery after more than six years of
unprecedented Fed stimulus, some of the economic data keeps disappointing. One
of the latest examples is retail sales that barely budged in April, confounding
analyst projections for a small increase.
As the
unemployment rate has fallen to 5.4 percent from as high as 10 percent in 2009,
workers still aren’t earning materially bigger paychecks or returning to their
erstwhile spendthrift ways.
While the
global bond market has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in May, short-term
debt yields haven’t changed much - - another sign investors don’t expect the
Fed to end the stimulus party anytime soon. Yields on 2-year Treasuries have
fallen to 0.55 percent from 0.57 percent on April 30.
Fed members
can keep warning traders of shocks that are soon to come, but a lot of folks
just aren’t buying it.
-Kris
