While everyone is talking about Wednesday’s FOMC meeting where the Fed announced:
In addition, the Federal Reserve will continue to increase its holdings of Treasury securities by at least $80 billion per month and of agency mortgage-backed securities by at least $40 billion per month until substantial further progress has been made toward the Committee’s maximum employment and price stability goals.
FOMC
There was a mountain of other global economic data that came out this week.
First, the UK inflation rate is officially at 5.1 percent and a 10 year high and the UK is the 9th largest trading partner of the U.S.
Second, a slew of economic data came out of China and it was all negative!
Let’s take a quick look at China: retail sales (DOWN), industrial production (DOWN), fixed asset investment (DOWN), and the unemployment rate is (UP). China is the top trading partner for the United States.
Third, India isn’t doing much better.
Wholesale pricing is up 14.23 percent!
Fourth, Canada has a mixed bag of data but inflation is still climbing there although it slowed this past month.
Quite frankly, we don’t care too much about what the Federal Reserve’s plan is at this point because it looks like they have lost control and the inflation monster is about to wreck havoc worldwide. All we can do at this point is sit, wait and watch and be ready to pounce on opportunities for our defensive stock portfolio.
Stay tuned and stay solvent!