Market Montage Officially Launches Tomorrow

Dear readers,

After a long period of introspection (nearly 3 minutes) I've decided to follow the ideology of the boxing world and come out of retirement.

I shall continue my career in prose at MarketMontage.com beginning tomorrow.  Hope to see some of you there. :)

Goodbye and Goodnight Fund My Mutual Fund

With post #8286 I am officially retiring  (see the post at 3:40PM before you panic).

This blog started Aug 6, 2007 with a few test posts and Aug 7 the real thing began to an audience of.... errr... 3 or 4. I might be over estimating. :)  Of course at the time, I had no idea we were about to embark on one of the most mind melting and audacious economic (and market) periods in history.  In retrospect it was a good time to start a market blog.  Thankfully I made some pretty good "Roubini" like calls back in the early days (before he became a well known name)  [See Economic Forecasts/Track Record] so that, along with the concept of the site, seemed to appear to draw in a decent sized crowd for a "no name" dude.

Some 3.6 million+ page views later...here we are.

Some of you veteran readers of FMMF may remember the super fashionable green + purple template this site had the first year and a half or so.  I believe that caused a few regulars to develop eye problems, so thankfully a good reader helped bring us to this more sensible color arrangement.

Obviously, this blog was created for a reason - and quite an outrageous one when you think about it.  But as our former president famously said....

I don't think anyone who does not run a blog understands the work that goes into it - this site often has seen 6-8 posts a weekday, 52 weeks a year.  And for every 1 post on the site, often 5-10 articles are read - so as to pass along interesting information via internet osmosis.  Thankfully there was always an ultimate goal and light at the end of the tunnel to be reached, which was a motivating force some of these long days.

A big thanks out to all the readers, and those who posted comments all these years.  I found out very early that if you were lazy in your work there would be very smart people out in the interwebs who would call you out on it, so in many ways this website helped me expand my knowledge base and trading tactics.   But the comments section was definitely among the most fun I had here, since it allowed me to "meet" many people - from all over the world.

So with that, I bid you farewell after nearly 4.5 years.... as I move on to the next chapter in life.

EDIT: perhaps some of the sarcasm was not apparent - see the post at 3:40 PM for the next venture. :)

Nothing Much from the Fed Other than a Few Words Changed

Carry on...

Most importantly a few hawks exit stage right in 2012, and more Yellen and Bernanke types will enter.  Also with the 'inflation is easing' commentary they take care of any issues with those who claim there should be a break from even easier money due to potential inflation pressures.

• The Federal Reserve on Tuesday left monetary policy on hold but said financial market turbulence posed threats to economic growth, leaving the door open to further easing next year.  The Fed characterized the economy as expanding moderately despite an apparent slowing in global growth, though it added that unemployment remains elevated and housing activity depressed. "Strains in global financial markets continue to pose significant downside risks to the economic outlook," the central bank said in its post meeting statement.
• Offering no new guidance on its evolving communications policy, the Fed repeated that it expects inflation to settle at levels at or below those consistent with its price stability mandate.  (key word "below")

Markets have sold off a tad thus far.

We're now at 3 years of "the zero bound" in rates - many more years ahead in my opinion.

Can you believe a year and a half ago the Fed was actually considering shrinking the balance sheet?

Bed time reading full report here.