The Recession – September 22, 2022

The day after the Fed decision to raise interest rates another 75 basis points, the DJIA closed down 107 points. Overnight, the Bank of Japan decided to take action and sell dollars and buy yen. I had bought some yen a couple weeks ago at about 144, and I watched as it fell lower. I was confident it would come back up, and as of publishing, the rate I see is a little worse than 142. So hooray for that, I guess. but it didn’t happen without intervention, and most other currencies fell against the dollar today. Oil gained a bit, and I think it’s still far too low compared to where it should be. Winter is coming, and the SPR can’t be open forever. Today and yesterday, committees in both houses of congress asked the heads of banks if they would commit not to fund new oil exploration. They said no. Once we’re there with alternative sources of energy, we can get off the oil train. But for now, we still need oil. And since we still need oil, higher oil means higher prices for goods. I don’t expect inflation to stop until oil prices fall either by way of stopping reliance or increasing supply. And I doubt we’ll increase supply sustainably in the short term. And on the topic of shorts, I heard on BloombergTV last night that people are recommending getting out of short positions as interest rates rise. I don’t know if that sentiment was causal in Evofem’s (EVFM) increase by as much as like 20% today, though it closed up 13.33%. Top line results form the Evoguard trial are expected to come out in less than three weeks.

Exchange rates per WSJ
USD-Euro: $0.9838 (+0.01%)
USD-GBP: $1.1254 (+0.15%)
USD-CAD: $0.7414 (+0.19%)
USD-NIS: $0.2864 (+0.80%)
Yen-USD: 142.37 (+1.19%)
Won-USD: 1404.86 (-0.51%)

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About raabidfun

I'm a guy living the #raabidfun lifestyle. I figured I would create a blog about crossword puzzles I do. The idea is to do the NYT crossword and the WSJ crossword daily as much as I can. That includes when I don't finish and have clearly failed. They can be difficult. Also I am not an attorney, and any legal analysis in this blog reflects my interpretation, which means it can be flawed and should not be relied upon for use in legal matters (especially against me).

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