With the Federal Reserve under fire for raising interest rates, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been looking to see if there are other ways to normalize monetary policy, according to a report. Mnuchin has been asking some of the biggest players in the bond market if they would rather see the Fed step up the rundown of its balance sheet than hike short-term rates, according to a Bloomberg... read more

Corporations, like people, are pretty simple: They do what they are rewarded to do. So when the Federal Reserve, by keeping interest rates very low for nearly a decade, rewards companies for borrowing money by making it historically inexpensive to do so, it can’t be a surprise to anyone that that’s exactly what they did. In 2008, in the wake of the financial crisis, the Fed began its “qu... read more

October saw hedge funds notch their worst collective monthly performance since January 2016, according to Preqin a research firm on the industry. Hedge funds lost 2.35 percent on average in October, according to Preqin's index, while investors withdrew $4.6 billion of hedge fund capital in the third quarter of this year. The hedge fund industry's performance turned negative for the year in Oct... read more

(Bloomberg) -- Investors pulled more money out of stock and bond funds in October than in any month in more than three years. Mutual and exchange-traded funds had net redemptions of $29.1 billion last month, the biggest outflows since August 2015, according to a report Tuesday by Morningstar. The data exclude money-market funds. The rout in global markets is turning investors cautious. The... read more

Once-mighty General Electric is fighting to stay off the junk heap. GE's stock has become a sliver of its former self, and its bonds are now trading as if they are already junk-rated. That puts pressure on new CEO Larry Culp to quickly raise cash and cut debt to keep its debt rating from falling further to sub-investment grade junk status, otherwise known as high-yield. "When the market begin... read more

Flows of student debt into serious delinquency - of 90 or more days - rose to 9.1 percent in the third quarter from 8.6 percent in the previous quarter, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported on Friday. That propelled the biggest jump in the overall U.S. delinquency rate in seven years. Sponsored It was a reversal after a period of improvement for student debt, which totaled $1.4 tr... read more

Today the top trends forecaster in the world, Gerald Celente, warned that global market shock is coming. A Global Market Shock. Prepare! The signals are clear. The warning shots have been fired. Equity markets across the globe have lost trillions as investors increasingly worry about the two-punch strike of slowing economic growth and rising interest rates. • “World Economic Climat... read more

Not even gold’s second quarterly straight decline was enough to shake billionaire hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio’s confidence in gold. Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates maintained its holdings in SPDR Gold Shares, the largest bullion-backed ETF, at 3.9 million shares, and its stake in iShares Gold Trust, the second-largest, at 11.3 million shares in the third quarter, according to a regul... read more

The recent stock market slid may look bad, but it wasn't bad enough to indicate that the damage has been completely done, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Even after a day when the Dow industrials lost 602 points and as the Nasdaq tech barometer remains in correction territory, indications of a bottom remain elusive. the bank said in its latest survey of professional investors. "We... read more

With the financial crisis now 10 years in the rearview mirror, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the U.S. central bank may be ill-equipped to handle the next financial crisis. Bernanke said at a conference at New York University on Friday that the Fed needs to have expanded powers to lend to institutions that are not commercial banks, which is the only industry that the central... read more