US Federal Reserve

The FOMC may have cut its rate hike forecast from 4 to 2, following by an even more dovish speech by Janet Yellen, but Goldman is convinced the Fed is wrong. As a result, after looking at today's payrolls report, its chief economist Jan Hatzius said that "we ultimately think the committee will move faster than the two-hike pace implied by the latest “dot plot”, despite the dovish signals from the March meeting and Chair Yellen’s remarks this week" and that "we continue to expect the FOMC to raise rates three times in 2016."

At 8:30am Eastern, the BLS will report the March payrolls report: the median forecast calls for a March nonfarm payrolls gain of 205k vs 242k in Feb., the high estimate is 250k, the low is 100k. The number is released three days after a particularly dovish Yellen speech, which prompted many to ask "what does the Fed know" - today's payrolls report will either provide the answer, if it is a big miss, or it will add to the confusion: if payrolls are surging, why is the Fed so concerned.

This is the breakdown of NFP expectations by bank:

Submitted by Etai Friedman via Palisade-Research.com,

After the stock market crash of 1987, The Federal Reserve embarked on a path that led to the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world. The day after the 1987 crash (Oct. 20, 1987) Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Fed, announced to the world that The Fed stood ready to provide whatever liquidity was needed by the banking system to prevent the crash from turning into a systemic financial crisis. That was the day the Fed “put” was born.

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

Authored by Mark St.Cyr,

As I type this the “markets” are once again sprinting higher to the highest levels of 2016. At the rate they are going it’s theoretically possible we could take out the all time high by lunch. After all – “it’s a great time to buy stawks,” no?