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| BondsOnline.com: instant access to and extensive coverage of over 3.5 million stocks, bonds, indexes and other securities covering major and emerging markets and exchanges across the globe. |
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| Bonds Online |
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| 5/10/2013Market Performance |
| Municipal Bonds |
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S&P National Bond Index
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3.00% |
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S&P California Bond Index
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2.96% |
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S&P New York Bond Index
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3.13% |
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S&P National 0-5 Year Municipal Bond Index
|
0.70% |
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| S&P/BGCantor US Treasury Bond |
400.09 |
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| Income Equities: |
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| Preferred Stocks |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index
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848.03 |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index (CAD)
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636.26 |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index (TR)
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1,701.05 |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index (TR) (CAD)
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1,276.26 |
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| REITs |
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S&P REIT Index
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174.07 |
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S&P REIT Index (TR)
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425.30 |
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| MLPs |
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S&P MLP Index
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2,469.58 |
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S&P MLP Index (TR)
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5,428.50 |
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See Data
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2nd UPDATE: Fed Signals June End To Bond Buying As Planned |
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL - April 27, 2011 - By Luca Di Leo, Jon Hilsenrath and Tom Barkley
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The Federal Reserve signaled the end of its controversial $600 billion bond buying program as planned, setting the stage for challenging decisions about whether to raise interest rates in the face of both high unemployment and looming threats of inflation.
The end of the Treasury buying program - which the Fed put in place in November to ease financial conditions - had been telegraphed by the U.S. central bank and the Fed made it a near certainty by saying in a statement at the end of a two day meeting that it "will complete" the purchases by the end of June.
That effectively marks the end of an unprecedented easing cycle, in which the Fed has pushed short-term interest rates to near zero and purchased more than $2 trillion of Treasury and mortgage bonds, flooding the economy with cash.
The big drama of the day still awaits. At 2:15 pm ET, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will hold the Fed's first ever post-meeting press conference, in which he will elaborate on how the decision making Federal Open Market Committee viewed the economy and policy decisions over two days of discussions. Fed policies have drawn increasing fire in recent years from U.S. lawmakers and foreign officials, and Bernanke has responded by stepping up his opportunities to explain the policies and counter the criticism.
The choice about when to raise interest rates is going to be challenging. The economy appeared to stumble in the first quarter. The Commerce Department is expected to report Thursday that it grew at a subpar rate of less than 2% between January and March. But with commodities prices marching higher, the Fed is under increasing pressure to respond to inflation threats with higher rates.
The Fed is holding the line on interest rates even as other central banks - most notably the European Central Bank and those in emerging markets - push theirs higher.
For now, Fed officials appear to be in no hurry to follow the tightening trend. In the statement, officials reiterated they expect short-term rates to stay at a record low for an "extended period" and said they plan to keep the size of the Fed's more than $2.0 trillion balance sheet steady by reinvesting the proceeds when bonds in its large portfolio mature.
Their description of the economy was little changed from the way they characterized it when they last met in March. The nearly two-year-old economic recovery is "proceeding at a moderate pace" and the jobs market is improving gradually, the statement said. After their March 15 meeting, officials described the recovery as being on "firmer footing." While consumer spending and business investment continue to expand, the housing sector is still "depressed."
As they have done before, Fed officials acknowledged that higher prices for oil, grain, cotton and other commodities were putting upward pressure on inflation. But since most officials, including Bernanke and his top lieutenants, expect the effects on consumer prices to be temporary - as was the case following in oil price spike in 2008 -- they don't see a longer-term threat to inflation.
Measures of expected inflation in the bond market and in consumer surveys have recently been creeping up toward the high end of the range they've been in for several years. The concern is that, if people expect inflation to go up in the future, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But Fed officials don't see that happening.
"Inflation has picked up in recent months, but longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable and measures of underlying inflation are still subdued," officials said.
For the complete article.
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