#federal-reserve

The Fed sets an overnight rate. Your 30-year mortgage is priced off the 10-year Treasury plus a spread that nobody at the Fed controls. That's why rates have gone UP after cuts, more than once, and why waiting for the Fed is a losing strategy.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said inflation risks have come down and markets rallied. But the June dot plot has nine of eighteen officials penciling in a hike, and futures still price one by September. The market is not front-running cuts. It is front-running the absence of a hike, and calling that a pivot.

The S&P 500 gained 9.6% in the first half of 2026 while the Magnificent Seven, a third of the index, went up 2.6%. That gap is the whole story, and most recaps skip right past it.

In October 1907, the United States had no central bank. When one of New York’s biggest trust companies started to fail, J.P. Morgan locked Wall Street’s top financiers in his library and didn’t let them leave until they’d saved the system.