Making sense of the markets this week: November 27, 2022 Nov 25th

It’s wonderful to be back writing “Making sense of the markets this week” at MoneySense. I am gladly filling in for a few weeks while Kyle Prevost is away on a dream family vacation. 

The Fed tries to crush investors’ hopes

I’ll start with my take on what the heck has been going on in the markets over the last few weeks. While the story evolves, the main theme hasn’t changed since the last time I penned this column, back in early August. The U.S. Federal Reserve and central banks around the world are raising interest rates to attempt to cool spending and bring down inflation. U.S. stock markets entered a bear market (down over 20% from their peak) in June, but they were rallying in August on the hopes of a Fed pivot. 

But that rally stalled. Markets fell hard again. And then they recovered again. 

In late November, we are now about six weeks into another uptrend…