Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is on Capitol Hill today setting before our congress the FOMC’s current monetary policy. She says that there has been quite a bit of “soft” data reported lately, meriting “accommodative” action by the Federal Reserve. Both stocks and bonds like the news and are both in the green this morning.
Outside of fed-speak, here is the mixed bag of economic reports out today: Good News: Foreclosures declined 19% from January of 2013. Bad News: Unemployment filings rose by about 5% last week. Durable Orders fell 1%. Mixed News: Institutional Investor home buying only accounted for 5.2% of all housing sales in January, which is a 22 month low. Investors are out and more families are in. Mom and Pop are back baby.
