{"id":21690,"date":"2024-03-29T07:30:12","date_gmt":"2024-03-29T11:30:12","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2024-03-29T07:30:12","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T11:30:12","slug":"the-smartest-accidental-financial-move-youve-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/the-smartest-accidental-financial-move-youve-made\/","title":{"rendered":"The Smartest Accidental Financial Move You\u2019ve Made"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Those Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate packets you stashed away in your &ldquo;survival&rdquo; box a couple years ago might prove to be the smartest &ldquo;accidental&rdquo; financial move you&rsquo;ve made since buying the Forever postage stamps when they were first issued at $0.41.<\/p>\n<p>The price of cocoa has gone parabolic.<\/p>\n<p>Cocoa trades today for more than $9,800 per ton. That&rsquo;s its highest price &ndash; ever. It&rsquo;s up 130% since January. It&rsquo;s up 240% over the past year.<\/p>\n<p>Just look at this chart&hellip;<\/p>\n<p><!--IMG SNIP--><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 20px\" align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-fluid\" alt=\"Image\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.jeffclarktrader.com\/JMU\/images\/202403\/20240329-JMU-01.png\"><\/p>\n<p>This isn&rsquo;t some hot Artificial Intelligence stock. It&rsquo;s not a speculative crypto-coin.<\/p>\n<p>This is cocoa. It&rsquo;s a staple of the American diet. And, its rapidly rising price is a sign that inflationary pressures are still alive and well.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who expects the Fed to start lowering interest rates while cocoa and other agriculture prices are rising like this needs to adjust that thinking. It isn&rsquo;t going to happen.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I made the &ldquo;no interest rate cuts anytime soon&rdquo; argument just before the FOMC meeting <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/lower-interest-rates-arent-coming-soon\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">earlier this month<\/a>. Chairman Powell then threw egg on my face by announcing that he could see a path to as many as three interest rate cuts some time later this year.<\/p>\n<p>But, saying it and doing it are two different things.<\/p>\n<p><!--GREY BOX START--><\/p>\n<div class=\"card bg-light mb-4\">\n<div class=\"card-body\">\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>Free Trading Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Have you checked out Jeff&#8217;s free trading resources on his website? It contains a selection of special reports, training videos, and a full trading glossary to help kickstart your trading career \u2013 at zero cost to you. Just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jeffclarktrader.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click here<\/a> to check it out.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--GREY BOX END--><\/p>\n<p>Remember, it wasn&rsquo;t too long ago that the Fed talked about inflation being &ldquo;transitory.&rdquo; Heck, not long before that, the Fed was worried that inflation was &ldquo;too low.&rdquo; Wouldn&rsquo;t it be nice if we had that problem again?<\/p>\n<p>It seems to me the Fed&rsquo;s track record when it comes to gauging the path of inflation is spotty at best. And, it&rsquo;s hard to see how the Fed can justify lowering interest rates as early as June.<\/p>\n<p>The market is slowly reaching that same conclusion. The probability of a rate cut in June has dropped from 60% two weeks ago to 55% today. It should continue to fall.<\/p>\n<p>And, to the extent that stocks and bonds have rallied in anticipation of a June rate cut, those assets are vulnerable to a decline as the markets realize it isn&rsquo;t going to happen.<\/p>\n<p>Best regards and good trading,<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Signature\" src=\"https:\/\/files.jeffclarktrader.com\/global\/signatures\/jeff-clark-signature.png\" width=\"200\" style=\"max-width:200px; width:100%;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Jeff Clark<br \/>Editor, <em>Market Minute<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The price of cocoa has gone parabolic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"service":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication":[10],"person":[7],"newsletter-type":[],"ticker":[],"class_list":["post-21690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-minute","publication-market-minute","person-jeff-clark"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21690"},{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=21690"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=21690"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-type?post=21690"},{"taxonomy":"ticker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ticker?post=21690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}