Global growth in the first half of the year averaged 3.5%, the best since 2014. In fact, the International Monetary Fund recently raised their GDP growth estimates for 2017 and 2018. Strong performances of many G7 nations are eliminating a lot of the excess capacity faster than anticipated. This improvement has prompted several central banks to shift to a more hawkish tone surrounding interest rates. This has been seen through various press releases and speeches by central b

Over the summer, U.S. Core inflation has slipped down to 1.7% year over year from over 2% in the spring. The Federal Reserve is calling this a transitory situation and expects Core CPI to return to their 2% target this fall. As a result, the Fed has felt comfortable enough to begin reducing the size of their balance sheet from $4.5 trillion to $2.5-3.0 trillion over the next few years. They are unwinding the massive Quantitative Easing (QE) Program of the past years which wa