Phil Grossfield's Blog

My Schedule…and A Little Extra:  Whatever you think you know about cheesecake is false, wrong, incorrect…grossly incorrect.  My Mom makes the best cheesecake on the planet.  Now don’t start sending me hate-email because you have some sort of delusional belief that your cheesecake can even compare to my Mom’s cheesecake because it just makes you look and sound sad.  Simply put, your cheesecake sucks and my Mom’s cheesecake kicks your cheesecake’s butt, yes I said it, butt. Now, with that introduction, I am going to try and make my Mom’s cheesecake for Passover dinner on Monday…I call it the Great Cheesecake Endeavor. Mom sent the recipe…now I have to buy the ingredients and spend the afternoon tomorrow in the kitchen (it has to be made 2 days in advance of serving).  I’d ask you to wish me luck but my introduction to this post is probably not a great way to ask for well wishes…. 🙂

My Market Watch:  The Fed meeting this week resulted in a big bond sell-off resulting in 3 reprices the other day and with little relief since. I thought I’d share my understanding of this and ask you to send me your comments and/or corrections. Ben Bernanke, the Fed Chairman who replaced Alan Greenspan, has been steadfast on a continued monetary strategy of buying bonds. This strategy has created and maintained an artificial bond market of low rates we continue to enjoy.  Many Fed members disagree with this strategy…they don’t want the Fed to keep buying bonds in large quantities and they site all sorts of reasons why they feel this strategy has long-term adversarial effects.  Yet Bernanke has pushed on and has said he is dedicated to maintaining this strategy into 2014.  That commitment wavered at the meeting on Wednesday. Bernanke introduced the idea of dimming spending…that is, he stated that the Fed may alter theamount of spending.  From what I understand this is the first time he has back off even a little bit.  Traders upon hearing of this sold off bonds and bought stocks instead, despite the Euro drama with Cypress’s financial troubles.  The Fed meeting minutes will be released April 10th and that is going to be a very interesting day as we get to see how much discussion and focus was given to this new concept.I hope all this makes sense…let me know your thoughts….  My Disclaimer

My Schedule:  Available all day. Keep in mind I rarely answer my phone before 10:30a as I use this time to catch up from the previous day….

My Fun Stuff:  Wall Street Monkeys  |  I watch this almost every single day  |||  All My Fun Stuff