Federal Reserve adopts limits on stock trading
The Federal Reserve on Friday formally adopted sweeping new rules that will limit the ability of its top officials to invest in financial markets, a change intended to prevent conflicts of interest involving investments affected by Fed policies.
The stricter rules were developed after an outcry last year over questionable trades that were made by several top Fed policymakers.
Under the new rules, Fed officials may not invest in individual stocks, bonds or cryptocurrencies and are limited to diversified investments such as mutual funds. They must provide 45 days’ notice of any trade and secure approval of such trades. And they will have to provide public notice of any trades made in the previous 30 days.
Chair Jerome Powell announced the rules in October after ethics questions engulfed several high-ranking policymakers about trades they had made in securities that stood to be affected by Fed actions at the time. The central bank’s decisions on interest rates and bank regulations can cause significant swings in the prices of stocks, bonds and other securities.
New York Fed head warns about rapid rate hikes
The Federal Reserve should start raising interest rates next month to help rein in too-high inflation, New York Fed President John Williams said Friday. But he added that the rate hikes may not have to begin with as big a bang as some have suggested.
With inflation at its hottest level in a generation, the widespread expectation has been for the Fed to soon raise rates off their record low of nearly zero, where they’ve been through the pandemic. The only question has been how big and how quickly it will move, because too much aggression could choke the economy and too little could let inflation spiral.
January home sales up ahead of rate hikes
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes rose in January, as a surge in buyers paying cash and other would-be homeowners eager to avoid higher mortgage rates snapped up properties, leaving the number of available houses on the market at a record low.
The National Association of Realtors said Friday that existing home sales rose 6.7% last month from December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.5 million. Sales slipped 2.3% from January 2021, while the median home price jumped 15.4% from a year earlier to $350,300. Prices climbed as would-be buyers competed for a shrinking pool of homes on the market.
The number of homes for sale at the end of January totaled just 860,000 – the fewest since the NAR began tracking it in 1999.
– Compiled by Dave Flessner