Lara Rhame Markets Quotations

If we get a downside surprise in retail sales, everybody will shrug it off. We all know that April was a bad month for the economy; the markets are really geared toward May.

In the near term, markets are getting very excited about the idea of the end of quantitative easing, and that's causing the yen to come under some upward pressure.

I would point to the core PCE deflator, which gave a modest upside surprise. This is the Fed's preferred measure of inflation ... and might have markets pricing in a more aggressive Fed.

I would point to the core PCE deflator, which gave a modest upside surprise, ... This is the Fed's preferred measure of inflation ... and might have markets pricing in a more aggressive Fed.

When we started the year, the markets were reticent to buy into either a strong U.S. economy or the Fed raising rates to 5 percent. What has changed is the market's very stubborn resistance to accepting the fact that the dollar has a pretty high carry compared to the rest of the world.

Markets initially seem to be focusing more on the downward revision in growth than the upward revision to the deflator.

Market expectations have priced a rate cut in. When markets are pricing it in like that, the Fed can't afford to give a downside surprise in this environment.

Stocks in this recovery have performed far worse than the last three recoveries, ... You really have to ask yourself, as a whole, what the markets are seeing out there.

We've seen markets get ahead of themselves in bonds and in currencies as well. There are signs that markets have now gotten too optimistic about not only the size of the U.S. recovery, but the speed; our medium-term forecast is still very much of euro strength and dollar weakness.

We've seen markets get ahead of themselves in bonds and in currencies as well, ... There are signs that markets have now gotten too optimistic about not only the size of the U.S. recovery, but the speed; our medium-term forecast is still very much of euro strength and dollar weakness.

This is the Fed's preferred measure of inflation...and might have markets pricing in a more aggressive Fed.

We're getting to a phase where European data could have more of an impact because a solid U.S. economic scenario is so widely expected. The markets are also very thin, so traders aren't taking on large amounts of risk.

The Fed really comes in in situations where the capital markets stop functioning. This not that situation. They're functioning just fine -- they're just really negative.

There's a growing effort within the Fed to look for other ways to add liquidity into markets and to sustain the interest-rate-led growth we've had. I think they are going to move to a bias to ease policy again, but I'd look for the ease somewhere else. It won't be a rate cut.

The weaker-than-expected housing number still leaves housing at a fairly high level of activity but will raise some eyebrows as markets worry about the (Federal Reserve) overshooting (with rate hikes).

A turnaround in manufacturing has not been signaled anywhere else, so I guess I'm not as excited about this number as the markets seem to be. I would like to see this confirmed in another month of data.

On balance, it is a modestly dollar negative set of data. Retail sales growth was a little weaker than markets had expected, with a downward revision to the ex-auto sector.

Almost always the knee-jerk reaction in the markets to positive news on reforms is yen positive. People look at reform as being a positive thing for Japan, one day, hopefully.

The markets have probably been too quick to connect the dots from the current slew of good data straight to a Fed rate hike,

The markets are trying to put this data in the context of how scared the Fed is by it. It's very difficult to see exactly what the Fed views as a continuation of last year's trend of broadly declining price pressure and what the Fed sees as a substantial decline.