Small caps take a break from the red

After a brief pull back after the opening, small caps staged a welcome upward trajectory, breaking this week’s red streak as better-than-expected earnings from Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), the SEC’s initiation to taper the shorting the financial sector has experienced year-to-date and deflating crude served to lift the market.
 
At 1:51 p.m. ET, the Russell 2000 (NYSE:IWM) was up 14.65, or 2.21%, at 677, while the Dow is up 153.96, or 1.4%, at 11,116.50.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was back on Capitol Hill for day two of his six-month economic progress report. Following a Q&A session in front of the Senate on Tuesday, the Fed Chair told the House a similar version. In testimony in front of the House, Bernanki told regulators that the central bank aims to attain price stability, as inflation in the United States “is too high.”

“Bernanke is stuck between a rock and a hard place right now regarding the economy,” said Bill Greiner, chief investment officer for UMB Asset Management and UMB Bank, and chief economist for Scout Investment Advisors. “The Fed’s priority has been trying to maintain stability in the financial system this year. The collateral damage of that focus now is that they’re going to try to keep the system liquid and not pay strict attention to what’s going on in the inflation world … I think they will be [hawkish] into 2009. They started jawboning about six weeks ago — trying to talk interest rates up, talking about the idea of tightening money supply by increasing interest rates some time in the not so distant future. But then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac happened.”

As the Fed Chair again addressed slower growth coupled with inflationary pressures that confront the economy, his comments proved timely in the face of troubling consumer price index data.

The headline figure for CPI clocked in at plus 1.1%, which was the largest monthly advance in 26 years. What’s more, the year-over-year increase was at a whopping 5%, which is the largest rise in consumer prices since 1991. Today’s CPI figure, which was in line with the forecast, came on the heels of Tuesday’s unsettling PPI report.

“We’re starting to see signs that headline inflation—and what’s been driving headline inflation on the upside (i.e. transportation costs and food costs) are starting to bleed into other areas of the economy,” Greiner said. “We’re starting to see some serious contagion with energy and commodity price inflation into other segments in the economy. Now I don’t think it’s gotten to a point where we’ll see wage-price spiral inflation. [However,]…if we’re starting to see labor costs move up dramatically in relation to productivity gains then I think we have a much more serious problem on our hands than we do today.”

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