America Merrill: Wall Street and Interest Rates

america merrill: These include 1, according to Market Watch. Wednesday's rate cut by the Federal Reserve marked the 729th time central banks around the world have moved to lower interest rates since the financial crisis in 2009. But Bank of America Merrill Lynch Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett put this revolution into stark relief in a Friday note to clients, highlighting a series of facts that illustrate just how dependent global stock markets have become on central bank stimulus and ever-growing debt, as well as how the global economy has changed in an age of rising protectionism. And that does include the extraordinary measures, like quantitative easing. 2. Wall Street, or U.S. private sector financial assets, are now 5.5 times the size of total gross domestic product, comparable to the years immediately before the financial crisis. Emerging market equities are at their lowest level compared with U.S. equities since the dot-com bubble, as measured by the MSCI Emerging Markets Index versus the S&P 500 SPX, -0.73% see chart below . BofAML Global Investment Strategy Caption outside of wrapper for normal article images 3. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.