As we bid farewell to 2023, it's time to reflect on a year that defied expectations.  Despite initial reservations fueled by the double-digit declines in 2022 and the Federal Reserve's ongoing rate increases, 2023 turned out to be a stellar year for investors.  The...

The stock market continued its decline this quarter, selling off another four percent since the end of June. As of September 30th, the S&P 500 was down 24.8% for the year. This puts stocks well into bear market territory which is defined as a 20% drop. Stocks were...

The second quarter proved to be every bit as challenging for investors as the first quarter this year.  2022 seems to be the year when the consequences of a lot of poor policy decisions have come home to roost.  Inflation and rising interest rates are the two main...

The S&P 500 continued to reach new all-time highs in the third quarter as investors looked for a return to a pre-pandemic world. It was a similar story for small and mid- cap stocks, although their performance was mostly flat after record runs in the first half of...

Despite all the terrible news from this past year, the U.S. stock and bond markets ended at all-time highs fueled by the largest government stimulus program in history and optimism that the economic shutdowns will soon be over. The S&P 500, Dow Industrial Average...

The third quarter was relatively calm compared to the first half of the year. The second quarter’s rebound from the March lows has largely held firm or in many cases continued to advance. In fact, large cap stock indices are now positive for the year thanks to the...

Despite all the anxiety and grim news, the stock market was able to retrace much of the losses suffered in the first quarter of the year. After bottoming out in late March with a roughly 40% decline, the broader stock market was able to move steadily higher throughout...

Many of you have heard us talk about the fact that the stock market regularly goes through periods where it loses half its value. This happens roughly every ten years. The last episode was around 2009-2010 during the financial crisis. Ten years later we have our...

2019 turned out to be one of those gangbuster years for the stock market that investors only see a couple of times in a decade. Or so it seemed. In reality, the rally was a continuation of the 2018 market expansion. Large cap stocks had the best performance with the...

For those of us that pay close attention to the central bank’s policies and the expert’s interpretation of those policies, you’d think that a global recession is certain and just around the corner. Most notably, there’s been a lot of focus on the relationship between...

In normal times, which we haven’t seen in over a decade, the markets would look at unemployment solidly under 4%, GDP above 3% and inflation around 2% and think the Federal Reserve is surely leaning towards a neutral or maybe even tighter monetary policy. After all,...

One of the more comical images is the crowd at a tennis match; hundreds of people swinging their heads in perfect unison for hours. Synchronized swimming has never been this coordinated. This image comes to mind when I watch the daily financial news on TV. The pundits...

In our last newsletter titled “The Christmas Bear”, we outlined the issues that we felt were driving the high levels of volatility in the stock market recently and shared our thoughts on how those may play out in 2019. That was only three weeks ago and now we’ve had...

The past few months have been less than kind for stocks, but December has been outright awful. As with any newsworthy selloff, the pundits have been attributing this to a whole host of reasons. With all the volatility and bad news, it’s easy to get overwhelmed trying...

We’ve been saying for a while that one of the big headwinds facing the stock market was going to be higher interest rates. But despite strong economic growth, falling unemployment and the Federal Reserve tightening monetary policy, interest rates have been stubbornly...

As we noted in our last newsletter, the volatility that had returned to the stock market this year has been principally driven by the specter of higher interest rates and a trade war with what seems like the rest of the world. While interest rate concerns are still in...

As we noted in our last newsletter, the volatility that had returned to the stock market this year has been principally driven by the specter of higher interest rates and a trade war with what seems like the rest of the world. While interest rate concerns are still in...

The closely followed Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index had a remarkable year in 2017. The Dow gained an impressive 25% while the S&P 500 rose 19%, their best years since 2013. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was the clear winner for the year,...

Since last year’s presidential election, the stock market has been on an absolute tear. Most of the major U.S. stock averages are up roughly 17% since then. The biggest chunk of these gains came immediately after the election in November. However, just as the market...

Stocks continued to rise through the second quarter, albeit at about half the rate of the first quarter. The large cap group had the best quarterly performance with the S&P 500 returning roughly 3%. Mid and small cap stocks increased as well but about a percentage...

2016 will certainly go down as one of the more interesting years in recent memory. By far, the biggest story of the year was the presidential election results. Since the election, there have been quite a number reactions; not least of which has been in the financial...

After more than a year of wild market swings, the third quarter ended up being the calmest we have seen in quite a while.  The S&P 500 finished up roughly 3% this quarter and had less than half the volatility than the previous nine months.  Most of the quarter’s...

This month, the S&P 500 and Dow Industrial Average set all-time highs. And while the seems impressive, it’s also important to note that those two market averages are only 2% higher than they were over a year ago. More importantly is the fact that all of the big...

If you had vacationed on a remote island for the first quarter of this year and hadn’t read the news, you’d be inclined to think it was a pretty boring three months. The majority of the major U.S. stock averages finished the quarter within two percentage points...