Category Archive

Meet the new bank crisis. NOT the same as the old bank crisis.  This is not the Great Financial Crisis II.  It’s not the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998.  It’s not the Great Depression either.  A lot of what is taking place today has some rhymes with various past episodes, but we are charting new territory with new lessons …

Let’s trace the hints and check the file.  You’ve got to hand it to the U.S. stock market.  The U.S. Federal Reserve keeps throwing monetary policy haymakers, and the S&P 500 takes the hits in stride.  The cooling of inflationary pressures has ground to a halt, and in some respects pricing pressures are reaccelerating, yet U.S. stocks are largely unfazed.  …

Summary After a blazing start to 2023, the U.S. stock market has cooled in recent weeks.  Looking ahead to the upcoming spring, the path of least resistance for stocks appears to be to the downside.  For while the underlying economy has remained solid in the face of aggressive monetary tightening from the U.S. Federal Reserve, this resilience in large part …

Summary Capital markets remain turbulent as we make our way through the early months of 2023. Thus, the priority to manage investment risk through broad portfolio diversification remains as important as ever. And gold is an allocation that has distinctive characteristics in this regard. Doing Its Own Thing. One of the keys that differentiates gold from a portfolio diversification perspective is …

Summary The latest reading on inflation was released on Tuesday morning.  On the surface, the report for the month of January seemed generally unmoving.  The annual rate of inflation did not come down as much as expected, but it still edged lower.  And this latest pricing data was not nearly as bad as some market watchers feared heading into the …

Summary U.S. stock investors are at it again.  Outside of a tax loss harvesting blip at the end of last year, the S&P 500 has been moving steadily higher over the past several months since bottoming last October.   Over this time period, the benchmark index posted a more than +20% trough to peak bounce.  A primary driver of this recent …

Summary Non-U.S. stocks have been on fire as of late.  After years of chronic underperformance relative to the United States, both developed international and emerging market stocks have been strongly outperforming over the last few months.  This recent development raises a worthwhile question – have we finally arrived at the point where non-U.S. markets are ready to take the sustained …

Summary Maria: “You should get out of these clothes immediately. You’ll catch your death of pneumonia, you will.”Clouseau: “Yes, I probably will. But it’s all part of life’s rich pageant, you know?” A Shot In The Dark, 1964 After more than a year of a back and forth downward slide, stocks continue to struggle. Frustrating indeed, but such challenges are all part …

Summary We have begun the descent down the other side of the mountain. The long dormant inflationary pressures that erupted nearly two years ago are increasingly subsiding. Assuming this trend continues, this has important implications for the capital markets outlook as we move through the coming year. The impact on some asset classes may take time to materialize, while other …

This week, we had our first full week of market action in 2023.  And so far, we’ve been seeing a friendly market with mostly up days here as we begin the year.  Could it be a sign of things to come?  Maybe but I wouldn’t set my sights on that too soon because there is still a lot of “froth” …