Index Performance View enlarged chart. U.S. and International Equities Markets Finish Mixed For the third straight week, the U.S. market indexes finished lower as the continued Eastern European conflict along with inflation concerns renewed investor worries about future corporate profits. This week, Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Jerome Powell discussed the possibility of a half-point interest…
According to LPL Research’s analysis of the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) recently released Beige Book, Main Street sentiment is confronting an expanding number of risks but remains positive overall. Words related to uncertainty reached their highest level since 2019, but within the context of extraordinary low mentions of weakness, which is usually a clearer sign of…
The shape of U.S Treasury yield curve is often looked at as a barometer for U.S. economic growth. More specifically, it reflects how the Federal Reserve (Fed) intends to stimulate or slow economic growth by cutting or raising its policy rate. Each tenor on the curve is roughly the expected policy rate plus or minus…
The bear market ended two years ago today and the subsequent bull market has clearly been an amazing ride. For some context, it was the fastest bull market to double ever, at just under 18 months. View enlarged chart. Here’s where it ranks against the other bull markets that have doubled. You can see it…
The Federal Reserve (Fed) ended its two-day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting yesterday and, as expected, the Committee voted (not unanimously however) to increase the fed funds rate by 25 basis points (0.25%) and signaled further rate increases were appropriate. Highlighting the disparate views on the Committee (also seen on the dot plot below),…
Short and intermediate-term inflation expectations, as measured by 2-year and 5-year breakeven inflation rates, reached their highest levels last week since 2005. Breakeven rates are the difference between inflation-linked bond yields and nominal bond yields of the same maturity; if actual inflation equaled the breakeven rate, an investor would be indifferent between holding an inflation-linked…
Good riddance to February. It was another negative month for stocks, but the clear headline was Russia invading Ukraine and the potential impacts that would have on the global economy and stock market. First things first, this means the first two months of 2022 have been in the red for the S&P 500 Index. “Seeing…
Index Performance View enlarged chart. U.S. and International Equities Most Markets Lower Firstly, our thoughts go out to those impacted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and we hope the conflict end’s quickly. This week, U.S. major equity markets finished higher with the exception of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Clearly the Russia-Ukraine conflict has added…
For the first time since March 2020, the S&P 500 Index officially moved into a correction, down 10.3% from the recent highs. Of course, many stocks have already been in a correction, with some even in bear markets. This is yet another potential worry for investors, but should it be? “Let’s remember the S&P 500…
As COVID-19 cases in the United States linked to the Omicron variant have fallen dramatically during the past month we look once more to high-frequency data for signals on how quickly the economy is reopening and what this could mean for the inflation outlook. “With everything going on recently with market volatility, rate-hike expectations, and…
