Economic & Market Updates

As we enter an eventful period, the coming two weeks will be critical for the markets. This week brings a surge in corporate earnings reports and key economic data releases...

I wanted to provide a brief update on the bond market, which has recently caught investors' attention due to some unexpected developments...

Since August 5th, according to Bloomberg the S&P 500 has fluctuated between a high of 5,662 and a low of 5,217, marking a 7.8% range, and The Nasdaq has seen even more volatility...

As a follow up to our brief market update published on August 5, 2024, I wanted to provide some more color on the recent volatility to hit the markets...

Given the obvious uptick in volatility in the markets last week, and now spilling over to today, I wanted to provide a brief update on where we stand...

The past week has shown clear signs of a slowing economy, aligning with the Federal Reserve's goals to curb inflation by slowing growth, especially in the job market. Here's a summary of the current market and economic situation...

There have been rumblings in the financial press recently about the possibility that the U.S. is at risk of falling into a Stagflationary environment where inflation continues to persist and economic growth stalls out.

The month of April concludes today, and it was a roller coaster of a month.

On Wednesday April 10, 2024, we got our first “clean” CPI report of the year. What does this mean?

This week on Tuesday, February 13, 2024, we saw the biggest decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average since March 2023 (per CNBC). The cause of this decline was a disappointing CPI report released in the morning.

Yesterday, January 31, 2024, marked the final day for trading in the first month of 2024. It also ended with the worst day of the short New Year but we did manage a gain for the month which bodes well for the rest of the year. In fact, according to Tom Lee at FS Insights:

I would like to present my observations of the markets starting with my apologies for being radio silent in the New Year, it has been a busy start to January! The same goes for the U.S. stock market as we suffered a bit of a New Year's Hangover in the first week of trading which shouldn't come as a major surprise since Q4 2023 was so good and many investors were waiting to take their profits in January and make any realized gains a 2025 tax problem. So where do we go from here, now that the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average have both made new highs?

I hope you are having a great holiday season so far. Here in the Northeast, we just had what I would describe as a nasty combination of a Nor'easter & a tropical storm. The flooding in some parts of Northern New England (look up Sunday River) was pretty severe. It could be a little while before some of the ski mountains regain their footing. Too bad since this was a great start to an industry that has had a tough go of things in the past few years.

Good morning. It is the time of the year when various investment firms start to put out their 2024 Predictions, hoping the roll of the dice lands remotely in their favor. As is normally the case with our group, we simply try and look at what the data is telling us to help us have the best odds of a consistent and somewhat predictable outcome. To us, managing risk is the main objective. If you do that, you can control the volatility of your portfolio which helps to keep ret urns within an acceptable range

The markets over the past year have been supported by the so-called 3 Pillars of Support (thank you Tom Essaye) supporting stocks over the past year. As long as these Pillars remain in place, the markets should be somewhat impervious to a significant pullback that would bring the S&P 500 to a level below 4000.

As you may recall, in our Portfolio Management Accounts, last month we reduced our Small and Mid-Cap exposure from Overweight and moved back to an Equal Weighting in that position. We moved the proceeds of that trade into a Market Neutral fund as we were concerned about the direction of the market and the possibility of a pull back.

Good morning. Given the backdrop of interest rates rising faster than most money market funds can keep up, rates on Treasuries and CD’s are now the most competitive they’ve been in years. If you have any excess cash generating little to no interest, a CD may make sense for you:

Good afternoon. According to Tom Essay at The 7’s Report, the S&P 500 saw its worse one-day drop yesterday, September 26, 2023, since March with a drop of 1.47%. Some tech stocks were down as much as 4+%. So, what exactly happened?

We wanted to provide you with a brief update to our portfolio that I manage on a discretionary basis and a change that I made to them on September 7th. On 9/7 we decided to trim back our overweighting to the small and large cap space and reallocate it to the Calamos Market Neutral Fund (CMNIX). After the rally that occurred during the summer months followed by the subsequent pull back that we’ve seen over the last few weeks, we decided it was appropriate to bring those two areas to an equal weighting.

I want to pass along a quick update on the monthly CPI (Consumer Price Index) report that was released yesterday. The report largely met the market’s expectations which is why you didn’t see a an overly volatile reaction from the market.

Technical analysis is the study of past price and volume trends of a security in an attempt to predict the security's future price and volumetrends. Its limitations include but are not limited to: the lack of fundamental analysis of a security's financial condition, lack of analysis ofmacro economic trend forecasts, the bias of the technician's view and the possibility that past participants were not entirely rational in theirpast purchases orsales of the security being analyzed.

As a follow up to our previously published article, What Is Going On With The Stock Market – Part I – we are going to cover what we believe investors need to worry about in the second half of 2023 and in to 2024.

Every now and then you run across an article that really hits home with explaining things in a very clear and concise manner. I often quote Tom Essaye in my updates (he has a daily update I subscribe to) and this morning he had a great summary of How To Explain This Market.

For those of you that follow our updates regularly, you may have noticed we have been quiet for most of the month of June. The end of Spring/beginning of Summer always marks a busy end of the travel season (closed out by catching ballgames in Allentown & Harrisburg, PA!) for my team and the end of school for my kids so I don’t have as many quiet mornings to myself to opine on what is driving markets. Well, thanks for a 4:50 AM thunderstorm overnight and the smoke detectors going off shortly thereafter, I have had the last couple of hours to myself to finally put some thoughts on paper.

The month of May has been dominated by fears of the federal government defaulting on its debt payments, Artificial Intelligence getting real, interest rates testing highs for the year and an economy that continues to chug along despite calls for a recession.

My update is a little off schedule this week as I was waiting for the Fed announcement yesterday and the market reaction. As expected, short term interest rates were raised by .25% to a “Terminal Rate” of 5.00%-5.25%. More importantly, the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) confirmed that it intends to keep rates at this level for the foreseeable future and not raise any further. So, barring any unforeseen data that would force their hand otherwise, they are done hiking for this cycle which means from here the direction is sideways or down.

Earlier this year, I discussed the Hard Landing/Soft Landing/No Landing scenarios for the stock market and economy as a whole. You can view that report here. Since then, there has been conflicting data that supports all of these outcomes, but the market has viewed things through the soft/no landing lens. Where are we now? Since the beginning of the year, market performance has been all over the place. The Russell 2000, which houses most small cap stocks, has had a tough time with just above a break-even return as of 4/24/23. Meanwhile, as of the same date, the Dow Jones is up around 3%, the S&P 500 is just shy of 8%, and the Nasdaq is leading the pack with almost a 15% return. The JP Asset Allocation Index* is up 5.1% YTD.

I hope you and your family had a good Easter weekend. My kids (9 & 11) commented this morning that it was a “quiet Easter” and I just told them that they are getting older and it’s not as much fun when you know the Easter Bunny isn’t real. So my daughter quipped back, “I guess holidays are just boring the older you get”.

Current situation - Three large banks failed in the last week and that resulted in major pressure on bank stocks. For now, contagion seems contained but banks still face structural headwinds.

To say the start to 2023 for the markets has been an emotional roller-coaster would be an understatement. At the beginning of the year, it seemed like The Federal Reserve was going to engineer a “Soft Landing”, rates would soon peak and then drop by the end of the year and inflation had been beat. Then came the data. As February progressed, the economic data began to reverse the belief that inflation would be so easily beat. This was not too surprising since inflation tends to stick around a lot longer than we want it to. Of course, this leads to the fear that the Fed will raise rates too much, choke off the economy and get us back to a “hard landing”.

It was school vacation for those of us in New England last week, so my family and I were able to go down and enjoy sunny and warm Charleston, SC which was a treat. Even though we own a home in Hilton Head, SC, where I am fortunate enough to visit more frequently thanks to remote work capabilities and more clients in the Southeast for our practice, I had not yet had a chance to explore Charleston and I was not disappointed! Even though I was out of the office, I was still checking in daily.

Every now and then you come across an article that does an excellent job of articulating where we are at in today’s economy and markets. Last week in February 8th’s edition of the Sevens Report, Tom Essaye did just that. As Tom puts it, the market loves analogies and one of the most popular analogies of late has been will the economy experience, through the actions of the Federal Reserve’s rate-hike campaign, a Hard Landing or a Soft Landing? One thing that has been rarely, if ever, mentioned is a No Landing scenario.

I would like to share my views on what transpired last week, it was by far the biggest week of this short year and probably one of the biggest weeks we have seen since the beginning of the Federal Reserve’s rate-hike campaign to stamp out inflation. As we mentioned in our note to investors on 12/27/22, this market will be driven by economic data to start off 2023 and last week is when we got a ton of it.

We are now in our third week of the New Year and the markets have been positive all-around to start the New Year. This is important because of the so-called "January Effect" where the performance for the first month of the year can dictate how the rest of the year will play out.

Inflation - Data from late 2022 clearly shows inflation has peaked, but it mush decline much further from current levels for the Fed to pivot.

This will be the final update of the year for me and what a year it has been! I am not sure I can remember a year when so many forecasters/economists/”experts” got it wrong as they did in 2022! The culprit: Inflation. Even The Federal Reserve didn’t see this coming as they thought the Fed Funds would be at .9% by the end of 2022 and instead here we are at almost 4.50%!

Good morning. Given yesterday's Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation report, I thought I would put out a few comments and chime in on the Fed Meeting later today.

Good morning. As you may have noticed, I have been a bit radio silent lately as my travel schedule has kept me busy which concluded with an investor conference in Charleston, SC. Yes, coming back to rainy Boston was tough but I am happy to be back home.

Davis Wealth Management reports on market influences and how different scenarios could impact the economy.

I would like to begin this week’s update by congratulating my team for the Davis Executive Wealth Management Group being named a 2023 Five Star Professional. This award is based on submissions from a designated professional’s client base. Financial Advisor’s such as myself must satisfy 10 objective....

Good morning. Given the backdrop of interest rates rising faster than most money market funds can keep up, rates on Treasuries and CD’s are now the most competitive they’ve been in years. If you have any excess cash generating little to no interest, a CD may make sense for you.

The market continued its “don’t look now but things just took another big swing” last week with the S&P 500 up 4.74% for the week according to Factset. What were the reasons for the move? One of the biggest pieces of news came on Friday when Nick Timiraos of the Wall Street Journal...

On Wednesday, September 21st, as expected, The Fed moved up the short-term overnight borrowing rate, The Fed Funds, by .75%. This was widely expected which is why the market initially bounced higher off the news. Then Powell’s Press conference came where the Fed announced...

I know it sounds cliché to say “the volatility & trading range continued last week” but that is exactly what happened. The main drivers of the markets being down so much last week (S&P 500 -4.77% Source: CNBC) were: 1) Core Inflation readings still high 2) Terminal Fed Funds (where they will stop) being raised to 4.25%-4.50% 3) Earnings Warnings from a few high-profile companies.

Good morning. A recent quote from Jeff Saut’s weekly publication caught my eye. Jeff was quoting a portfolio manager from Greenbrier Partners which involved timing the market. In times like these, clients often ask: Why don’t we just get out of the market until things settle down? Ah, if it were only that easy!

Earnings per share (EPS) is calculated as a company's profit divided by the outstanding shares of its common stock. The resulting number serves as an indicator of a company's profitability.

This brochure is for informational purposes only. The author(s) are neither employees of nor affiliated with Steward Partners Investment Solutions, LLC. We are not implying an affiliation, sponsorship, endorsement, approval, investigation, verification or monitoring by Steward Partners of any information contained in the presentation. The opinions expressed by the authors/presenters are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Steward.

Good morning. This past Friday, we saw another significant daily drop in the U.S. equity indices with the S&P 500 down by -3.37% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq by -3.94%. The 10 year Treasury closed at 3.03%. Sources: CNBC.

This brochure is for informational purposes only. The author(s) are neither employees of nor affiliated with Steward Partners Investment Solutions, LLC. We are not implying an affiliation, sponsorship, endorsement, approval, investigation, verification or monitoring by Steward Partners of any information contained in the presentation. The opinions expressed by the authors/presenters are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Steward.

Good morning. As some of you may have noticed, the markets have finally found some forward momentum and this week as the major averages closed at 6-week highs. Also, worth noting that the S&P 500 closed above its 50-day moving average for the first time since April. The next challenge for the market would be for the 50-day moving average to break through the 100-day & 200-day moving average to set up what is known as a Golden Cross which usually marks the beginning of a Bull Market.

Good morning. Yesterday, July 13, 2022, we received another upside surprise in inflation with headline inflation up 9.1% over June 2021. To the surprise of many, the equity markets, which initially were hit hard in the pre-market after the 8:30 AM announcement of the inflation numbers, held up remarkably well.