Category: Weekly Market Commentary

The Markets Happy birthday! The bull market in stocks charged past its two-year birthday on October 12. “This unique bull market is still young relative to history and, for now, supported by relatively healthy breadth and broadening participation,” wrote Liz Ann Sonders and Kevin Gordon of Schwab. One factor in the U.S. stock market’s rise… Read more »

The Markets There was a lot to celebrate last week! The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed above 5,800 for the first time—and that’s not all. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also notched a record high last week—and all three major U.S. stock indices ended the first full week of October with gains of more… Read more »

The Markets Living the realities of risk and reward. Asset allocation is important because it helps investors manage the risk and rewards of investing. In general, investments have different levels of risk and the potential return (or reward) for taking that level of risk is a higher return. For example, investing in stocks typically has… Read more »

The Markets The Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index hit a new all-time high last week. The S&P 500 has had quite a year. Despite a sharp downturn in August when investor confidence was ruffled by concerns about economic growth, the Index was up about 20 percent, year-to-date, at the end of last week. The… Read more »

The Markets Rates moved lower and stocks moved higher. In 2022, the United States Federal Reserve (Fed) began raising interest rates as it battled high rates of inflation. That year prices rose 8 percent, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. In 2023, prices increased more slowly (4.1 percent), but still advanced at a pace… Read more »

The Markets There was a lot of good news last week! Inflation continued to trend lower. The Consumer Price Index showed that inflation was 2.5 percent year over year (yoy) in August. That’s lower than economists had expected, and a significant decline from July’s 2.9 percent. Food and energy prices have been falling faster than… Read more »

The Markets Investing in September can be like biting into a jelly doughnut and finding boiled cabbage—full of unwelcome surprises. “History suggests September is the worst month of the year in terms of stock-market performance,” reported Isabel Wang of Morningstar. The Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index “has generated an average monthly decline of 1.2%…dating… Read more »

The Markets After gyrating wildly throughout the month, major U.S. stock indexes finished August higher. Despite a lot of uncertainty and some dramatic ups and downs, the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index rose 2.3 percent in August, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.8 percent to close at a record high. It was… Read more »

The Markets The near future is more predictable than the distant future. Last year, the St. Louis Federal Reserve explored the accuracy of recession forecasts. They found that short-term predictions about whether there would be a recession in the subsequent quarter were fairly accurate. However, projections for economic growth a year ahead were far less… Read more »

The Markets The best week of the year? After two weeks of slow and jolting market performance, a bounty of positive news calmed investors and lifted stock markets higher last week. “Investors seem to have come to the realization that while the economy may be in fact slowing, the Federal Reserve is going to take… Read more »