Category: Weekly Market Commentary

The Markets Is it good news or bad news? The answer depends on your perspective. Last week, we learned that: Consumer sentiment is at its highest level in more than a year. Consumers are feeling better about current economic conditions and the future. That said, the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment remains 20… Read more »

The Markets Brace for a bumpy ride. There were some unwelcome surprises in last week’s economic data that caused markets to reassess expectations for 2023. For example: Inflation didn’t fall as fast as expected. Last week, the Consumer Price Index showed inflation rose 6.4 percent, year-over-year, in January. That was an improvement over December’s pace… Read more »

The Markets This time may be different…or it may not be. There has been a lot of speculation about how the Federal Reserve’s policies will affect the United States economy. Economists have differing opinions about whether the country is headed for: A recession, which occurs when the economy stops growing and begins to contract; or… Read more »

The Markets What do Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) and the current economic expansion have in common? Author and humorist Twain was prematurely reported to be dead. It first happened in 1897. Twain was on a speaking tour in London when rumors that he had fallen ill and died began to circulate. Then, about a… Read more »

The Markets The vicious cycle of inflation. Last week, we learned that pay increases at central banks in many parts of the world won’t keep pace with inflation. As a result, their employees may not be able to maintain the standards of living they had before inflation began rising. For example, at the United States… Read more »

The Markets “It’s hard to be a contrarian for very long these days because the consensus seems to change so quickly,” opined Ed Yardeni via LinkedIn last week. We’ve certainly seen a shift in investors’ preferences during the first few weeks of this year. Despite widespread expectations that markets would move lower early in 2023,… Read more »

The Markets Bullish or bearish? After last year’s geopolitical turmoil, economic malaise, and tumultuous stock market decline, many financial professionals – from investors to asset managers – have strong opinions about what will happen in 2023. Some are bullish. While individual opinions are quite nuanced, in broad terms, bulls tend to think the Federal Reserve… Read more »

The Markets It’s being called the “Goldilocks” report. Last Friday, we learned that demand for workers in the United States remained strong in 2022. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.5 percent in December. (It was 3.7 percent in November.) That brought U.S. unemployment back to where it was before the pandemic – at the lowest… Read more »

The Markets It’s finally over. 2022 was a dismal year for financial markets. Major United States stock indices moved lower, trimming or eliminating the previous year’s gains. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, which had gained about 27 percent in 2021, dropped almost 20 percent in 2022. The Nasdaq Composite Index, which had gained more… Read more »

The Markets What a year! In some ways, it feels as though we lived through several years in 2022. The onslaught of events included, “The first major European war since the 1990s, unprecedented sanctions, energy-price mayhem, bail-outs, global interest rates rising at their fastest pace in four decades, a faltering Chinese economy, an overheating American… Read more »