Weekly Market Commentary January 17, 2023 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 R...

Friday, January 6, 2023 There was good news for those saving for retirement in the recent appropriations bill passed to fund the government, signed into law by President Biden on December 29, 2022. The larger bill included a set of retirement reforms called SECURE 2.0. A kind of sequel to the SECURE Act passed by the Trump Administration in 2019, SECURE 2.0 makes it easier to save for retirement,...

Weekly Market Commentary January 09, 2023 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 level in more than 50 years,...

Weekly Market Commentary January 03, 2023 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 than 21 percent in...

Weekly Market Commentary December 27, 2022 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 Am...

Weekly Market Commentary December 19, 2022 The Markets Bad news is bad news, once again. For months, investors have cheered bad economic news. When the United States economy showed signs of weakness, stock markets often reflected investor enthusiasm. The thinking was that bad economic news would persuade the Federal Reserve to slow the pace of rate hikes. Inflation would slide lower, and recession...

Weekly Market Commentary December 12, 2022 The Markets What comes next? The U.S. stock market tends to be a forward-looking vehicle. Investors make decisions today based on what they think may be ahead for the economy, and how economic change may affect the companies they’re considering for investment. Currently, key questions include: Will inflation be lower in 2023? Will Federal Reserve (Fed) po...

Weekly Market Commentary December 05, 2022 The Markets What will it take to slow this economy down? In 2001, railway workers slowed a runaway train in Ohio by latching a second engine to the back of the locomotive and applying the brakes. In all, the train traveled sixty-six miles over two hours, decelerating from a maximum speed of 47 miles per hour to 10 miles per hour before workers regained co...

The Markets There was a shift in the winds of monetary policy. Last week, it became clear the Federal Reserve (Fed) had softened its hawkish stance. The minutes of the central bank’s November policy meeting indicated the Fed was likely to slow the pace of rate hikes soon. There was a caveat, though. The minutes noted: “…with inflation showing little sign thus far of abating, and with supply and de...

The Markets Thanksgiving and football go together like turkey and stuffing. For some families, though, this year may be more like a turducken, stuffed with American football and the sport the rest of the world knows as football (soccer). The men’s World Cup, which is played every four years for national glory, the Jules Rimet trophy, and millions of dollars in prize money, began on Sunday and will...