Weekly Commentary

  Investors have seen the Federal Reserve come full circle over the past five months.  The Fed went from a “hawkish” rhetoric and raising interest rates to a “dovish” rhetoric putting further interest rates on hold for the foreseeable future. [i]     Bond investors took it one step further by hammering short-term interest rates, which […]

  Last week the S&P 500 added a new notch to its belt.  For the first time since September 2018, the S&P 500 closed at a new all-time high.  [i]   This came on the back of the U.S. posting its best first quarter GDP since 2016.  According to the advance estimate of the United […]

    With just a few weeks’ worth of S&P 500 earnings reports released for Q1 2019, the earnings recession we have been talking about for many weeks is beginning to take shape. So far with 15 percent of companies reporting their Q1 2019 earnings, FactSet is anticipating a decline of -3.9 percent versus the […]

  To celebrate Earth Day almost 40 years ago, Walt Kelly wrote, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  The essence of his work was to remind Americans we were all responsible for hurting the environment. [i] Oddly enough, we had a similar reminder during last week’s testimony on the Hill.  CEOs from seven […]

  After completing the first full trading week of the second quarter, the market continues to rocket toward the all-time highs it reached last September.  With the market’s exuberance, we’d like to remind investors of the potential clouds headed our way, as we present you with our Q2 2019 Look Ahead. For our PDF presentation […]

    Talks of a recession seem to be on everyone’s mind following the decision by the Federal Reserve to put a hold on further interest rate hikes in 2019.  During last week’s blog post, “A Stair Case Maze of Confusion,” we discussed the inverted yield curve and its predictive power for recessions.  While it’s […]

(Earnings Recessions, Inverted Yield Curves, and Economic Recessions)   Every few years I repurpose some old themes and remind our readers that, although past performance is not always indicative of future performance, cycles do repeat themselves.  Through 2015 and much of 2016, the United States was facing an earnings growth recession amid an economic boom.  […]

  In most developed countries, an important public utility like power or water is always available with the flip of a switch or the turn of a knob.  As consumers, we have grown so dependent on these reliable services that we hardly think about how they work.  The expectations for 100 percent delivery are universal. […]

  The latest Employment Situations report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday, March 8, 2019, suggested the economy is in the midst of a massive cooling down. The United States economy added a mere 20,000 jobs versus the 181,000 that economists were expecting.  [i] [ii]     If this report is the […]

  One of the most astonishing economic miracles I have seen in my 30-plus years of professional investing is the possibility of our economy receiving a second wind. That’s right! Considering the length of this economic recovery compared to past recoveries, this qualifies as a growth miracle. [i]     To appreciate this growth miracle, […]