Weekly Commentary

  At the recent 2018 G20 Buenos Aires summit, where the leaders of the largest economies in the world gathered at the beginning of the month, there was a moment that was misunderstood. The “high five” between Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Vladimir Putin of Russia was interpreted as a slap […]

  If the market playbook had followed its recent script, we should have had an extremely positive week last week.  Over the past several months, heated China trade-war rhetoric and hawkish Federal Reserve interest-rate remarks have taken center stage, and markets have responded accordingly with increased volatility. [i]     Last week, those two catalysts […]

    Many of you woke up this morning to news headlines on trade and a roaring stock market after this weekend’s G-20 conference concluded.  [i].  News feeds were littered with headlines surrounding a trade war truce between the U.S. and China, which followed the highly anticipated meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi […]

  Following last week’s Thanksgiving Day festivities was the annual shopping extravaganza known as Black Friday, which kicked off the holiday shopping season.  But if you didn’t get a chance to get any of your shopping done last Friday, don’t worry.  Many of the deals extended into other retail manufactured holidays such as “Small Business […]

  President Harry Truman grew so frustrated with his stable of economists always giving him contradictory answers that he quipped, “Give me a one-handed Economist. All my economists say ‘on hand…’, then ‘but on the other…” [i] If only Truman was here today.  He would have loved the recent flip-flopping from Jerome Powell, the powerful […]

  With midterm elections behind us and almost certain gridlock soon to waft over Washington, DC, markets might have a chance to digest other important factors. Tariffs on China look to be one of the most significant headwinds facing equity investors.  China, the largest component of the Emerging Markets Index, has been down 30 percent […]

  “Our country has never been more divided.” And Always Has Been! I’d like to give attribution to the quote above, but so many people have been saying it lately that attribution is impossible. As we approach a divisive and acrimonious midterm election on Tuesday, let’s see what the data says about divisions within our […]

  With just a couple trading days left in the month, October is shaping up to be one of the worst months for equity returns in decades. [i]     As of Friday, October 26, the indices have seen their largest drop since the correction we experienced between late January and early February of this […]

Despite the rise in market volatility and the recent pullback in stock prices, the market still lays claim to the longest bull market in history.  However, as the market readjusts to a normalized level of volatility, many investors have begun to wonder if a longer-term correction is just around the corner. [i] [ii]     […]

Last week served as a stark reminder that equity markets, in the short term, can be volatile and present significant risk.  On October 10, the market dropped 831 points, driven by several reasons.  When taking the full three-day correction into consideration, the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all dropped slightly more than 5 percent. […]