Weekly Commentary

    This Thursday the Fed will either raise interest rates by 25bps (maybe more) or they will push out the inevitable until later this year. Markets will react, one way or another. Currently, more investors expect a rise in interest rates to be delayed instead of hiking later this week. The current Federal Funds […]

  By now you might be developing some investor fatigue as market volatility adds more difficulty to the already complex art of investing. After all, we have experienced 16 days of triple digit moves in the last 30 trading days. [I] Perhaps, you might be thinking, “When will this ever end”? Or, “How much more […]

  A plethora of economic data was released last week that helped to provide a recovery rally in U.S. equity markets. First, U.S. GDP for Q2 was revised much higher than estimated on the first report. U.S. GDP grew by 3.7% up from Q1 growth of .6% and Q2 first estimate of 2.3%. [I] Growth […]

It should come as little surprise to those that read our posts that we have had a full correction in U.S. Equities (defined as a 10% drop). After all, it’s been over 1,420 days since we have had a correction of this magnitude. In fact, when you look at the frequency of corrections this length […]

  The US economy is strengthening by most economic accounts (see our post from last week). It’s no wonder we hear lots of news about the Fed raising rates in September with almost certainty of seeing at least a rate increase in 2015. The probability of a rate increase by year end is 72% according […]

  Is the US Economy about to launch into a phase of consumption driven by confidence, wages, and income? Let’s take a very quick look and contemplate how likely we are to achieve lift off. The US Economy added 215,000 more jobs in June, according the latest report from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.(i) […]

  After spending 30 years as a professional investor on behalf of others, I’ve grown accustomed to the rhythms of the market. More important, I’ve grown more attuned to the rhythms of our clients and investors. Right around this time of a long run bull market when earnings are evasive and markets have been trending […]

  This week we finally witnessed the equity markets owning up to a well known reality; earnings matter! We’ve been warning for several months that second quarter earnings for the broad market (S&P 500) were expected to decline. As of June 30, according to FactSet, earnings were expected to decline by -4.5%.(i) The “good-bad” news […]

  Spain just celebrated their Festival of San Fermin with the traditional Running of the Bulls. The single mindedness of a bull and the tremendous force with which a bull can charge, is quite a thing to witness up close. Once a bull is charging full steam ahead, getting them to change direction requires quite […]

Each quarter we prepare our near term Look Ahead. Our goal is to attempt to frame the macro-economic and asset allocation issues we face when trying to invest wisely. Below is a link to a video version of our Look Ahead for your review. Q3 2015 Look Ahead If you prefer the pdf version with […]