Weekly Commentary

  Volatility. I’m not referring to tremors or seismic events in the title. US and Global equity markets added some significant volatility this week in light of a weaker than expected start to the earnings season.[i] Volatility is up with only a few companies reporting earnings. Most significantly, Alcoa reported a revenue miss of $97M, […]

  The US jobs report on Friday was only exceptional in one regard. It wasn’t the 192k jobs added in March to the US economy. It wasn’t the paltry 1k manufacturing jobs created. What was exceptional was the fact that we have now recovered all of the jobs lost during the “Great Recession”.[i] It may […]

  One of my favorite poets, T.S Elliot, wrote in his seminal poem The Dry Salvages (1941), “We had the experience and missed the meaning.”[1] It’s quite possible we are about to encounter a global event where we might just miss the meaning. While much of the world debates the importance of Russia and Crimea, […]

  With the Federal Reserve taking extraordinary measures since 2008 to lower interest rates, we know that rates will have to go higher eventually; it’s a question of when and how quickly? The Fed typically offers vague guidance on future interest rate policy, much like parents answering a child’s constant inquiries of “Are we there […]

  I often try to assess whether we are in an equity bubble (unsustainable price valuations on stocks) to add perspective to the allocation work we do at Phillips & Company. This week in Barron’s and during a private investment strategy meeting I attended, one of the more prolific investment firms (GMO) suggested that we […]

  On Thursday, the Fed released its quarterly net worth statistics for American households and nonprofit organizations.[i] The data suggests that household net worth is now at record levels, over $10 trillion above 2008 levels, thanks to gains from stock, bond, and real estate investments. Further, recent credit card data from the Survey of Consumer […]

  There is so much going on that a very big event, Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp, might get obscured by other news. Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine. Being a noteworthy topic, there should be plenty of punditry to inform all of us on the significance of this event. Here’s what I believe: Ukraine […]

  On Thursday of last week, The Federal Reserve released the minutes from their meeting on January 29, 2014. They made an astonishing statement: “…the Committee continues to see the improvement in economic activity and labor market conditions over that period as consistent with growing underlying strength in the broader economy.”[i] Let’s just take a […]

  As we have opined in the past several months, much of the US GDP growth has come from businesses pushing “all in” on the US consumer and building up inventories to meet expected demand. (Source: Moody’s Analytics, GDP) As the impact of inventory on GDP begins to diminish, will consumption take its place? It’s […]

  (click here for a definition) The latest jobs report should confirm a concern we have expressed for many years; the economy continues to need extraordinary action by the Federal Reserve to keep the macro US economy limping along. In December, the monthly jobs report showed the US economy only added 75,000 jobs.[i] On Friday, […]