Weekly Commentary

  Life Goes On!Weekly Market Commentary 10-14-2013Tim Phillips, CEO—Phillips & Company We are in full circus mode with Congress doing exactly what we hoped they wouldn’t: take the “full faith and credit” of the United States to the brink of its capacity.

Weekly Market Commentary 10-7-2013 Tim Phillips, CEO—Phillips & Company As we discussed in last week’s blog, most government shutdowns don’t come with extreme long-term consequences. Just take a look at market action for last week.   [i] Source: Google Finance The S&P 500 was down only 0.48 percent—well within the range of possibilities for any […]

Wake Up-It’s the Economy Weekly Market Commentary 9-30-2013 Tim Phillips, CEO—Phillips & Company By the time you get this we will likely be hours away from another government shutdown. Although we humans suffer from “present bias” (events that happen now seem more important than those in the distant past), government shutdowns have been more common […]

  Slow Economy 3 Fed 0 Weekly CEO Commentary 9-23-2013 Tim Phillips, CEO—Phillips & Company   This week the Fed blinked and decided to continue their purchase of 85 billion in mortgage and treasury bonds as part of their non-traditional monetary policy (QE3). The Fed’s statement accompanying their decision was one that I did not […]

One Year Early: Lame Duck?Weekly CEO Commentary 9-16-2013Tim Phillips, CEO—Phillips & Company American politics had a very strange week. The President went from a go-it-alone war President, to a collaborator with Congress, and ended with our country being lectured by Russian President Putin. The traditional Congressional support paradigm was thrown into disarray several times this […]

  Can higher rates lead to more jobs?Weekly CEO Commentary 9-10-2013Tim Phillips, CEO—Phillips & Company The trend in jobs continues to disappoint and suggest a very sluggish economy in the months to come. The US economy added only 169,000 jobs in August, and the current 3 month average is 148,000 jobs per month.[i] At this […]

  Turmoil Part ___?Weekly CEO Commentary 9-3-2013Tim Phillips, CEO—Phillips & Company We had a spate of economic data released last week some suggesting continued growth: Auto sales are expected to rise broadly in August, and are estimated to be an increase of 13% from a year earlier[i] The investment component of GDP increased by 4.4% […]

Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It Weekly Market Commentary 8-26-2013 Tim Phillips, CEO—Phillips & Company Fixed income was once an easy asset class to allocate to. You could by US Treasuries or municipal bonds, collect good income, hedge against deflation and mitigate the risk of having equity exposure in the other part of […]

  Are we overextended? Weekly Market Commentary 8-19-2013Tim Phillips, CEO—Phillips & Company The number one question that I get asked is if the markets are overextended. Invariably, most people already have formed their own opinion, but my answer is no—based upon several metrics. Look at the chart below of current PE ratios versus their 10-year […]

  Fiscal TrifectaWeekly CEO Commentary 8-12-13Tim Phillips, CEO—Phillips & Company As earnings season winds down, it appears we had an excellent outcome. (Image source: Bespoke Investment Group) Roughly 63% of companies beat their earnings estimates, and earnings grew by 2.1% in the quarter.[i] These were some of the best numbers we have seen since 2010. […]