Weekly Commentary

Weekly Market Commentary 1-30-12 Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company A few things happened this week that give significant clarity around the winners and losers in our economy this coming year. Event 1: As expected, the Federal Reserve announced no change in interest rates. However, they did unexpectedly change their specific language for when […]

Weekly Market Commentary 1-23-12 Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company There appears to be no shortage of earnings pessimism this quarter. According to the Wall Street Journal, analysts now expect earnings to grow 7.8% year-on-year, down from their expectations of 15% at the start of the fourth quarter. Bespoke has also noticed the trend […]

Weekly Market Commentary 1-17-12 Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company For the first time since WWII, the US Debt has increased above 100% of GDP. While this is a troubling number, it’s not as relevant in the short run as another number, 71.06%, the percentage of GDP which is currently made up of consumer […]

Weekly Market Commentary 1-10-12 Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company For just once I would like a piece of economic data without strings attached. I long for the olden days of the 1990’s when everything just pointed up and you hardly had to think as an investor. Just steer the car in the right […]

Weekly Market Commentary 1-3-12 Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company The start of the year has me preparing for meetings with endowment and foundation committees as well as strategic planning meetings for our firm. In general, I take a macro view on key themes that could impact investment outcomes and build those into my […]

Weekly Market Commentary 12-27-11 Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company It’s that time of year when everyone in my business tries, in earnest, to predict the markets for next year. I’ve spoken to some of these professionals and my takeaway is that they (still) tend to believe in their prognosticating skills. In my profession, […]

Weekly Market Commentary 12-15-11 Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company While Europe has been grabbing all the headlines winning our “Grim Reaper” award, there has been one country quietly accumulating some momentum, the United States. The U.S. has been posting some fairly positive numbers so far for the month of December. As you can […]

Weekly Market Commentary 12-12-11 Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company Last week, we touched on a report from the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) that calls for the United States to enter a recession in 2012. This deserves further examination for two reasons. First, it’s a significant outlier from other 2012 GDP forecasts. Second, […]

Weekly Market Commentary Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company Over the last two weeks we’ve looked at the European Debt Crisis and the potential impact on US exports if Europe falls into a recession (What’s All the Fuss?). We also covered the challenges many European countries face on budget agreements as a consequence of […]

Weekly Market Commentary 11-28-11 Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company As we discussed earlier this month, a recession seems almost inevitable and the impact on US GDP growth is negligible. In fact, this morning the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that Europe risks a severe recession if they can’t halt the sell-off […]