Market Updates

Happy New year!  I hope that your holidays were great and that 2023 is off to a great start for you.  I just caught myself signing a document “2022,” so I think it’s going to take me a while to get used to the change. There’s not much sense in looking back on 2022; it…

We’re about to ring the final closing bell for 2022, and what a year it’s been.  Given the number of drastically bad events this year, like the war in Europe and near-record inflation, we’re lucky that it wasn’t worse for the stock market.  Still, it’s likely going to go down as one of the worst…

As I write this on the morning after Election Day, the results are undetermined, as suspected.  I think all of us want to make sure the final tally is correct, but I hope that the outcomes are determined soon.  The longer the delay, the greater opportunity for folks to question the validity of the results,…

In late September, we did breach the old low on the S&P 500 of 3636 (set in June), which leads me to believe that new money should be patient when buying stocks.  I certainly would recommend dollar cost averaging, whereby an investor adds sums of money to the market at regular intervals, rather than placing…

As of mid-afternoon on September 23, the S&P 500 is re-testing the lows it hit in June.  This isn’t unprecedented as the stock market has a history of re-testing lows.  I wrote in August that I expected a pullback, although not to this extent. The culprit is the rapid change in interest rate policy by…

We’ve seen a big and welcomed, rally in stock prices since the end of June.  Since then, the S&P 500 index is up nearly 13%, and some of the laggards from early in the year have become the leaders.  While that is great news, it still does leave the index down more than 10% for…

As we head into the second half of 2022, I wanted to take a moment to look back on what we have come through.  For starters, the first 6 months of 2022 were the worst January-June period for the stock market since 1970.  On top of that, US Treasury bonds, which are usually a safe…

As summer unofficially started last weekend with Memorial Day, so starts what are usually slow trading days in the stock market.  Historically, summer has meant vacations for many on Wall Street, and that has led to lower volumes and markets that, despite heightened volatility, have often ended the summer on Labor Day at about the…

I’m not one to wish time away, but I’m glad that April is over, from a stock market standpoint (and also because tax season is over!).  The S&P 500 lost 8.8% in April to finish off one of the worst January-April periods ever for that index.  The NASDAQ index, which tends to consist of more…

Greetings! I hope that you had a nice March and that you are ready for Spring. In Florence, we’re digging out from our pollen storm, and it’s been a beautiful time to be outside, if your allergies can stand it! In March, US stock were higher after two months of declines to start 2022. The…