Market Updates

  August lived up to its historic reputation as one of the worst-performing months of the year for the stock market, as the S&P 500 index fell by about 1.5% last month, basically erasing July’s gains. Interestingly, for as great as 2019 has been for the S&P 500, the index is only up about 3%…

We got a break from tariff talk recently, but it was replaced by talk of the yield curve, unfortunately. The 2 are probably related, as concerns about tariffs, and Hong Kong, and Russia, have caused some stock owners to sell and reposition to bonds. When bonds are bought, their yields go down, helping to create…

  I hope you all had a nice time celebrating Independence Day last week. I suppose that’s sort of the unofficial “halftime” for summer, and for the year, too. With that in mind, I wanted to give you an update on the markets, as well as my outlook. According to Morningstar, the S&P 500 index…

After a relatively tough month in May, with the S&P 500 index down about 6.5%, we’ve had a dramatic reversal in June, gaining about 5% as of June 13th. As always, there’s no shortage of headlines, with oil tankers, China trade, and Tweets being the popular ones right now.   Interestingly, the market has shrugged…

  As I write this, the market is all over the place due to uncertainty of our trade agreements with China.  Terms were not met as of last night’s deadline, so additional tariffs will be imposed on imports from China.  Right now, market participants are trying to figure out how to value stocks in that…

Given the stock market (S&P 500) pullback over the past 2 weeks, I wanted to provide my thoughts on what might be happening.  First, I think this is just a fairly normal reaction to the very abnormal run higher we had from Christmas Eve through the end of February.  Stocks don’t typically move up like…

  What a nice rally we got in January!  Through February 12, the S&P 500 is up about 9.5% in 2019.  That’s a nice change following December.  There’s no sense belaboring the events of the end of 2018, but I do feel strongly that tax-loss selling had a lot to do with the pullback.  I…

  With this recent market rally, up about 12% on the S&P 500 since the December 24 close, I wanted to give an update on current market conditions. Since the 9/21/18 high of 2940 on the S&P 500, we are still down about 10% as of my writing this on January 17. That’s a fairly…

The stock market, and its investors, have not found this to be the happ-, happiest time of the year. The mixed signals, heightened volatility, and terrible performance have left many of us guessing whether the top of the market has come and gone. I think this is a tale of two markets, the fundamental market…

In the wake of Hurricane Michael’s devastating blow to the Florida panhandle, I took some time to look back over the indicators that I track (for the stock market, not the weather).  The first half of this month has been a rough one for stocks and bonds both, with the S&P 500 down about 4.7%…