Market Updates

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…

March Madness is in full swing, and unfortunately, I’m not referring to the basketball tournament. I save a number of beginning of the year market forecasts from various analysts, and will occasionally look back on them to grade the analysts’ predictions. As I was looking through some the other day, I decided that it wasn’t…

January was a rough month for stocks, as the S&P 500 index of large, U.S. stocks was down more than 5%.  That was the worst start for the index since 2009.  That’s an ominous start–historically there is some correlation between bad Januarys and bad years.  However, the track record not foolproof, since as recently as…

Happy New Year! I hope 2022 is off to a good start for you. I am optimistic that it will be a great year! My indicators are still positive for the stock market and the economy. We are enjoying loose monetary conditions and economic reopening, although the monetary conditions aren’t quite as loose, and the…

At the end of November and in early December volatility has bounded back into financial markets.  A couple of reasons have been cited for this, namely the introduction of the new COVID variant, Omicron, and recent comments by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jay Powell.  In those comments, he has suggested that the Federal Reserve may…

October has gotten off to a rocky start, as concerns of government shutdowns, COVID, debt ceilings, inflation, supply chains, and infrastructure bills have dominated the news.  While all of these certainly can create volatility, I believe that stocks will continue to be a good investment.  A healthy consumer, strong economic growth, strong earnings reports from…

Summer is officially winding down, but you’d never know it from all the heat and storms we’ve had. The very low volumes on the New York Stock Exchange recently are a reminder of all of the investment professionals that are taking summer-ending vacations, so I’d expect volume—and possibly volatility—to pick back up when they return…

Amazingly, the year is already halfway over. It’s been full of events so far: a new President, battling COVID, vaccinating for COVID, Tom Brady winning another Super Bowl, meme “stonks,” genetically modified mosquitos (yikes!), and the gas pipeline hack and gas shortage. Through it all, the S&P 500 closed the first half of the year…

There has been an impressive rotation out of technology stocks and into industrial, basic materials, and financial stocks in 2021, and the first couple of weeks of May have seen that rotation continue. Basically, the stocks that outperformed in 2020 are underperforming in 2021, and vice versa. Of course, there are exceptions, but this trend…