Jun 26 The first six months of the year have seen a volatile equity market and increasing interest rates, and despite the Fed’s recent pause, we’re likely to see more of the same in the next six months. With inflation still high and the Fed articulating a plan to keep putting the brakes on the [...]
Jun 06 May Recap and June Outlook The debt ceiling negotiations dominated headlines throughout the month. By month end, the deal was hammered out and on its way through Congress to end up on the president’s desk before “X-Date” when the Treasury ran out of money. The negotiations suspended the debt ceiling until January 2025, [...]
May 16 The debt ceiling is making news again. Will Congress raise it? Will the U.S. make history by defaulting on our government debt? If it seems like this a story you’ve heard before, that’s because it is. Over the past decade, there have been seven occasions where we’ve seen negotiations (or lack thereof) over [...]
May 05 April Recap and May Outlook The biggest news in the Fed’s statement after their meeting on May 3 was what it didn’t say. The Fed’s statement from March contained the language “the Committee anticipates that some additional policy firming may be appropriate” for the Fed to achieve its 2% inflation goal.” This was [...]
Apr 17 April is Financial Capability Month, an initiative that started in 2004 as “Financial Literacy” and has evolved over the last 20 years. The rebrand reflects a trend of taking a more active approach to finances and a focus on having more control over decision-making as you move through your financial journey. As you [...]
Apr 06 March Recap and April Outlook Equity markets, using the S&P 500 index return as a proxy, at first glance appear to have shrugged off the mid-month drama of multiple domestic, regional bank failures and the forced sale of a massive Swiss bank. Attention was temporarily diverted from the economy’s star attractions, CPI and [...]
The monthly Fed/CPI/Employment headline-market movement industrial complex was rudely shouldered aside in the last week by a much bigger and faster-moving story. While the fallout from bank failures will take a while to unravel, and the impact on markets will likely be ongoing, the bigger picture wraps right back to the Federal Reserve. But first, [...]
Mar 07 February Recap and March Outlook If there’s an aphorism for February that you could embroider on a pillow, it would be, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Markets appear to have finally started taking Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s warnings seriously and caught up to the rhetoric that the [...]
Feb 04 January Recap and February Outlook The market adage is “as January goes, so goes the year.” Is it true? According to an analysis by Fidelity, January returns are positive about 75% of the time the full year turns out positive. The rally was certainly a relief after last year’s dismal performance, and while [...]
Jan 22 The markets are starting to feel like Groundhog Day. Almost every month, it’s a cadence of employment numbers, CPI, Fed — market reacts. With inflation starting to trend down, even if only slightly, optimism has been making a comeback. That means moving our analogy to another charming rodent. It seems like the Fed [...]
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