-
Market Recap
Printable Version Weekly Recap This marked the third consecutive week of a +3% or greater advance for the S&P 500, leaving many scratching their heads about the disconnect between the markets and the economy. Furthermore, over the last few trading days we’ve seen the economic sensitive sectors such as small-cap and value stocks take the lead from growth stocks. Even airlines have taken off, so to speak, and interest rates have hooked higher…
Continue reading >> -
Asset Class Review – Does Volatility Make Things Seem Worse?
Printable VersionWith all the chaos going on the past few months, we thought it’d be worthwhile to take a step back and look at how all the major asset classes have performed over various time frames. Let’s asses the damage and see if maybe the volatility has made market returns seem worse than they really are. Year-to-Date The above chart shows the year-to-date performance of the major asset classes. There have been…
Continue reading >> -
Market Recap
Printable Version Employment and Housing Solid performance by the global equity markets this week despite lousy news (again) on the jobs front. The weekly unemployment claims number showed that 2.4 million people filed initial claims for the week ended May 16th, a decrease of 249,000 from the previous week (chart below). This report raised the nine-week total to nearly 39 million people. This comes close to 18% of the labor force….
Continue reading >> -
Market Recap
Printable Version We Are All Moving On-Line More confirmation that April was simply a brutal month for the economy came in today’s retail sales number. Sales nosedived a record -16.4% in April, a fair bit worse than expectations for a 12% decline. Sales fell almost 20% year-over-year (chart below). The only bright spot, as you would expect, were sales at online retailers which surged 8.4%, the second largest increase on record….
Continue reading >> -
Market Recap
Printable Version Well we knew the monthly employment report would be bad. And Friday’s report certainly was. U.S. unemployment surged to 14.7% (chart below), its highest level since the second world war, after 20.5m people lost their jobs in April. The fall in non-farm payrolls in April was the largest drop on record. Job losses were widespread. Key industries hit hard were: Food services -5.5mn Retail -2.1mn Healthcare providers -2.1mn (this…
Continue reading >> -
Asset Flows – How Money is Moving
Printable VersionDuring periods of historic volatility, you often see significant changes in fund flows between asset classes. The past few months have been no different. Given this dynamic, we thought it would be interesting to take a quick look at what asset classes are taking in money and where that money is coming from. March Saw Historic Outflows During the initial phase of the downturn, investors fled nearly every asset class and…
Continue reading >> -
Charts That Caught Our Attention
Printable VersionFor this week’s post, we thought it would be worthwhile to go through a few charts and statistics that caught our attention over the past couple weeks. In an effort to keep it different, we’ll try to stick to main street trends as opposed to security specific data (“try” being the operative word here). Airports Are Ghost Towns I created the above chart from data provided by the Transportation Safety Administration….
Continue reading >> -
Market Recap
Printable Version Weekly Recap At least on the economic front not much has changed and the contrast between the economic data and the markets just gets starker, with the former basically confirming what we already know, while the latter seems oblivious. Weekly jobless claims came in at roughly 4.2 million this week, bringing total claims since the crisis began to roughly 26 million. Such a quick spike in unemployment is…
Continue reading >> -
Volatility Through A Different Lens
Printable Version“Every time I get accustomed to low volatility, like we were towards the end of the Greenspan era, and we think we have all the levers under the control… something erupts to remind us that the idea that anybody is in control of everything is hubris.” -Lloyd Blankfein, ex-CEO Goldman Sachs The point Blankfein is making here is that there are black swan type of events that are impossible to plan for…
Continue reading >> -
Market Recap
Printable Version Weekly Recap A solid week in the markets again despite some miserable economic data. About the only major standout to the downside was oil. Crude oil prices briefly sank below $18 a barrel on Friday, the lowest level since 2002, as energy markets struggled to absorb a record glut created by the coronavirus pandemic. Prices dropped this week despite a landmark US-backed deal by the OPEC+ group of producers…
Continue reading >>
