Blog Posts

  Time to Move On After all the anxiety and angst, you mean to tell me that’s it?  No debt downgrade, no whiff of default, not even a market tremor or two?    Debt ceiling pantomime.  But the deal is done and the ca...

It was a good week for stocks despite an increase in bond yields and growing jitters about the debt ceiling.  Tech stocks performed particularly well, but even small-caps and beaten down bank shares managed to rally.  The beleaguered ...

The markets are in a bit of a holding pattern as we work closer to the debt ceiling showdown.  Lots of guessing going on about the ultimate solution, but no concrete news as of yet.  Meanwhile, a couple of economic reports point towards...

More turmoil in the banking sector this week.   We started off Monday with news that First Republic was no more.  The FDIC arranged for J.P. Morgan to purchase the entire company, basically wiping out both the existing stock and bond ho...

It was a flat-ish week for the markets as investors weighed a number of competing issues.  Corporate earnings, the growth and inflation data, and continued woes at First Republic all vied for attention.   Some of the big tech heavyweigh...

Inflation was the theme of the week, and in general the markets liked what was reported.  The first report was the consumer price index for March.  The headline rate was up just +0.1% month-over-month, a tick below expectations, while cor...

It was a pretty uneventful week in the markets ahead of holidays. Stocks didn’t do much at the broad index level with the exception of small-caps, which was pulled down by the financial sector once again.  It’s been a brutal run for regional b...

The markets are proving to be surprisingly resilient despite all the bad banking news thrown their way.  Of course, both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank have all passed from this world, but it seems only a matter of time before another ...

Coming into this week the thinking was that today’s payrolls report would be the big event for the week.  Ahh, but Mr. Market had other ideas.   How about a Fed Chairman banging the drum for larger rate hikes followed by the second larges...

  It’s been something of an aimless chop back and forth for the markets the last few days.  Last week both short-term and long-term rates spiked higher and stocks sold off.  This week rate volatility persisted (the 10-year briefly t...

  It was a mixed bag this week with investors pulled in different directions due to changing perceptions about inflation and what it might mean for monetary policy in the months to come.   The main indexes didn’t really do much, but th...

There was a lot to absorb this week.   Three major central bank meetings, the closely watched payrolls report, a couple other major economic reports, and earnings results from a range of companies including four of the world’s biggest.  S...

A relatively quiet news week, at least as far as the markets are concerned.  There were a couple notable earnings misses, but three topics seemed to matter at the macro level:  recession risks seem to be abating, inflation continues to co...

Market Recap   The markets have gotten off to a strong start this year, with all the main equity indexes advancing. Bond yields have also backed off a bit leading to gains for fixed income. The general theme underlying the move in both stock...

Anyway you look at it, 2022 was a tough year for investors.  It isn’t so much that stocks lost money (not that unusual).  Or even that bonds closed in the red (more unusual, but not unheard of).  It’s more that they both went down at...

Market Recap It was all about inflation and central banks this week.  As a matter of fact, most weeks this year have been all about inflation and central banks, at least when it comes to the markets.   Urrrgh. The inflation news wa...