Last Week: Stocks hit new highs, with the S&P 500 gaining 0.86% to finally close above its January 26th top, while small stocks fared even better, as the Russell 2000 surged 1.93%. The often-cited adage is that the stock market climbs the wall of worry. I would suggest that the current market is instead climbing the wall of “whatever”, because no one seems particularly worried about anything. The global supply chain and [...]
Last Week: To the casual observer, it was a quiet week, with the S&P 500 posting a modest 0.59% gain, while the U.S. Dollar and bond markets were largely unchanged. On the other hand, there was tremendous daily volatility in the overall market, as well as continued stock specific winners and losers. The concern over the crisis in Turkey early in the week, gave way to optimism over the U.S. consumer [...]
Last Week: The S&P 500 slipped 0.25%, the yield on the Ten-Year Treasury slid 10 basis points to 2.85%, while the U.S Dollar strengthened over 1% to a new 2018 high. The chart below shows the link between the strength in the dollar and the S&P this year, particularly since the end of March when the “Trade War” dialogue started dominating the headlines. It’s hard to tell how the dollar and [...]
Last Week: Our TIEs (Trade, Interest rates, Earnings) theme remained the dominate narrative, with relatively benign developments on the Trade and Interest rates front and continued spectacular Earnings. Unlike most quarters when analysts make downward revisions to earnings estimates as the reporting season approaches, in the first and second quarters of 2018 analysts increased expectations ahead of earnings reports. Even with elevated expectations, 78.2% of the index reported first quarter earnings [...]