Tasty The financial markets gave us tasty reasons to be thankful, with the S&P 500 advancing 1.5% the NASDAQ gaining 0.7% and the Russell 2000 rising 1%. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners 2.5-1, and all the equity sectors finished in the green. The yield on...
Piling on Pessimism The pessimism pendulum oscillated between fear of inflation and fear of recession, with a brief swing over to optimism following an encouraging report that confirmed the downward trend in inflation. The producer price index for October released on...
In Memory of Sheldon Goodman It is with great sadness that we report that our beloved Sheldon Goodman passed away in his sleep Thursday night after heroically battling multiple illnesses throughout the years. Shel began his career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New...
Shaky Start November got off to a shaky start with the S&P 500 slipping 3.4%, the Nasdaq nosediving 5.7%, and the Russell 2000 retreating 2.6%. Almost the entire decline came in the last hour of trading on Wednesday, courtesy of Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press...
Sugar Rush The stock market got a pre-Halloween sugar rush, with the S&P 500 3.9% higher, the Nasdaq showing a 2.2% gain, and the Russell 2000 jumping 6.0%. The rally from the previous Friday continued through Tuesday, but disappointing results from Alphabet and...
Rally Reignited A spoonful of sugar from the Fed made the medicine go down, as the market indexes posted their biggest weekly percentage gains since June, with the S&P 500 finishing up 4.8% for the week, the Nasdaq Composite jumping 5.2%, and the Russell 2000...
Pressure The stock market continued to be under selling pressure, as the S&P slid 1.6%, the Nasdaq dropped 3.1%, and the Russell 2000 shed 1.2%. Health care and Financials shares fared better thanks to solid earnings reports from several of the key components of...
Not So Hot Our previous commentary was titled “Bad News Bears”, but perhaps “Bad News Bulls” or “Good News Bears” would be a more appropriate description. Indeed, stock traders continued to obsess on future Fed rate hikes, with good news such as the strength in the...
Winter Is Coming The selling deluge continued with the S&P 500 losing 2.9% to finish at its lowest level since Christmas 2020. The storyline remained the same as the PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, rose a whopping 0.1% more than forecasters expected....
The S&P 500 Total Return Index fell 4.9% for the quarter and is down 23.9% for the year. The Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Composite Index fell 3.8% during this period and is down 11.0% for 2022. This is the first time since 1976 that both stocks and bonds have...
Last Week The stock market treaded water until Wednesday afternoon’s extraordinarily hawkish Fed statement and Chairman Powell’s grim press conference opened the selling floodgates. By the closing bell Friday, the S&P 500 was down -4.7%, the Nasdaq -5.1%, and the...
Inflationary Data vs. Deflationary Outlook The S&P 500 turned sharply lower, wiping out the previous week’s 3.7% gain plus another 1%, with a loss of 4.8% for the five-day session. The Nasdaq fared even worse, suffering a 5.5% decline, the Russell 2000 shed 4.5%,...
Weathering the Storm U.S. stocks snapped a three-week losing streak as the selling pressure abated and buyers, likely either bargain-hunting investors or short-covering traders, emerged. The market rose in three of the four sessions with only the oil and gas sector...
Consensus Pessimism Drives Our Optimism We are beginning to embrace the saying that “no news is good news” since the market has been reacting negatively to both good news and bad news. This suggests a pessimistic consensus among financial markets participants, and any...
Waiting on Wyoming The sell-off that started the previous Friday continued Monday, as concerns deepened over a more hawkish tone from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on the upcoming Friday at Jackson Hole. The market treaded water on very low volume Tuesday and...
Walmart Sales Up, Gas Prices Down The stock market rally ran out of steam, as the S&P dropped 1.2%, the Nasdaq declined 2.6%, and the Russell 2000 slid 2.9%. Most of the damage was on Friday, without any specific news to account for the mood swing. Of note, the...
The Rally Continues It’s getting better all the time Better (inflation) Better (consumer sentiment) Better (corporate earnings) Stocks rallied for the fourth straight week, with the S&P gaining 3.2%, the Nasdaq advancing 3.1%,and the Russell 2000 surging 4.9%. The...
An Economy Off Life-Support After much reflection we have come up with the novel concept that good news is actually good news. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy added 528,000 jobs in July, more than twice as high as expected, and the...
A Shift Back to Dovish Against the backdrop of the Fed raising rates and a shrinking GDP, the stock market finished July with a flourish as the S&P 500 rallied 4.5%, the Nasdaq gained 4.7%, and the Russell 2000 advanced 4.3%. The Oil and Gas sector was the...
Mixed Picture We finally got a break from having the market narrative being dominated by record inflation, the never-ending pandemic, experimental monetary policy, and the tragic war in Ukraine. Instead, the focus was on corporate earnings, with those companies who...
Error: Contact form not found.