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...
Deep in Oversold Territory There is probably no better analogy for recent financial markets activity than the summertime-classic game of tug-of-war. The main players in this summer picnic classic are: (1) inflation reports and employment reports suggesting robust...
Big Bad Fed The market rallied to kick off the back half of 2022, particularly for Tech stocks, as the key news releases comforted investors recession anxiety and their fear of the Big Bad Fed. The highly anticipated employment report showed that the U.S. economy...
Yesterday, a tragedy occurred in Highland Park, IL, the location of North Star’s suburban office. The North Star employees are safe. We want to extend our deepest sympathies to the families of the victims and those affected by this senseless act. As always, we pray...
When Stocks Go Low… As is frequently the case in the stock market, just when it seems clearly to be the worst of times, suddenly it is the best of times. Against the bear market beat, the verse of impending recession, and the chorus of soaring inflation, the S&P...
All Eyes (Including Ours) on Gas Prices Perhaps the best way to describe the current market environment would be to edit the opening of Charles Dickens’ masterpiece “A Tale of Two Cities” by removing all the “best of times” references. "It was the worst of time…it was...
Steep and Cheap At 3pm ET on Thursday afternoon, apparently some traders gained conviction that the highly anticipated economic releases the following morning were going to paint a bleak picture. Unfortunately, that intuition proved correct, as the CPI report for May...