FAANG in Flux For the second week in a row, the market was slightly ahead through the Thursday afternoon coffee break only to nosedive into the weekend. By the closing bell on Friday, the S&P 500 had shed 3.27%, the Nasdaq was down 3.93%, and the Russell 2000 lost...
Technical Turnaround All was quiet on the Wall Street front until mid-morning Thursday when suddenly a nasty selling assault was unleashed in all the equity markets. The S&P 500 decline from Thursday’s high to Friday’s close was a brutal 4.7%, resulting in a loss...
A Million Reasons In her 2016 hit ‘Million Reasons,’ Lady Gaga sings: “I've got a hundred million reasons to walk away But, baby, I just need one good one to stay.” That one line captures how easy it is to find recent data points that support pessimism, and yet...
The $9 Trillion Question The $9 trillion question (size of the Fed’s balance sheet) which is unnerving the financial markets is whether “normal” monetary policy can be restored without crashing the economy. We have recently and frequently heard the argument that since...
Inversion Diversion Some market prognosticators believe that the stock market climbs any "wall of worry." If that is true, then the stock market is going much, much higher. Ironically, despite all the supply-chain issues globally, so far in 2022 there have been no...
Small-Caps Are Finding Their Footing The bounce back rally continued for a second week, with mega caps back in favor as the S&P 500 advanced +1.8%, and the Nasdaq gained nearly +2%. Small-caps continued to lag the field, with the Russell 2000 slipping -0.4%. On...
Outbreaks and New Rates In our previous commentary, “War-Torn Week”, we adapted the blues song “Stormy Monday” to describe the tone of the market. We expressed our belief that in the upcoming week that the war would be the primary determinant of the direction of...
Carnage Continues The market definitely sang the blues as the Dow Jones Industrial Average notched its fifth consecutive week of losses, down 2%, while the S&P dropped 2.9%, the Nasdaq slid 3.5%, and the Russell 2000 declined 1.06%. It was a worn-torn Monday And...
Historical Impacts of Military Conflicts on Equity Markets While recognizing that the future of humanity has been permanently altered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our commentary will remain focused on the stock market and economy during this crisis rather than on...
Volatility Persists The disconnect on Thursday and Friday between the heartbreaking geopolitical developments and the euphoric reaction on Wall Street was startling. At the close of trading Friday, with bloody battles raging in Ukraine, the major indexes had rallied...