Last Week The stock market weathered the crosscurrents of escalating tension in the Middle East, a potential disruptive labor dispute, and rising interest rates to post modest gains. The Oil & Gas sector was the only big winner, rising 6.7%, while the S&P 500...
Last Week The stock market continued to rock and roll, setting record highs on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. All the large cap indices finished in the green with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrials both gaining + 0.6%, the Nasdaq Composite adding +1%. It was a...
Last Week Happy Days are here again! The skies above are clear again. The Fed is cutting rates again. Let us sing a song of cheer again. On Wednesday, the Fed announced a 50-basis point cut in the fed funds rate, marking the end of an extended period of extremely...
Last Week There have been bull markets and there have been bear markets. Now, some strategists are referring to the summer of 24 as a kangaroo market, with investor sentiment bouncing between fear and greed with all eyes on the Fed’s attempt to use monetary policy to...
Last Week “Wake Me Up When September Ends” is a song from Green Day’s 2004 “American Idiot” album. It also captures the mood of investors following brutal holiday-shortened trading, in which the market suffered its worst first week of September since 1946. The...
Last Week As the lyrics go in the Grateful Dead’s classic tune U.S. Blues, “Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my.” Stock market investors waved the rally flag wide and high as the market continued its long trip to higher ground. The most recent gains overcame...
Last Week “Tell it to me slowlyTell you whatI really want to knowIt's the time of the season for (loving) cutting interest rates”Mash up of Zombies (1968) and Chairman Powell (2024) After several months of resolute statements by many Federal Reserve leaders that maybe...
Last Week Early in August, the combination of soft economic data and a stubbornly hawkish-sounding Fed stirred fear in investors of a recession or “hard landing.” A flurry of data since then has reinforced the not-too-hot and not-too-cold Goldilocks scenario, sent...
Last Week It was the worst of times on Monday and the best of times on Thursday, with wild swings that left equities slightly lower by the closing bell on Friday. The selling pressure from the end of the previous week, following the hawkish Fed meeting and soft...
Last Week The investor sentiment pendulum swung dramatically from the Greed pole to the Fear pole, triggered by another dose of soft economic data combined with stubbornly unresponsive Fedspeak from the FOMC statement and news conference. Despite solid corporate...