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June 12, 2023
FOMC Preview: Fed Skip, Pause, or Hike?

June 12, 2023: The Federal Reserve (Fed) meets this week where it is largely expected to not raise short term interest rates for the first time in 15 months. However, Fed messaging has been all over the place in recent weeks. While some Fed officials continue to advocate for...

June 5, 2023
Closing Out Our Equities Overweight

June 5, 2023: Stocks have had a nice run, but at higher prices, the bar for further gains gets higher. We have recently made the case in this publication that there are a lot of reasons to expect the market to go higher between now and year end. But with stocks at higher val...

May 30, 2023
How Much of a Problem is Concentrated Leadership for Stocks?

May 30, 2023: The mega-cap technology companies have powered the broad market higher this year. In fact, the 8.1% gain in the S&P 500 year to date has been driven entirely by six mega-cap stocks: Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), NVIDIA (NVDA), Meta (META), Amazon (AMZN), and ...

May 22, 2023
Will History Rhyme? A Fed Pause Has Been Good for Fixed Income

May 22, 2023: Economists like to remind us there is no such thing as a free lunch. In investment parlance, that just means all investments carry risk—even cash. And the big risk with cash is reinvestment risk. That is, while short-term rates are currently elevated, the ris...

May 15, 2023
Earnings Update: Better than Feared Undersells These Results

May 15, 2023: First quarter earnings season is nearly complete, and it has caused us to regret titling our earnings preview commentary on April 10, “Malaise Continues.” While the “better than feared” label fit the past couple of earnings seasons quite well, based on ...

May 8, 2023
King Dollar Still Rules: Why It Continues to Reign

May 8, 2023: Much has been written lately about the threats facing the reserve currency status enjoyed by the U.S. dollar. “De-dollarization” headlines appear on a near-daily basis, suggesting the dollar’s reign is in looming jeopardy, while counter arguments point out...

May 1, 2023
Sell in May: Does This Stock Market Adage Come into Play

May 1, 2023: “Sell in May and go away” is probably the most widely cited stock market cliché in history. Every year a barrage of Wall Street commentaries and stories in the financial press floods in about this popular, but overused, stock market adage. Here we take our ...

April 24, 2023
Draining the Lifeblood of the Economy: The Small Business Sector

April 24, 2023: Investors use various analogies to describe the importance of small businesses in the domestic economy. Some refer to the small business sector as the backbone or the lifeblood of the economy. At this current stage of the cycle, we could say there are rising...

April 17, 2023
A Closer Look at Commercial Real Estate Market

April 17, 2023: The commercial real estate (CRE) market has recently captured the spotlight after being flagged as the next potential shoe to drop following last month’s banking turmoil. While rising rates have weighed on financing costs and the recent bank failures will m...

April 10, 2023
Earnings Preview – Malaise Continues

April 10, 2023: First quarter earnings season kicks off this week with some big banks reporting toward the end of the week. In some ways this quarter’s earnings season will probably be déjà vu all over again—earnings declines and cautious guidance, reductions in estima...

April 6, 2023
10 Things You Need to Know About Secure 2.0

Congress passed secure Act 2.0 at the end of December 2022 the article below summarizes some of the major elements of this far-reaching bill. Individuals and employers will want to be aware of the changes this bill is making....

April 3, 2023
Who Is Right, Federal Reserve or Financial Markets?

April 3, 2023: Financial markets and the Federal Reserve are reading from two different playbooks. Who is right? The markets are pricing in several rate cuts by the end of this year, while the Federal Reserve communicated more rate hikes with an expectation of holding rates ...