Category: Market Updates

April 4th, 2022: As the Final Four NCAA Basketball Tournament rolls on in New Orleans, we continue our tradition of picking a stock market final four. We have identified our four key factors for the stock market outlook: 1) Consumer spending, 2) Earnings, 3) Interest rates, ...

March 28th, 2022: As the stock market recovered from the 2020 pandemic lows, valuations reached levels not seen since the dotcom bubble more than 20 years ago. The reopening economy and massive fiscal stimulus helped fuel one of the strongest starts to a bull market ever...

March 22nd, 2022: Core bond investors have experienced one of the worst starts to the year ever, potentially calling into question the validity of bonds in a portfolio. Despite the poor start, we don’t think the value proposition for bonds has changed much. Moreover, with ...

March 14th, 2022: The Federal Reserve (Fed) meets this week and in all likelihood will raise short-term interest rates for the first time since emergency levels of monetary accommodation were provided to markets after the COVID-19 shutdowns. Inflationary pressures are runnin...

March 7th, 2022: We currently expect the U.S. economy to grow 3.7% in 2022. The risks are to the downside since the Fed may err on tightening too fast, the recent commodity spike may trickle down to the U.S. consumer, and supply and demand imbalances may last longer than exp...

February 28th, 2022: With inflationary pressures running higher than many central bankers are comfortable with, calls for interest rate hikes have become louder. A number of important central bank meetings are set to take place in March including the Federal Reserve, Europea...

February 22nd, 2022: Corporate America has capped off an outstanding 2021 with an excellent fourth quarter earnings season so far. Entering 2021, the consensus estimate for S&P 500 Index earnings per share (EPS) was less than $170. Now with fourth quarter results mostly in t...

February 14th, 2022: High inflation continues to cloud the economic outlook while its impact on the potential path of rate hikes has left markets unsettled. Inflation is a serious topic, but occasionally it’s useful to revisit it from a lighter perspective. Today is Valen...

February 7th, 2022: The near-10% correction in the S&P 500 Index and even larger drawdown in the Nasdaq have gotten a lot of attention this year. What hasn’t gotten as much attention—and maybe surprising to some—is the relative resilience in equity markets outside the ...

January 31st, 2022: Sustainable investing hit several milestones in 2021, but continued to attract its critics. Below we look at how sustainable investing fits within the broader concept of sustainability, its growth during 2021, and an implementation framework that has been...

January 24th, 2022: After a tough start for stocks in 2022, investors are looking for reasons to expect a rebound. After more than doubling off the pandemic lows in March 2020, without anything more than a 5% pullback in 2021, stocks probably needed a break. That doesn’t, ...

January 13th, 2022: The Federal Reserve (Fed) has engineered a massive hawkish shift, causing a bit more stock market volatility recently. But how worried should investors be? Here we take a look back at historical performance for stocks before, after, and much after initial...