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Category: Market Updates

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September 13, 2023
The Growing List—and Politicization—of BRICS and Friends

September 11. 2023: The BRIC acronym, without the “S,” was introduced in 2001 by the Goldman Sachs chief economist who highlighted the prodigious growth and investment prospects of Brazil, Russia, India, and China combined. In 2009, Russia advanced the BRIC platform to c...

September 5, 2023
Interest Rates Are Back to Normal, But What Is Normal

September 5, 2023: Fixed income investors have had a rough time over the last few years. Normally a staid asset class, core bonds (as proxied by the Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index) have seen negative returns over the last two calendar years and could potentially see negative...

August 28, 2023
Opportunities and Risks in the Markets: Lessons Learned from the Grand Tetons

August 28, 2023: The Federal Reserve (Fed) often uses the Jackson Hole Symposium to announce tweaks in policy. Other central bank leaders are also worth watching as investors try to perceive where rates will be in the coming months. In this piece, we discuss some of the oppo...

August 24, 2023
Pullback Perspective: The Reasons Why Stocks Are Pulling Back

August 21, 2023: Volatility has returned right on cue as U.S. equity markets continue to pull back from overbought levels. The recent jump in interest rates has proven to be too much too fast for stocks to absorb, especially for the heavyweight and longer-duration technology...

August 14, 2023
How This U.S. Debt Downgrade is Different from 2011

August 14, 2023: It’s different this time. The four (or five) most dangerous words in investing. We’ll take the risk and use those words here as we break down the recent decision by credit rating agency Fitch to downgrade U.S. government debt to its second-highest rating...

August 7, 2023
Key Earnings Season Takeaways

August 7, 2023: Earnings season is mostly behind us with about 85% of S&P 500 companies having reported second quarter results. The high level results aren’t particularly impressive, but if we peel back the onion, the numbers are encouraging. Results and guidance probabl...

July 31, 2023
A Cloudy Outlook Makes for Choppy Markets

July 31, 2023: The economy is doing better than expected, and the markets are responding accordingly. In this piece, we discuss some of the factors that cause us to think the Federal Reserve (Fed) hiked for the last time in this cycle as inflation is receding and the outlook...

July 27, 2023
(Still) Waiting on the Fed to Be Done Raising Rates

July 24, 2023: The first half of the year probably didn’t go the way many fixed income investors had hoped, particularly after the historically awful year last year. It wasn’t a horrible start—more in line with recent years—but expectations were high this year, with ...

July 17, 2023
Earnings Need to Do Some Heavy Lifting to Keep Rally Going

July 17, 2023: Earnings season is upon us as some banks and a small handful of other blue chip companies have already reported results for their quarters ending June 30. The results on the surface probably won’t offer much to write home about given consensus estimates impl...

July 3, 2023
Capital Markets: The Essence of American Capitalism

July 3, 2023: The long dormant capital markets have recently begun showing signs of interest from institutional investors and deal makers anxious to bring companies to market. While activity remains muted at best, expectations are focused on 2024, when there is a prevailing ...

June 26, 2023
New Bull May Need a Breather

June 26, 2023: We know it’s old news at this point, but on June 8, 2023, the S&P 500 entered a new bull market. After such a strong rally off the October lows, this young bull probably needs a breather. A look at the charts suggests this market may be due for a pause. Bul...

June 20, 2023
Market Responses to Fed (In)Action

June 20, 2023: As the economy is likely downshifting, investors should take heed that the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) current stance is eerily similar to early 2007. During that time, the Fed held a tightening bias since they believed the housing market was stabilizing, the e...