What’s More Concerning Than Too Much Inflation?
Investors are rightly concerned about the recent level and persistency of inflation, which, depending on what metric one uses to measure it, is running at 4% to 5% year over year, well above the Federal Reserve’s long-term inflation target of 2%+ (to be fair to…
Vlog: Quarter-end Q&A 3Q2021
Tim Holland, CFA, Chief Investment Officer, asks and answers three top-of-mind questions as investors receive their quarterly statements and reflect on the past quarter: Why did emerging markets underperform in the third quarter? The Fed started the clock on tapering, what now? Why did markets stumble…
What’s Behind Door #3?
“What’s behind door number 3?” is a question very familiar to fans of the long-running TV game show “Let’s Make A Deal.” Well, maybe to fans of a certain age as it seems the latest incarnation of the show has moved on from doors to…
Stocks Stumble Through September
We have written about seasonality and the markets often of late, both that we have been working our way through the part of the calendar that has historically proven challenging for stocks (“Sell in May and go away”) and that September has been the only…
Systemic: of, relating to, or common to a system
Systemic was a word heard often on Wall Street last week as investors tried to divine the impact China’s Evergrande Group might have on the world economy – as in did Evergrande pose a systemic risk to the world’s economy? Before speaking to the conclusion…
Is That A Light At The End Of The Inflation Tunnel?
As long-time economic and market observers we appreciate that a single data point does not a trend make; but we also appreciate that any change in trend does take place at an inflection point (i.e., a single data point; of course, that change in trend…
So Far, September Is Living Up To Its Reputation
We are about halfway through what has historically been the roughest month of the year for the stock market, and so far, September is living up to its reputation with the S&P 500 off about 1.4% month to date, more than two times the average…
If The Fed Steps Back, Do Yields Step Up?
We think three questions are top of mind among investors when it comes to the Federal Reserve’s securities purchase program (for more than a year, the Fed has been buying $80 billion of Treasuries and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities each month with an eye…
Productivity, Profits, and Pay
Despite the Delta variant of the coronavirus, supply chain bottlenecks, a spike in input prices, and a meaningful employer/employee mismatch (there are more job openings than there are job seekers), the US economy continues to power ahead. Last week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)…
The US Debt Downgrade 10 Years On
There has been much written in the financial press the past few weeks about the just-passed 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon taking the US off the gold standard. While that was for certain a momentous event in the financial history of our country, it…