Weekly Market Commentary
Economists like to joke that inflation is just right when no one notices it. Last week, investors noticed it.
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Nov 15 -
Nov 8A Confluence of Good News
Investment management firms are in the business of forecasting the future, particularly those with a heavy emphasis on active management.
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Nov 8
Weekly Market Commentary
Feeling bullish…Investor bullishness ticked higher last week on all four investor sentiment gauges tracked by Barron’s.
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Nov 1PIMCO’s Secular Outlook – A Summary
Investment management firms are in the business of forecasting the future, particularly those with a heavy emphasis on active management.
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Nov 1
Weekly Market Commentary
The road to recovery is slow and bumpy. Last week, we learned that economic growth slowed in the third quarter as a new wave of COVID-19 surged across ...
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Oct 26Interest Rate Normalization
After its November 3rd meeting, the Fed is expected to announce a tapering of its asset purchase program...
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Oct 25
Weekly Market Commentary
It’s MESSI! No, this commentary is not about Lionel Messi, the Argentine soccer phenom who is widely regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time.
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Oct 21Quarterly Market Commentary
Third Quarter 2021 Key Takeaways. The market rebound may not be over, but it took a break in the third quarter of 2021.
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Oct 19Economists on Inflation
Years ago, one of us at JMS had a teacher who had a poster tacked up in his classroom that showed a chimpanzee deep in thought.
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Oct 18
Weekly Market Commentary
Don’t get spooked! Barron’s Big Money Poll is an exclusive survey of market sentiment among professional investors.
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Oct 11September’s Mixed Jobs Report
The September jobs report provided fodder for economic pessimists and optimists.
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Oct 11
Weekly Market Commentary
The word “jouncy” may have started life as a combination of bouncy and jolting – and it’s a pretty good way to describe what happened to stock markets ...
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Oct 4Supply Chain Under Strain
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has regularly expressed the hope that the current inflation spike would be transitory. He may well be proven correct..
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Oct 4
Weekly Market Commentary
If you look back over the last 20 years, September has been the worst performing month for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, according to Nasdaq.
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Sep 28China’s Evergrande
On Monday equities slipped markedly, with the S&P 500 down nearly 2% and other global markets down even more.
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Sep 27
Weekly Market Commentary
Central banks have a lot of influence on investors, markets and economies.
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Sep 20Risks to the Market
On Monday equities slipped markedly, with the S&P 500 down nearly 2% and other global markets down even more.
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Sep 20
Weekly Market Commentary
In recent weeks, bullish sentiment has drifted lower like sediment settling after a storm.
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Sep 13Balancing Retirement Goals
In 1950, Americans who made it to the retirement age of 65 could expect on average to live another 14 years; by 2010 this number had risen to 19 years.
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Aug 30The Fed’s Jackson Hole Update
Last week Fed Chair Jerome Powell gave a closely watched speech at the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole, Wyoming, symposium.
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Aug 30
Weekly Market Commentary
Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder,” advised the Persian poet Rumi.
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Aug 23Checking in on Inflation
This spring we discussed JP Morgan’s annual energy report, which sounded a note of skepticism regarding how quickly we can expect to transition away from fossil fuels ...
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Aug 23
Weekly Market Commentary
Markets were shaken last week by a potent cocktail of central bank tapering and economic growth concerns mixed with coronavirus and a splash of the new Chinese privacy ...
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Aug 9The Importance of Infrastructure
As the bipartisan infrastructure bill advances through the Senate, its fate still uncertain upon reaching the House of Representatives...
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Aug 9
Weekly Market Commentary
Are we there yet? For months, investors have wondered when the Federal Reserve (Fed) might begin to “normalize” its policies...
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Aug 2The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill
In an increasingly rare moment of bipartisan unity, a group of Republican and Democratic Senators, along with President Biden...
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Aug 2
Weekly Market Commentary
The Chinese dragon cast a shadow over free trade and foreign investment last week.
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Jul 27US China Tensions Linger
President Trump attracted a great deal of attention through his stance towards China, including his implementation of tariffs against numerous Chinese goods.
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Jul 26
Weekly Market Commentary
Shortest ever. Last week, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) finally announced the official dates for the recession that occurred in 2020.
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Jul 22Quarterly Market Commentary
Second Quarter 2021 Key Takeaways, The second quarter of 2021 for equities marked a continuation of the remarkable recovery since the COVID downturn in early 2020.
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Jul 19
Weekly Market Commentary
The term “peak growth” has become almost as popular as the comedy show Ted Lasso.
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Jul 19Biden’s Economic Executive Orders
Earlier this month President Biden signed an executive order encompassing 72 actions and recommendations aimed at increasing competition and limiting anti-competitive practices
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Jul 12
Weekly Market Commentary
There was a gapers’ block in financial markets last week as equity investors slowed to see what the United States Treasury bond market was up to.
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Jul 5Corporate Tax Rates May Get an International Standard
Last week 130 countries agreed to a corporate tax framework with a minimum tax rate of 15%.
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Jun 28
Weekly Market Commentary
What begins with the letter “I”? Infrastructure is essential and sometimes taken for granted. Pipes carry drinking water to our homes, offices, and healthcare facilities...
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Jun 28The End of the Beginning of an Infrastructure Bill
On Thursday, the White House reached a preliminary agreement with a bipartisan group of senators on infrastructure investments.
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Jun 21
Weekly Market Commentary
Is that a hawk? The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) met last week.
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Jun 21The Fed – Back in the News Again
Lumber price surged this spring to record levels, spurring concerns about the Fed’s relative nonchalance towards inflation.
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Jun 14
Weekly Market Commentary
It’s transitory. It’s not transitory. It’s transitory. It’s not transitory. Media analysts were plucking the inflation daisy petals last week.
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Jun 14Aduhelm’s Impact on Healthcare
Biogen’s treatment for Alzheimer’s disease was unexpectedly approved last week by the FDA. The ruling was a surprise given that the FDA’s advisory had voted ...
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Jun 7
Weekly Market Commentary
Pulling the economy out of the shed. If you’ve ever stored tools or machinery in a shed or garage for an extended period of time, you know ...
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Jun 7The Electric Vehicle Market
The good news for electric vehicle manufacturers is that battery costs have been plummeting over time, and that the cost of electric vehicles may soon achieve parity with ...
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Jun 1The Energy Revolution May Be a Long and Winding Road
Although it’s pulled back from its peak, Tesla’s stock has still risen more than tenfold in the past two years.
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Jun 1
Weekly Market Commentary
Are we at a tipping point? One side effect of the pandemic was a collapse in demand for oil, which led to “the largest revision to the value ...
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May 25Inflation and the Money Stock
The combination of dovish monetary policy and stimulative fiscal policy has given rise to inflation fears.
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May 19Checking in on Speculative Investments
Here’s the current 10-year breakeven inflation rate, which reflects market expectations of the average inflation rate over the next 10 years.
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May 17
Weekly Market Commentary
Uncle Inflation is here. Will he overstay his welcome? Ever since the financial crisis, central banks have pursued expansionary monetary policies to encourage reflation and avoid deflation.
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May 12On Unemployment
The jobs report released last Friday contained unexpectedly bad news. Normally a gain of 266,000 jobs would be a strong month...
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May 10
Weekly Market Commentary
Like a gender reveal gone wrong, last week’s employment report delivered an unexpected surprise.
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May 3
Weekly Market Commentary
It’s Spring and economic recovery is in the air. Last week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported the U.S.
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May 3A Quick Inflation Update
Here’s the current 10-year breakeven inflation rate, which reflects market expectations of the average inflation rate over the next 10 years.
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Apr 26
Weekly Market Commentary
The Markets It wasn’t just the price of pork chops. Last week, as investors weighed the news, strong corporate earnings were offset by higher grocery ...
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Apr 20Quarterly Market Commentary
First Quarter 2021 Key Takeaways. The market marches on. On the heels of its post-recession resurgence last year, stocks have continued their remarkable runup.
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Apr 19Weekly Market Commentary
Where are Treasury bonds going? The direction of bond yields is influenced by investors’ expectations for economic growth, among other factors.
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Apr 12
Weekly Market Commentary
Investors didn’t stumble over inflation last week. Why not? Inflation – rising prices of goods and services – can be measured in a variety of ways.
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Apr 12Is Step-Up in Basis Reform on the Horizon?
The Biden Administration is seeking to enact a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which then raises the question of how to finance this government spending.
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Apr 5March Job Recovery
The market’s recovery over the past year can be attributed in part to expectations that COVID would be largely suppressed and that the economy could then regain ...
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Apr 5
Weekly Market Commentary
Zoom, zoom, zoom. Big economies tend to recover from recessions about as quickly as semi-trucks accelerate from stop lights.
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Mar 29A Quick Fed Update
In recent years the Fed’s communication style has become increasingly direct...
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Mar 29
Weekly Market Commentary
Last week, unemployment claims were looking good and consumers were feeling good...
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Mar 23The Potential of a Roaring Twenties
Last week we discussed optimistic economic growth forecasts for 2021, highlighted by a Goldman Sachs projection of 8% growth...
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Mar 22
Weekly Market Commentary
What are professional asset managers thinking? Bank of America recently published the results of its March global asset managers’ survey...
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Mar 17Economy Is Ready To Take Off
3,2,1 Takeoff! We may still be cooped up far more than we want to be, but if Goldman Sachs is right, the economy is ready to take off. As ...
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Mar 8What’s in the $1.9 Trillion COVID relief bill?
This weekend the Senate passed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. The House is expected to approve the bill later this week and send it on to President Biden ...
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Mar 1
Weekly Market Commentary
Students of financial markets may have noted a historically unusual event last week.
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Mar 1Inflation and Interest Rates
After the yield curve flattened in 2020, with the US 10 year rate falling to under 0.6% and the 30 year rate briefly slipping to under 1%, we’ve started to see significant ...
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Feb 22
Weekly Market Commentary
It’s a contrarian’s dream come true. Contrarian investors like to buck the trend.
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Feb 22It’s Not Your Father’s Fed
The Fed has long been known as a chief fighter of inflation, ever since Paul Volcker in the 1980s hiked interest rates sharply in an effort to bring ...
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Feb 15
Weekly Market Commentary
Way back, when radio disk jockeys played 45-rpm vinyl singles, the A-side of a disk was the song the record company was promoting and the other side.
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Feb 15Diversifying with Emerging Markets
The stunning recovery of US and global markets has been generally excellent for portfolios, but leaves a challenge going forward...
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Feb 8
Weekly Market Commentary
It’s not a black diamond ski run yet, but the yield curve for U.S. Treasuries is steeper than it has been in a while.
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Feb 8Selling Short Selling Short
The Gamestop short squeeze has prompted discussion of short selling, in which an investor who believes a stock is overvalued borrows shares of that stock...
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Feb 1
Weekly Market Commentary
They say people watching the same event often see different things.
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Feb 1What’s Up with GameStop?
If a group of Redditors dislike hedge funds, dislike the idea of shorting a gaming company that has sentimental value for many...
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Jan 31Quarterly Market Commentary
Fourth Quarter 2020 Key Takeaways. Once again, as abnormal as 2020 has been, as we still sit months away from widespread COVID vaccine implementation...
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Jan 25A Few Perspectives on Debt
The Biden Administration has proposed an additional $1.9 trillion in spending on a COVID relief package, and unsurprisingly, many Republicans ...
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Jan 25
Weekly Market Commentary
Last week, as COVID-19 vaccination efforts continued, there was speculation about stock market corrections and asset bubbles.
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Jan 19
Weekly Market Commentary
Investors were rocked by economic data showing the economy hit the brakes hard in December.
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Jan 18A Bit on Bitcoin
Bitcoin has been in the news quite a bit lately, both for its meteoric rise and its sharp selloffs.
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