Q3 2021 Stock Market Commentary

Market volatility is back in a big way. In our last report, we noted that the market was “climbing a wall of worry” as the market just seemed to go up and up and up despite pockets of bad news here and there. Late in the quarter, however, that unmitigated move higher finally hit a roadblock…

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Q1 2021 Stock Market Commentary

The market continued to surge higher as we said goodbye to 2020 and hello to 2021. Additional stimulus, mass vaccinations, and hopes for a return to a fully opened economy provided a nice backdrop for the market to further its gains. As rosy as that all sounds, we did run into some volatility late in…

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GameStop, Reddit, and Market Mania: What You Need to Know

Over the course of 11 trading days from January 13 to January 28, 2021, the stock of GameStop, a struggling brick-and-mortar video game retailer, skyrocketed by more than 2,200% — creating a mix of excitement and concern throughout the financial world, as well as among many people who pay little attention to the stock market.1 Other…

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The Bull Is Back… Will It Keep Charging?

On August 18, 2020, the S&P 500 set a record high for the first time since COVID-19 ushered in a bear market on February 19. The cycle from peak to peak was just 126 trading days, the fastest recovery in the history of the index, erasing losses from an equally historic plunge of almost 34%…

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Q2 2020 – Second Quarter Stock Market Commentary

There is an old saying on Wall Street, “The stock market is not the economy and the economy is not the stock market.” We all got a little taste of that this past quarter when we saw a negative -4.8% GDP in the first quarter and predictions of negative -30% to -50% GDP for the second quarter. We saw record…

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2020 First Quarter (Q1) Market Commentary

Most economic slowdowns occur over time with a slow deterioration of Employment, Consumer Confidence, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Companies generally tighten their belts and the Fed and Government make monetary and fiscal policy changes to help soften the blow and eventually we come back slowly. It’s called the business cycle. We have been going…

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Coronavirus Concerns? Consider Past Health Crises

During the last week of February 2020, the S&P 500 lost 11.49% — the worst week for stocks since the 2008 financial crisis — only to jump by 4.6% on the first Monday in March.1 By all accounts, the drop was largely driven by ever-increasing fears about the potential effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and its…

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2019 Q4 Market Commentary

One year ago, the market was convinced that our economy was headed for a recession and we began 2019 on the heels of one of the worst quarterly market returns in more than a decade.  This could not have been further from the truth.  Once the market figured out that a recession was not happening,…

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2019 Q3 Market Commentary

During the quarter we saw two major market indicators, both with drastically different signals for market watchers.  The first and most publicized was the inversion of the yield curve.  There are many different measures for this; but in a nutshell, the yield on the 2-year Treasury note was higher than the yield on the 10-year…

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