Monthly Market Insights | July 2022

US Markets June was a tough month for the markets as recession talk prompted investors to recalculate risk in their portfolios. The Dow Jones Composite Average led the indices to lose only 6.84% while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 8.39%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped the most losing 8.71% in the month of…

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Morning Market Commentary for Q2 2022

By the end of the first quarter, it seemed as if we had gone through a much-needed correction, and we were on our way to a recovery. That theory ended quickly as the 2nd quarter turned into something much worse as we entered bear market territory for the first time since March of 2020. It…

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Q4 2021 Stock Market Commentary

For the third consecutive year, the stock market posted a double-digit positive return. The S&P 500 gained 26.9% for the year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average posted an 18.9% gain, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 21.4%. Double-Digit Returns Despite Challenges The market confronted and largely ignored a lot of events that normally would have sent…

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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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Investing 101: a Primer for Beginners

Many of us have heard the term “investments” used in many ways – and it’s a concept most of us are familiar with to some degree. But unless you’ve really taken an interest in the markets or set aside time to study them, you may not have a total understanding of what investing is, everything…

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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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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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