You've probably heard the phrase "soft landing" a lot lately. It has, over the last couple of months, become the new economic consensus. The economy continues to perform better than expected despite the Fed raising interest rates steadily - and fairly rapidly - over the last year. The most recent hike was just this past week and put the Fed [...]
*This week's Market Pulse will be a short one, as Joe is on a well-deserved weekend getaway. This market rally from the lows of October 2022 continues to surprise and impress. It started off as a very narrow rally where a few big tech names were pushing the S&P 500 higher, but there is much more participation now. This stock [...]
A few weeks ago, it appeared to me that stocks were starting a correction. I was clearly wrong about that as the S&P 500 and NASDAQ have moved higher since then and the rally has broadened out. And thank goodness since the things I own are mostly the parts of the market that benefitted from the broadening. Stocks tend to [...]
I spend a lot of time asking questions. I don't always have answers to these questions but I think it is critical to ask them. Think about how the consensus might be wrong or, more importantly, how you might be. Question the narrative and try to determine what's important and what's not, who you can ignore, and who merits your [...]
The first half of the year is over and despite a few bank failures and three more rate hikes by the Fed, stocks and bonds both managed to produce gains in the first six months of 2023. Growth stocks were the big winners as the market for most of the first half was trying to price in rate cuts before [...]
It appears we have started the third correction in stocks since the bottom in October of last year. The first one was in December and saw the S&P 500 fall about 8% from peak to trough. The second one was from February into mid-March and totaled about 9%. I don't know how far this one might carry but a pullback [...]
Everyone knows that growth stocks have been on a tear this year but what is more interesting is the divergence in performance between indexes with similar names. The Russell 1000 and the S&P 500, the two main broad US large-cap indexes, are both up about 15% this year. But the growth and value versions of these two indexes have produced [...]
No one could have possibly been surprised by the Fed's lack of action on Wednesday. They had signaled to anyone who would listen that they would pause (skip, take a hiatus, halt, or whatever you want to call it) at this meeting. And no one should have been surprised that Jerome Powell offered some tough talk about the future of [...]
I am changing the format of these weekly updates. Rather than publishing one long weekly note, the weekend note will cover just the market and economic news of the week. The general commentary portion will be published another day during the week. We will also be publishing some new research notes during the week. The Monday email will include links [...]
The stock market surged last Friday after the employment report showed a gain of over 300k jobs while the year-over-year change in average hourly earnings fell to 4.3%. That was the popular explanation and it makes sense; continued economic growth and fading inflation pressures would certainly seem a big positive (although wages have little to do with the recent bout [...]
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