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Five Strategies to Improve Your Investing Experience
There are numerous investment philosophies, but at the end of the day, almost all investors have a common goal – to have their money work for them and increase their assets. As financial professionals, our goal is to partner with each of our clients on their unique...
Quarterly Economic Update First Quarter 2023
The first three months of 2023 were a classic example that volatility can be very prevalent in equity markets. Despite a banking crisis, an initial uptick in inflation rates, additional increases in interest rates and economic uncertainty, U.S. equities still managed to end the quarter on a high note.
Weathering Volatility With a Long-term Strategy
“Market volatility” is the fluctuation of the market, both up and down, and the rate of that change to the equity market’s overall value. The bigger and more frequent the value swings, the more volatile the market.
Quarterly Economic Update Fourth Quarter 2022
Although the yearly results were discouraging, the fourth quarter of 2022, despite its volatility and uncertainty, brought slight improvements in the U.S. equity markets.
Research
New Year, Same Bull Market? | Weekly Market Commentary | January 13, 2025
As the new year officially gets underway, there’s the usual sense of renewed optimism and excitement over new opportunities.
Evaluating Stock and Bond Market Predictions From 2024 | Weekly Market Commentary | January 6, 2024
With 2024 fully behind us, it’s a good time to celebrate our winning calls from last year while also reviewing some mistakes to learn from them and improve our process. The good news is we got more right than wrong last year, but there were some misses. Some course corrections helped. Perhaps the most impactful decision we made was to recommend investors stay fully invested in equities at benchmark levels throughout the entire year despite expecting a stock market pullback around Election Day.
Keys to Stock Market Gains in 2025 | Weekly Market Commentary | December 30, 2024
As 2024 draws to a close, investors have fully embraced the stock market. The S&P 500 is up more than 25% year to date. The broader Russell 3000 Index is up 24%. The Nasdaq Composite is up over 31%. Even the laggards are up double-digits with 12% and 14% advances for the small cap Russell 2000 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Volatility was low, with a maximum peak-to-trough decline for the S&P 500 of 8.5% (the long-term average max drawdown is over 13%). As we turn our attention to 2025, the supports of the past year largely remain in place, but some additional pillars have been added as we discuss below.
The Fed Resets Expectations for Next Year | Weekly Market Commentary | December 23, 2024
The Federal Reserve (Fed) is moving more cautiously in adjusting policy, and markets might have a hard time resetting expectations. Throughout the latest press conference with Fed Chair Jerome Powell, equity markets declined as investors were befuddled with the large upward revision to 2025 inflation forecasts; despite disappointing inflation projections, the “vibecession” is over as businesses and consumers have become more optimistic.