Review and Outlook The third quarter ushered in a tremendous amount of volatility as global financial markets reacted as perceptions for whether a trade deal with China was crumbling or not. So far, as we are writing this piece, it has been much ado over nothing as the S&P 500 ended in the black, up +1.9% for the quarter. Returns year to date through the third quarter range from around 10% for International stocks, 13% [...]

Review and Outlook During the second quarter the market moved modestly higher with a quick pullback in May. Our outlook is for a choppy range in the second half of the year with the bulk of the returns this year having been front loaded. There are many opposing forces the market will have to navigate over the second half of the year. This is now the oldest economic cycle in history at 121 months old [...]

Review and Outlook In our January Outlook we noted that “the fundamentals did not support a move much worse than this…as the market had become very oversold in December…we saw significantly large breadth in buying…this combination…rarely results in the market doing materially worse”. What resulted was in fact quite a rally, the extent of which has surprised most pundits. The S&P 500 was up 13.6% during the quarter and we are close to retesting the [...]

Review and Outlook In our October outlook we warned of more volatility to come. As it turned out, we got even more volatility than we expected. The market declined 13.5% during Q4, putting the S&P 500 at -4.4% for the year. The average stock in the S&P did even worse as the equal weighted S&P 500 was -7.8% for the year. US Mid and Small Cap fared even worse at -9.8% and International continued [...]

Review and Outlook During the third quarter, the market continued the choppy uptrend that started in April after the broad sell off in February. The first few days of Q4 have ended that, and the uptrend is now in question. The fundamentals for the economy and earnings continue to be positive, against a backdrop of the Fed continuing to tighten monetary policy. The tug of war between these two opposing forces has increased! It's difficult [...]