Insights

Summary Financial assets had a tough second quarter.  Interest rates rose while corporate profits dipped.  Greece was once again in the...

How seriously should we take the notion of a strengthening economy when commodities prices fell 3.8% in the first half of 2015? Last...

The May Employment report was surprisingly strong. Labor force participation rose by 400,000 and average hourly earnings climbed to 2.3%...

Recently, both the S&P 500 and Dow Industrial Averages again closed at all-time highs and are up 4.3% and 3.3% respectively<1>. The...

Summary The U.S. economy improved modestly in the first quarter of 2015.  The bigger story, however, was how well the rest of the...

Market Summary The first quarter of 2015 is just over and it has been fairly disappointing for most investors.  The S&P 500 was up 0.45%...

Last Friday’s U.S. Employment report was strong enough to send interest rates soaring.  The 10-year note, which opened the year yielding...

Summary It is hard to overstate the impact that weakness in the global economy had last year.  Because the United States was the only...

I am not concerned about the stock market's rough start to the year because January 2014 also got off to a bad start and yet finished the...

It seems like each update starts with how much the market has changed direction from the previous update.  As this is written, the stock...

Market  Update What a difference a month makes!  We had the sharpest stock market decline since the summer of 2011 (the S&P 500 was down...

Summary Stocks posted another gain last quarter as measured by the two major indices (the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average,...

Market Perspective Thoughts on Equities We seldom get through a year without at least one down quarter, but we are presently on a six...

As we wrote last month, the most prudent course of action statistically is to assume any particular decline in a bull market is a...

Market Perspective Bear markets are a “when”, not an “if”.  The goal is to go into one without being overly aggressively positioned, so...

Summary The stock market rally continued through the second quarter of 2014.  There was a brief -4% “correction” in early April but...

Stocks finally broke out of their trading range after the Memorial Day holiday as investors decided that the economy was in fact growing...

Stock prices have leveled off here in 2014.  The blue chip averages have recovered from both their January correction (6%) and a smaller...

Summary After a very strong 2013 it was reasonable to expect there would be some period of consolidation in 2014.  Stocks gave back...

Market Leadership Rotation Last week saw one of the biggest asset allocation reversals I have ever seen. Going into last week, the...