In December 2018 with the S&P 500 at 2,500, we forecast it would hit 3,100 by the end of 2019 and then pushed our forecast to 3,250 as stocks soared. The S&P 500 rose 28.9% in 2019 and hit that revised target on the first day of trading in 2020. We then raised the target [...]
Dear Friends and Clients, I want to start by commending our Clients on your overall response to this truly unprecedented situation we all find ourselves in. Many of you have been with us through one, or even several, declines and we are gratified that our educational message seems to have been taken to heart. As [...]
Due to fears about the Coronavirus – more specifically, the forceful government measures designed to halt its spread, the US is on the front edge of the sharpest decline in economic activity since the Great Depression. The US economy was on track to grow at around a 3.0% annual rate in the first quarter before [...]
Monday, fear over the Coronavirus finally gripped investors, as both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 index fell over 3% - the largest daily declines in two years. These drops wiped out all the gains for the year. Frankly, it's amazing to us that the market had been so resilient! Maybe it's [...]
Back in mid-November, the highly respected GDP forecasting model from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank (also known as "GDP Now"), estimated that real GDP would only grow at a 0.3% annual rate in the fourth quarter, which, if accurate, would have been the slowest growth for any quarter since 2015. At the time, we were [...]
Analysts were very quick to pin the blame for weakness in stocks late last week on the trade war with China. We agree that uncertainty regarding the future of US-China trade relations was a drag on equities, but think it was far from the only reason for weakness. In fact, it wasn't even the most [...]
Our media loves a "good" story, even if they have to invent one. Today’s story from Media Groupthink Central (MGC) is the yield curve for US Treasuries has inverted and therefore is signaling an impending recession. Several carefully worded stories to this effect have been printed recently, along with others written more sloppily so as [...]
The Fed is flailing. For the past several years, under the leadership of both Jerome Powell and, before that, Janet Yellen, the Fed claimed it was "data dependent." But the decision last week to reduce short-term rates by 25 basis points tore that narrative to shreds. At the prior Federal Reserve meeting in mid-June, a [...]