April 17, 2018 In the first three weeks of the year, the stock market experienced gains that were nothing short of spectacular, extending a great year for equities in 2017. Starting with the last week in January, the markets have been experiencing extreme amounts of volatility — both up and down. It has not been unusual […]
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April 10, 2018 The job numbers for March give us another indication of where our economy is headed in the short-term. The headline numbers showed 103,000 jobs added and an unemployment rate of 4.1%. While the number of jobs added was disappointing, the report followed a very high number of jobs added for the previous […]
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April 3, 2018 Now that April’s Fools Day has passed, we can get down to some serious business. And the first order of business each month is the release of the employment report. Each report seems to have a special meaning with regard to the economy, and this month the job numbers will be no […]
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March 20, 2018 The Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee meets today and tomorrow. While the vast majority of the world will be going about their business, thousands of financial analysts will be on the edge of their seats trying to determine what the Fed’s direction will be. Like all Americans, they are concerned that […]
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March 13, 2018 The wild year has continued with regard to volatility in the markets, political headlines and, sadly, national tragedies. Through it all, we have seen three patterns emerge. First, the volatility has been focused mostly in the stock and bond markets. Stock gains were some of the strongest in memory in January and […]
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March 6, 2018 The minutes of the Federal Reserve’s January meeting were released the week before last. These minutes indicated that the Fed is comfortable that an expansion with “substantial underlying economic momentum” could sustain additional increases in interest rates this year. This statement was of no surprise to the markets, as rates have been […]
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February 27, 2018 There are many questions which have arisen because of the movements in the stock market and interest rates. For example, how high will interest rates need to go in order for investors to start thinking that they can achieve better returns than the stock market? That seems far-fetched because the stock market […]
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February 20, 2018 Several weeks ago, we spoke about the negative effects of economic growth. The two factors we cited were higher interest rates and higher oil prices. Now we are starting to see the markets react to this new reality. Many are blaming rising interest rates for causing what we can now call a […]
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January 30, 2018 As we have mentioned previously, it has already been a busy year with major storms, wildfires that turned into mudslides, a new tax plan and the in-fighting in Washington seemingly getting worse. And that is just the first month of the year. We end the first month and start the second month […]
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January 23, 2018 The stock market is setting records. We have a new tax plan which lowers taxes significantly for companies and moderately for individuals. We just had a decent retail holiday season with higher home sales closing out the year. In other words–everything is looking up for the economy. Most economists are cautiously optimistic […]
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