By: Matt Garrott The S&P 500 got off to a hot start this year, up over 10% in the first quarter, but it may make sense to focus on what hasn’t happened this year rather than what has happened. Coming into 2024, forecasters expected 6 or 7 rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. [...]
By: Matt Garrott February may be the shortest month of the year, but that doesn’t mean it was boring. The S&P 500 was up 5.3%, breaking through the 5,000 mark and new all-time highs. As you can see below, it took the S&P 500 nearly 50 years to make its first 1,000 points, [...]
By: Matt Garrott The S&P 500 broke through to new all-time highs for the first time in 512 trading days (over two years). As mentioned in our year-end commentary, all-time highs are not ceilings. Research from Goldman Sachs shows that this is only the seventh time the index has taken over two years [...]
By: Matt Garrott What Happened in 2023 2023 was a surprise to the upside. Inflation dropped, a much-anticipated recession never arrived, and the S&P gained 26.3%. Famed investor Peter Lynch said, “Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections [...]
By: Matt Garrott The story of the S&P 500 this year is the Magnificent 7. That is, the seven largest companies in the index by market cap (it’s 8 tickers because Google has two share classes). The S&P is up over 20% year-to-date, mainly because of these giants: All investment pros had [...]
By: Matt Garrott Investors have had to deal with the drumbeat of an increasingly negative media for years. Most of this should be filtered out as noise, but the recent attack on Israel was impossible to ignore. Words feel small, but our hearts go out to those dealing with fear, anger, and loss [...]
By: Matt Garrott Cash and commodities were the only places to hide in the third quarter as stocks and bonds both posted negative returns. The yield curve remains inverted. A government shutdown has been delayed, but looms behind daily headlines of legislative dysfunction. Strikes are hitting not only Hollywood and Las Vegas, but [...]
By: Matt Garrott The S&P 500 gained 3.2% last month. Unlike the first half of the year, returns were spread across the index rather than concentrated in a handful of names as the S&P 500 Equal-Weight Index gained 3.4%. JPMorgan’s Dr. David Kelly says the Federal Reserve is fighting a battle it has [...]
By: Matt Garrott It’s been 15 months since the Federal Reserve started to raise interest rates. A streak of 10 hikes in a row came to an end at the recent June meeting. The market expects this to be a skip, not a stop or pause as the Fed expects another two hikes [...]
By: Matt Garrott The stock market in 2023 has been dominated by the 4 Comma Club, the Trillionaires* – Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia. Nvidia’s position in this elite group is not cemented in place as it has recently fallen back down to a mere $925 billion market cap. Schwab’s Liz Ann [...]
