By: Matt Garrott Halfway through the year, the S&P 500 is up 15.25%, including dividends. Yet at times, headlines read as if the market is down 15%. Two weeks ago, the big story was how June 18th ended the worst week for the S&P 500 since February. One week later, the S&P set [...]
By: Matt Garrott The S&P 500 continued its bull run, returning 5.3% during the month of April. You wouldn’t know it from the headlines, though. Instead of cheering increased vaccination numbers, inflation worries dominate the news. Inflation has picked up by 2.6%, but it is not present across the entire economy. Home prices [...]
By: Matt Garrott The S&P 500 dropped 9.5% on March 12th, 2020. It fell 12% on March 16th, 2020. It didn’t hit bottom for another week. Today, the market is hitting all-time highs. Even if you had the exact worst timing and invested in the S&P 500 at the pre-pandemic peak last February, [...]
By: Matt Garrott The airwaves are abuzz with talk about the impending stimulus package. The consensus view is that it’s not a matter of if we’ll get another round of stimulus, but when and how much. However, the longer the stimulus is delayed, the less necessary $1.9 trillion seems to be. This is [...]
By: Matt Garrott “A good decision is based on knowledge, not numbers.” – Plato By now you have heard of the latest short squeeze. GameStop, a brick-and-mortar retail chain that sells video games and related items has found its way into national headlines. The company’s financials were so poor and its prospects so [...]
By: Matt Garrott What Happened in 2020 What could grab headlines away from the killing of a top Iranian general, a very public oil production dispute between OPEC and Russia, and even the Presidential election? The global pandemic was the top story of 2020 and continues into 2021. After taking hold in the [...]
US large cap equity markets hit all-time highs in November as the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 30,000 for the first time. These round numbers get easier to hit as the index values increase. The Dow’s increase from 10,000 in March 1999 to 11,000 in May 1999 was a 10% move. The increase from 29,000 [...]
By: Matt Garrott The S&P 500 gained 8.9% during the third quarter, putting its year-to-date return at 5.1%, while other broad stock indices gained between 4% and 9% for the quarter but remain in negative territory through the first nine months of 2020. A moderate asset allocation is likely up between 2 and [...]
By: Matt Garrott The current bull market is already four times as long as the last bear market. The last bear was merely a month old when it expired. The current bull market is 4 months old. Is this the real deal? Pre-pandemic, there was worry that the market was too expensive or [...]
By: Matt Garrott Not including dividends, the S&P 500 was down exactly 20% in the first quarter. It was up 19.95% in the second quarter. Down 20%, up 20%. If you think 2020 has been a joke of a year so far, it seems the stock market is in on it. This is [...]
