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Investment Strategy Video, Our Investment Views, To Coin a Phrase
Emilie Ma
Investment Strategy Video: Inflation's Flame ...

George Hosfield, CFA, discusses Ferguson Wellman's quarterly strategy titled, "Inflation's Flame Flickers," which addresses the narrow market leadership, the impact of higher interest rates on inflation and how assets are priced at this stage of the economic cycle.

Investment Strategy Video: Inflation's Flame Flickers
Investment Strategy Video, Our Investment Views, To Coin a Phrase
Liz Swagerty Olsen
Investment Strategy Video: Stalemate

George Hosfield, CFA, discusses the firm's quarterly strategy titled "Stalemate," which highlights the Fed's ongoing battle to tame inflation along with our views on the health of the banking industry and capital market expectations for the balance of the year.

Investment Strategy Video: Stalemate
Our Investment Views
Liz Swagerty Olsen
Third Quarter 2022 Investment Strategy Video: ...

Director and Chief Investment Officer George Hosfield, CFA, discusses the Fed raising interest rates, peaking inflation and our view on equities and volatility across all asset classes in our Investment Strategy titled, “Balancing Act.”

Third Quarter 2022 Investment Strategy Video: Balancing Act
Annual Report
Mary Faulkner
2021 Annual Report

2021 Annual Report

2021 Annual Report
Wealth Management
Liz Swagerty Olsen
First Quarter 2022 Wealth Management Insights ...

Mary Lago, CFP®, CTFA, discusses the theme for the first quarter of 2022, “Valuing the Resources of Time and Money.”

First Quarter 2022 Wealth Management Insights Video: Valuing the Resources of Time and Money

Weekly Market Makers

The Long Run

The Long Run

Earlier this week, The Eagles’ Greatest Hits surpassed Michael Jackson’s Thriller as the best-selling album of all time. I would argue that “greatest hits” albums should be excluded, but that’s neither here nor there. Also, this month, the S&P 500 set the record for the longest streak without a 20 percent decline, or bull market. This trend started in March of 2009 and has lasted over 3500 days. The previous feat was the 1990s bull market which finally ended with the burst of the Internet Bubble in 2001.

Tariff and Turkey Talk

Tariff and Turkey Talk

A currency crisis in Turkey and continued trade uncertainty resulted in a volatile week for equities. International stocks, specifically emerging markets, started selling off. U.S. commodities were also weak. This was offset by positive news on the China trade front.

Main Street Over Wall Street?

Main Street Over Wall Street?

The current economic expansion has been punctuated by record profits for large corporations, and slow job and wage growth for U.S. consumers.

Shake-Ups

Shake-Ups

News broke this week that the Trump administration would consider bypassing congressional legislation to change the capital gains taxes rules to index for inflation. The current strategy that is being floated is to use the Treasury department and IRS rather than traditional legislation to redefine capital gains to include only returns in excess of inflation.

What Matters for Stocks

What Matters for Stocks

If you break the stock market down into its most basic elements only two things matter: earnings of companies and what investors are willing to pay for a dollar of earnings. This week, earnings season for the second quarter of 2018 was in full swing and investors are digesting the news.

Shifting into Gear

Shifting into Gear

Markets were inundated with a barrage of political, economic and stock-specific news this week, challenging investors to stay on top of it all.

Path to Productivity

Path to Productivity

Since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law on December 22, 2017, pundits and economists have continued to debate if companies would increase their capital expenditures due to the 100-percent-expensing provision in the new tax code.

Good News on the Jobs Front

Good News on the Jobs Front

Expectations and events often explain market movement. With earnings season underway next week, every earnings report will be judged on whether those expectations were exceeded, met or missed. Perhaps the most important aspect is if future growth outlook meets expectations.

Stressed Out

Stressed Out

Over the last month, financials and industrials have been the two worst performing sectors in the S&P 500. While the industrials sector can be explained due to the strengthening U.S. dollar and trade rhetoric, financials have been more perplexing.

Short Stories

Short Stories

Trade concerns weighed on stocks this week resulting in a 1 percent decline for the S&P 500, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling close to 2 percent. Large-cap industrial stocks have taken the brunt of the pain due to their exposure to export markets, as well as increasing steel and aluminum costs due to recent tariffs.

Action and Reaction

Action and Reaction

With just a couple of weeks left to go in the second quarter, investors wanting for a lack of earnings news found plenty of economic reports and central bank meetings to freshen up their views of the macroeconomy.

Winning in Later Innings

Winning in Later Innings

In recent weeks, investors and economists alike have been questioning the sustainability of the current backdrop of strong global growth and are considering the longevity of the current expansion. No doubt, economic data out of Europe has been weak and some U.S. data has moderated from very strong levels.

Quitaly

Quitaly

News of political uncertainty in Italy, trade disputes and a strong employment number for May injected volatility into the U.S. stock market, with the S&P 500 ending up .43 percent for the week and U.S. Treasury bond prices moving higher, with the yield on the 10-year bond ending the week at 2.89 percent.

A New Face

A New Face

The markets had to digest weighty geopolitical headlines this week with tariffs, North Korea and a messy political landscape in the European Union dominating the news cycle.

More Bang for Your Buck

More Bang for Your Buck

In our annual economic Investment Outlook, we predicted that interest rates would rise but not enough to derail the expansion. At the same time, we anticipated that the conflicting signals of robust earnings growth and above-average valuation would settle somewhere in the middle.

Texas Tea

Texas Tea

One of the four takeaways in our 2018 Outlook was, “It’s the Economy,” meaning that over the long term, financial markets tend to do a good job shrugging off headline risk and political drama. Instead, markets focus on the health of the economy. This attribute was once again demonstrated this week with equity markets gaining more than 2 percent despite heightened geopolitical tension as the U.S. formally exited the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. 

A Tale of Two Headlines

A Tale of Two Headlines

Charles Dicken’s iconic tome illustrates aptly the interplay between earnings news and economic news of late. Every day it seems good earning news is complemented with slowing economic news and vice versa. Recent market volatility has pushed cautious investors to the sidelines and those that remain are riding the markets up and down with every recent news release.  

Choose Your Own Adventure

Choose Your Own Adventure

Stock markets were essentially flat for the week, but individual stocks gyrated with earnings announcements. Economic data continues to be solid, but not spectacular. First quarter U.S. GDP came in at 2.3 percent, marking the fastest first quarter growth since 2015. Interest rates were essentially unchanged for the week as well.

iCan't Afford This

iCan't Afford This

Stocks and bonds moved in opposite directions as the S&P 500 finished positive on the week despite falling nearly 2 percent between Thursday and Friday. Bonds, on the other hand, declined due to higher interest rates.

Back to Basics

Back to Basics

With this week’s latest rebound, the S&P 500 has now closed up or down more than 1 percent 27 times year-to-date ‒ this is more than three times the daily volatility that investors experienced in 2017. Accompanying higher stock prices, safe-haven bonds retreated modestly.