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.
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.
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.”
It was another solid week in the markets. The S&P 500 was up almost 1 percent to record highs. Interest rates were relatively quiet with the 10-year Treasury finishing the week yielding 2.40 percent. Oil rallied modestly and is now up to $54.00 per barrel.
Friday’s jobs numbers propelled stocks to roughly break even on the week. While the gain of 227,000 jobs in January was meaningfully above the estimate of 175,000, the unemployment rate ticked up and wage growth ticked down. The increase from 4.7 percent to 4.8 percent in the unemployment rate was due to more people entering the labor force, thus not much of a negative.
The equity markets were higher by about 1.3 percent compared to last week as investors absorbed fourth quarter earnings and reacted to the changes in Washington. Interest rates were higher, with the 10-year Treasury climbing in yield from 2.39 percent to 2.49 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 20,000 this week but the real story is how long it took to get here.
What has become known as the Trump Trade has delivered strong equity returns since election day last fall, with the benchmark S&P 500 rising by 6.5 percent over this period. More remarkable is the fact that the blue chip index hasn’t experienced a 1 percent or greater loss since October 11, 2016.
After rallying into the end of the year, both interest rates and the market took a little breather this week. The S&P 500 finished the week basically flat, while the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury finished at 2.40 percent. A quiet week as we head into earnings season.
The Friday job report was slightly on the light side with December payrolls coming in at 156,000, 19,000 below economist’s estimates. Positively, the previous two months showed 19,000 in upward revisions. However, wages grew at their highest rate since June 2009, coming in at 2.9 percent year-over-year growth.
It was a relatively quiet week in capital markets. Trading volume was very low, and the S&P 500 was down 1 percent. Interest rates were also down for the week with the 10-year U.S. Treasury finishing the week at 2.44 percent.
Treasuries are wrapping up with their first weekly gain since the U.S. election and stocks are mixed in pre-holiday trading. Yields on the 10-Year Treasury benchmark closed at 2.54 percent, down from last week’s close of 2.59 percent. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Index are trading at slightly higher levels than where they started on Monday.
The stock market was slightly positive on the week up around .20 percent taking a break from the strong move upwards following the election in November. Both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average are within striking distance of all-time highs. The 10-year Treasury bond sold-off this week with the yield rising from 2.47 percent to 2.55 percent as treasury prices and yields move inversely to each other.
In a relatively quiet week on the company news front, investors welcomed a series of new highs on the S&P 500 that have pushed the benchmark index to price gains now exceeding 10 percent on the year.
Ferguson Wellman has viewed the energy sector favorably for close to two years. While 2015 was a difficult year in that regard, we started seeing improvements in 2016. Finally, OPEC delivered a nice gift earlier this week which will continue to benefit our stance.
The election is over and the capital markets have had a few weeks to digest the results. In this holiday-shortened week the equity markets coasted to new record highs on light volumes with the Dow Jones Industrial Average surpassing 19,000 and the S&P 500 eclipsing 2,200. Small Cap stocks continued their post-election rally, up nearly 13 percent since the election.
This week the markets continued to digest the election news in an attempt to understand how the changes in government will impact the economy and markets. Stocks were up a bit less than one percent this week and bond yields continued to
As the week draws to a close, we wanted to share some perspective on what was a surprising week for our political system. Against this backdrop, the capital markets once again demonstrated they do not like surprises or uncertainty. Following the announcement that Donald Trump had secured the necessary 270 electoral delegates, equity markets sold off
Equity markets fell a little more than 1 percent on the week as the presidential race grew closer with the news of renewed investigations into Hillary Clinton’s use of personal emails during her time as Secretary of State. Additionally, the Fed chose not to raise interest rates when they met on Wednesday, but signaled pretty clearly that they would be tightening in December.
Relatively modest losses in the S&P 500 this week masked enormous volatility in the pricing of underlying companies, thanks to a deluge of third quarter earnings reports that resulted in what felt like a feast or famine result for individual stocks. This last full week of October
Disappointing corporate earnings forecasts outweighed a Microsoft surge and increased deal activity to end the week basically flat for the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and NASDAQ. Worldwide stock markets also turned in lackluster performances for the week. The U.S. dollar climbed to a
A Nobel Prize for Bob Dylan couldn’t buoy the markets this week. Uncertainty in China and a rocky start to earnings season resulted in a down week for stocks. While equities rallied on Friday, the S&P 500 ended the week down close to 1 percent. Pre-announcements from Honeywell, Dover and Fastenal weren’t a positive way to start the week; however, [...]
Mixed economic data led to weaker stock markets around the world this week. U.S. equities were down around less than 1 percent, while international benchmarks were modestly negative as well. One would expect with negative equity markets that interest rates would have dropped as well, but
After another positive week, the S&P 500 finished the quarter up almost 4 percent and is up 8 percent for the year. The 10-year Treasury finished the week in the middle of its recent trading range at 1.59 percent. Mixed economic data kept the Fed on hold for another quarter and put a bid into equities.
