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.”
On October 29, 2018, Indonesia’s Lion Air Flight 610 crashed 13 minutes after takeoff. Months later in March of this year, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 suffered a similar fate. Both flights were flown using Boeing’s much heralded new airplane, the 737-MAX or “MAX.”
Earlier this month, the U.S. Labor Department released its monthly jobs report, which continued to show the strength in the U.S. workforce.
Negative interest rates have been in the news this year and have been the source of questions from clients. Negative Interest rates are an extraordinarily unusual phenomenon where an investor pays for the “privilege” of loaning a country money.
As we close out another Thanksgiving week, investors have a lot to be thankful for this year. At this time last year, the Fed was still raising interest rates, global economies were slowing and the S&P 500 was on its way to a negative 13.5 percent return for the fourth quarter.
In April, Disney held an investor event outlining the strategy for their direct-to-consumer streaming service, Disney+. The service not only includes classic Disney films, but also the full library of Star Wars, Marvel and National Geographic. Disney indicated that the service would be priced at $6.99 per month, and projected global subscribers in a range of 60-to-90 million by 2024.
While many eyes were on the impeachment proceedings this past week, we saw encouraging retail sales data and the prospect of a completed trade deal with China push equity markets to another all-time high this week. Even as these new highs are met, many investors have a bad feeling about the market.
With some 90 percent of the S&P 500 having now reported third quarter earnings, investors have responded favorably to a plurality of companies delivering better than expected numbers.
Equities continued to rise steadily for the fourth consecutive week, reaching fresh all-time highs, as market participants digested several meaningful economic and policy data points.
While the U.S. consumer remains resilient, CEO confidence has been deteriorating as economic uncertainty has been increasing.
The books are now closed on the 2019 fiscal year for the Ivy League endowments and for the fifth time in the last 16 years, the missed the mark.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced this week that the central bank will once again be purchasing U.S. Treasury securities, reversing the recent trend of allowing its balance sheet to shrink. Immediately, many market participants experienced déjà vu, recalling the first time this monetary policy tool was implemented in 2008.
The U.S. economy has been expanding for over 10 years, the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. When looking back, the bull run in stocks and the economic expansion may seem “easy” but there have been multiple periods of angst as we flirted with slow growth.
With the impeachment inquiry being announced this week, clients have been asking, “What does this mean for my investments?” The short answer: markets trade on economic fundamentals, not political headlines.
This week, the Federal Reserve made big news when it reduced the federal funds rate by 0.25 percent, its second cut this year. While any Fed action always dominates the headlines, the interest rate reduction was expected and fully priced into the market. Having raised federal funds a quarter point just last December, it has been a rather dramatic change of monetary policy in which the Fed has now cut rates twice this year.
The global search for yield has driven tremendous fund flows into all corners of the fixed income market. While our primary focus is on investment grade bonds, this trend has also driven yields lower on non-investment grade bonds which are sometimes referred to as “high-yield” or “junk” bonds.
Earlier in this expansion it was all about jobs. Each month, we would wring our collective hands over how many jobs were created, what kind of jobs were created and whether they were even good jobs. Today, while it is still a market moving number, the monthly payroll report doesn’t seem to carry as much mindshare with Wall Street.
There were a number of moving pictures this past week that we could cover. One topic that we have not covered in our communication that caught our attention this week is … opioids.
For the week, the S&P 500 returned -1.41 percent and the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield declined to 1.51 percent. On Friday, the S&P 500 declined by more than 2.5 percent on news that China had escalated the trade war which was coupled with a similar response from the White House.
On Wednesday at midday, the global financial media held their collective breath as the benchmark U.S. Treasury Yield Spread (2-year/10-year yield) inverted. Then, as they exhaled, minor hysteria ensued.
We were in consensus regarding our 2019 Investment Outlook theme, “The Fasten Seatbelt Sign Is On,” and this week’s market volatility reinforced that we landed on the right message. The Dow was down by 600 on Tuesday and then rallied by nearly 1,000 points within 24 hours.
