Newsletter for November 27, 2017
Weekly Report November 27, 2017 The Markets There was a lot to be thankful for last week. Stock markets around the world may have ripened to full-slip sweetness this year. Emerging markets have delivered the most attractive returns year-to-date. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index was up 34 percent year-to-date, last week. The United States and […]
Newsletter for November 20, 2017
Weekly Report November 20, 2017 The Markets Are investors more like tigers or African wild dogs? It appears investors – retail and institutional – have become rather like predators. They patiently stalk shares, waiting for a dip, and then they strike – buying stocks when prices fall. Consider last week. Barron’s described it like this: […]
Newsletter for November 13, 2017
Weekly Report November 13, 2017 The Markets Selling it overseas. Most of the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) Index have reported third quarter earnings per share (EPS), which is the profit earned per share of stock outstanding during the period. Many have done quite well. With more than 90 percent of […]
Newsletter for November 6, 2016
Weekly Report November 6, 2017 The Markets “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s statement is engraved on the front of the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington, D.C. Some people agree with the sentiment. Others believe it to be a logical fallacy. It’s likely the […]
Newsletter for October 30, 2017
Weekly Report October 30, 2017 The Markets The last full week of October was a box full of surprises. First, U.S. economic growth exceeded expectations. The devastation wrought by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria was widely expected to stifle U.S. quarterly growth, according to NPR. The Atlanta Federal Reserve predicted 2.5 percent gross domestic product […]
Newsletter for October 23, 2017
Weekly Report October 23, 2017 The Markets And the hits just keep on coming. Last week was the anniversary of Black Monday. On October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow) lost 508 points, or more than 20 percent of its value, as it fell from the previous trading day’s closing value of 2,247 […]
Newsletter for October 17, 2017
Weekly Report October 16, 2017 The Markets There’s a new kid in town: narrative economics. Last week, Richard Thaler was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. His work in behavioral economics and finance recognizes not all economic and financial decisions are made after rational reflection. In Nudge, he wrote: “The workings of the human brain […]
Newsletter for October 9, 2017
Weekly Report October 9, 2017 The Markets Slow and steady… It has been 332 days since the Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) Index experienced a 5 percent drop, reported Barron’s. If there isn’t a selloff on Monday or Tuesday, this will become the longest rally without such a drop. During this period, the Index […]
Newsletter for October 3, 2017
Weekly Report October 2, 2017 The Markets A lot happened during the third quarter of 2017, but not much changed. The bull market in U.S. stocks continued to charge ahead. Traditional measures of valuation continued to suggest the market is overvalued, but some analysts argued it’s different this time. The Economist explained: “The current [cyclically-adjusted […]
Newsletter for September 25, 2017
Weekly Report September 25, 2017 The Markets Geopolitics, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin’! In January, Robert Kahn of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in Global Economics Monthly: “Markets showed impressive resilience in the face of a range of geopolitical shocks in 2016, but recent market moves suggest this year could be different…It […]