October 2015 Financial Markets Summary Stock markets rose yesterday, September 30, with the S&P 500 adding 1.5%. The gains ended a quarter that had the first real correction since 2011. At one point the index was down 12% from the 2015 peak, but ended the quarter down 7%. Most economists and money managers believe stocks…
Economic and Investment News Bits In last month’s Viewpoints, we suggested that “the current market weakness” might portend a correction. It seems we may have been onto something, since the S&P 500 Index was down more than 12% from its high on August 24 (currently it is down 8%). A true correction would drop the…
September 2015 Financial Markets Summary It has been an eventful couple of weeks for global markets, and the wild ride may not be over. The question is whether this represents a correction or the start of a bear market. The Fed has not even begun tightening yet, and typically a bear market occurs after there…
Economic and Investment News Bits “Markets historically price in rising rates ahead of the first Fed rate hike. Yellen has said she will go slowly. I believe it will be ‘One and Done’, as in the target rate will reach 1%, then the Fed will stop to assess,” (Source: Steven Auth, Federated Investors). 76 million…
August 2015 Financial Markets Summary Our clients intuitively understand that they should broadly diversify their investments. Economist Jason Hsu notes “Diversification is the strategy of maximum regret because some part of the investor’s portfolio is always underperforming!” Research Associates says that staying diversified is like trying to get a five year-old to eat broccoli –…
This quarterly call provided an update on asset class returns so far for the year and the past few years. Very timely topics included what higher interest rates really mean to us, the real story on Greece and their ongoing financial crisis. We also looked at the resurgence of international markets and the major changes taking place…
Economic and Investment News Bits “I am wary about advising people to pull out of this [stock] market, even though I believe valuations are at extreme levels”, (Source: Robert Schiller, creator of Schiller CAPE ratio). Comparing fracking wells in the U.S. Great Plains with Saudi Arabia’s conventional oil wells, Bloomberg notes “New wells in the…
Economic and Investment News Bits According to the National Association of Realtors, the average sales price of existing homes sold in the U.S. during May was $228,700, just 1% less than the all-time record high set in July 2006. Online real estate source Zillow tells us that the median home value in California is $415,000,…
July 2015 Financial Markets Summary This month, we highlight three topics that are getting a lot of attention in the media: Greece, interest rates, and the dollar. Greece Greece continues to make headlines as it tries, once again, to find a way to emerge from a morass of debt. Is Greece important? The economy of…
Economic and Investment News Bits A recent study by Goldman Sachs suggests that millenials (the generation born between 1980 and 2000) are different from boomers in four ways. First, they tend to be renters, not buyers. This is true for homes, cars, vacation homes, and music listening. Second, they have a different definition of health,…
Economic and Investment News Bits Economist John Mauldin writes about the potential disaster with public pensions, “It’s not as if no one saw the problem coming. Experts have been harping on it for decades. Politicians at all levels of government knew very well that a train wreck was inevitable and still did nothing. In some…
Economic and Investment News Bits Forward Thinking Agriculture, based in Barcelona, Spain, is developing floating farms, which would be used for fishing and growing crops. These are built over water and have multiple levels of production. The floating farm will be enclosed and use solar power for electricity. The company believes one floating farm can…
Economic and Investment News Bits Strong U.S. jobs growth in May sent markets scurrying to calculate the odds that the Fed will boost short-term interest rates this year. The result was a sharp jump in the value of the dollar and higher Treasury bond yields. On the downside, utility stocks and other high-dividend stocks saw…
Economic and Investment News Bits An average of nearly 60,000 high-skilled agriculture and related job openings are expected annually in the U.S. over the next five years, with only about 35,000 graduates in food, agriculture, renewable resources, or environment available to fill them, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Purdue University.…
June 2015 Financial Markets Summary The most recent AAII Investor Sentiment Poll says only 27% of investors have a positive outlook for the stock market over the next six months. Just recently as February, that number was 47%. Sentiment is fickle, depending on what people hear and read from the media, and what may have…
