March 2022 PDS Market Commentary With Russia’s invasion, the world is clearly in a different position than it was at year-end. Markets were already struggling in 2022 as investors grappled with record inflation and the Federal Reserve’s plan to consistently raise interest rates, but Russia’s invasion sent shockwaves throughout markets. As of today, oil has…
December 2021 Financial Markets Commentary “With less than a month left in what has been an extraordinary (and mystifying) year on multiple fronts, stocks have maintained a largely uninterrupted trek higher (at the index level) in the face of myriad headwinds—not least being the mid-year surge in the delta variant, supply chain disruptions on a…
Beyond Your Finances, Market Commentary
Power of the Retail Investor In recent weeks, and more notably recent days, shares of GameStop [GME] and AMC Entertainment Holdings [AMC] have been gobbled up hordes of retail investors. So much so that prices have gone up 320%, and 161% just since Monday, respectively. In “GameStop Mania Reveals Power Shift on Wall Street—and the…
What is “The Market”? Volatility has played a big part of 2020 and there’s no sense it will stop anytime soon. More people are paying attention to the ebbs and flows of the stock market – whether they want to or not – thanks in large part to the news cycle. “Dow Soars 800 points…”,…
August 2020 Financial Markets Summary 2020 has been a year for the record books… and it’s only August! The markets have experienced an unprecedented amount of volatility with the fastest 30% or more domestic stock market decline in history, the biggest quarterly decline in GDP since 1947 and many well-known company bankruptcies such as Hertz,…
Volatility The Random Walk Theory suggests that stock prices take a random and unpredictable path, therefore past trends are irrelevant to future stock price movements. We should consider renaming it the Random Sprint Theory after the volatility we’ve seen in 2020 thus far. Recent Heightened Volatility Financial markets have been moving at breakneck speeds, both…
May 2020 Financial Markets Summary April was a strong month for markets (in fact, the best month since January 1987) as the number of new COVID-19 cases started to plateau, prospects of a potential vaccine improved and plans to reopen economies were laid out. However, we wanted to look at this through a longer-term perspective. …
Diversification: Stocks & Bonds In the midst of the current market turbulence, many of our clients are paying more attention to financial markets and their investment portfolios than they otherwise typically might. Rather than allowing headlines to influence our emotions, at PDS Planning we rely upon longer-term data and historical context to put the current…
April 2020 Financial Markets Summary The first quarter was a tale of two halves for both the markets and our daily lives. In the markets, the first month and a half started well with 2-5% gains across most asset classes. Investors’ biggest concerns seemed to be the trade tensions with China, slowing global growth,…
Market March Madness This is typically one of my favorite times of the year as we see the start of spring, the Masters and the famed NCAA March Madness. I’m glad to see the trees budding and the grass greening, but the sporting events have been replaced by the coronavirus and Market Madness. Volatility…
Beyond Your Finances, Market Commentary
Good News, New Opportunities and Things We Can Control It is completely understandable to fear uncertainty. Like most crises (9/11, housing recession, etc.) this coronavirus crisis comes with a lot of uncertainty causing us to feel anxious, overwhelmed, and confused about how to handle our money. The COVID-19 pandemic adds the additional unusual aspect of…
As I get used to the new (temporary) normal, working from home each day, I’ve had the morning news shows running in the background and find myself each day stopping my work during the segment where they have a doctor on who is answering write-in questions from viewers. I’m paying attention because in many…
March 2020 Financial Markets Summary Stock markets around the world were rocked during the last week of February. Prior to this past week, markets had been fairly resilient to the coronavirus concerns with the S&P 500 breaking its all-time high on February 17th. However, everything changed when a rising number of infections in Europe caused…
February 2020 Financial Markets Summary The month of January ended on a sour note with the global stock markets pulling back from their highs by 3%-4% within the last week. Much of this was due to growing concerns around the rapidly spreading coronavirus and its potential global economic impact. Vanguard suggests that China’s prompt…
Here is the link to our 4th Quarter Investment Webcast! The 4th quarter was especially difficult for markets, but we focused the brief discussion on the rationale behind the recent volatility and our outlook for 2019. Please click the link below for our thoughts on these timely topics. Please note, the opening screen shows “There…
