The S&P 500 Total Return Index is currently down roughly 12% for the year, well above its low of down 23% on June 16, but still a long ways from a full recovery. For bonds, the U.S. 10-Year Treasury Yield remains volatile, swinging between 2.5%-3.5% since early April. Its current 3.1% level is roughly double the 1.5% from December 31, 2021. Will stocks and bonds go on to set new lows or record highs before year-end? While neither we at…
The S&P 500 Total Return Index is now down roughly 15% year-to-date, with the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index not far behind, down roughly 10%. The main causes of the dual equity and bond downturns have been the same all year: Inflation: The March Consumer Price Index (CPI) of +8.5% was the highest since 1981.1 Monetary policy tightening: The Federal Reserve is expected to raise the Fed Funds Rate from its current 0.8% to over 3.0% by March 2023.2…
Today’s topic is on fixed income, the causes of the large drop in bond prices in Q1 2022 and what this means going forward. The presentation is just under nine minutes long and we hope you can take the time to watch. Remember that you can pause or rewind if you need to as we cover a lot of information in a short period of time. If you would like further information on any of the topics discussed, please contact…
Shortly after we sent out our market update yesterday, Russia invaded Ukraine with military strikes throughout the nation, clearly going well beyond the disputed Donbas region. While not yet a worst-case scenario as civilians/major cities do not appear to have been targeted, these events represent a dramatic escalation and go far beyond the fighting that occurred in Ukraine in 2014. Russia’s end goal remains unclear. At the very least, they appear to be looking to expand and strengthen control of…
Following our market update on January 24, the market rallied for a few weeks but has since come right back down to where we started, with the S&P 500 closing today at $4,226 (the low on 1/24/22 was $4,223). Recent headlines have been dominated by the Russia/Ukraine saga, and this is playing into investors biggest fear at the moment: that high inflation forces the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy faster than the economy can handle, causing a recession. This…
The S&P 500 is now down over 10% year-to-date, with the NASDAQ and Russell 1000 Growth down over 15%. We wanted to update you on what we believe to be the primary drivers of the downturn and our thoughts, as the majority of the decline has come since our last communication on January 14. What has changed since January 14? The main update has been corporate earnings, with more large firms echoing JPMorgan (who reported January 14) and citing rising expenses due…
The global economy has bounced back from the pandemic faster and more robust than almost anyone expected, thanks in large part to tremendous fiscal and monetary stimulus from governments around the world. This year will test how economies can endure that assistance being dialed down or removed altogether, though plans vary dramatically for different countries around the world. As we look into 2022, these are a few key topics and events that are top of mind: Inflation continues to be a…
Does requiring Di-vers-ification lead to Di-worse-ification? Diversification Versus Concentration Presentation
Inflation is the word of the year so far in financial markets. There seems to be a major news item daily on the subject, including this morning’s data showing the highest yearly consumer prices increase since 2008. While it is still unclear if inflation will be higher than current market expectations over the coming years, today we want to cover how we at GGS are thinking about inflation and positioning client portfolios for this possibility. First, let’s look at current…
We want to cover two things in this writing based on client questions we have been receiving: (1) Recent news flow related to short-term traders; (2) Our current market outlook. There have been nonstop headlines the past few weeks regarding the battle between the Reddit/Robinhood/millennial/day-traders vs. the short-sellers/hedge funds/Wall Streeters. What are our thoughts on this? This has not yet affected any company that GGS owns in the vast majority of client accounts. This is primarily happening in smaller companies…
