There’s a lot of bubble talk around US stocks. The market has been on fire in recent years. The S&P 500 Index has more than doubled in value since bottoming in March 2020 on Covid fears. It’s also up 14% a year since 2010, including dividends, nearly 5 percentage points a year better than its long-term annual return.
More than a few individuals were active in the markets in 1999-2000, but many participants today were not. I remember looking at charts and writing about the craziness in markets as the fears of “Y2K” and the boom of “internet” filled media headlines.
Just as humans and other species have evolved and adapted over time, investors need to do the same to meet the challenges and opportunities of an ever-changing financial world.
This week, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) significantly upgraded its profitability projections for airlines in 2024. The trade group now expects net profits to reach $30.5 billion, an increase from $27.4 billion in 2023.
The Northern Trust Economics team shares its outlook for U.S. growth, employment, interest rates and inflation.
The shift in consumer behavior toward buying more discretionary items is attributed to the deceleration of inflation, according to Costco management.
Here we are in June. Things are mostly continuing in a Newtonian fashion: “A stock at rest will remain at rest, and a stock in motion will remain in motion, seemingly at constant velocity and in a straight line, unless acted upon by a net force.” Or Elon swiping your Nvidia chips.
Good news on U.S. inflation in May did not sway the Federal Reserve to signal interest rate cuts could come sooner.
It’s certainly a challenging time to be an investor. It's probably why a call for caution and diversification seems to be getting louder.
Given its ascent to the $3 trillion market capitalization club, Nvidia (NVDA) is the stock that grabs the most AI headlines.
In the early innings of 2024, there was a flurry of consolidation in the biotech industry.
Despite prices heading lower, the start of summer could bring seasonal gold buying if history repeats itself.
Apple Inc. investors finally have a roadmap for how it will use artificial intelligence — and they’ve responded by pushing the stock toward its best week in more than two years.
The manufacturers of solar equipment, similarly, aren’t in the final analysis providing us with panels of silicon and glass, but machines that can harvest power from the sun. The activities of each group of companies provide a fresh flow of useful energy to the world every year. And by many measures, the solar companies have already overtaken Big Oil.
A potentially overlooked area of opportunity to harness the impact and increased adoption of AI lies within midstream.
India Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a third term last week. But his party didn’t sweep to the expected landslide.
The Federal Reserve’s move to signal fewer interest-rate cuts this year deepens its divergence from peers who have already begun to ease.
As expected, the Federal Reserve kept its policy rate unchanged at the June meeting, but left the door open to rate cuts later this year if inflation declines.
Artificial intelligence is sweeping across the economy. It’s showing up in the stock market with Nvidia’s meteoric rise, and the marketing blitz around AI is inescapable, whether from software providers peddling the promise of harnessed data to golf-club makers trumpeting an AI design. Narrow AI is now a real tool, and companies are figuring out how to deploy it.
Inflation is not fun. And—for the past 30 years—it has largely been a non-issue for consumers. That dynamic has changed. The relevant question is whether this is something persistent and meaningful or simply a fleeting feeling.
The utilities sector has outperformed most of the other sectors in 2024, and there are some very specific reasons why.
Today’s industrial business models offer surprising sources of consistent earnings growth.
Real estate investment trusts (REITs) and related ETFs are usually viewed as rate-sensitive instruments, and with good reason.
A historically strong start to the year for the US stock market should continue into the second half of 2024, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s asset management division.
Reflecting the ongoing strength of the U.S. economy, the investment grade and high yield corporate bond markets continue to demonstrate remarkable fundamental resilience. Join us to hear JoAnne Bianco, CFA® of BondBloxx discuss why now is the time for investors to increase their allocation to select segments of the U.S. corporate bond market.
Bond traders loaded back up on interest-rate-cut bets — and even the pushback coming out of the Federal Reserve did little to shake their conviction.
When the Hunt brothers cornered the silver market in 1980 by amassing a huge cache of the precious metal, jeweler Tiffany & Co. ran an advertisement in the New York Times denouncing the move: “We think it is unconscionable for anyone to hoard several billion, yes billion, dollars worth of silver and thus drive the price up.”
The last 15 years have been a magical time for the stock market — but don’t count on it lasting. While US stocks may indeed have the bright future markets currently predict, the cost of growth will be more volatility.
When Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and his top deputies this week unveiled a landmark arrangement with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone, iPad and Mac, they were mum on the financial terms.
The rapid expansion of AI has reopened the floodgates for renewables. But it's also propelled nuclear power into the spotlight.
VettaFi discusses spot ether ETFs, spot bitcoin ETFs, and the crypto ETF universe.
Certain segments of the economy and stock market have experienced much stronger recoveries this year, underscoring a severe bifurcation between the "haves" and "have nots."
India’s equity markets have experienced strong growth and momentum, with rising incomes and political stability contributing to the country’s potential for accelerated growth.
The investment landscape has proved remarkably resilient thus far in 2024 given several headwinds including inflation, interest rates, and the unsettled geopolitical situation. Fortunately, employment remains solid, and companies continue to deliver improved profit growth.
The derivative income space has grown tremendously over the last five years. Since the end of 2019 there has been a ten-fold increase in assets invested in derivative income ETFs and mutual funds, from $7bn to $73bn.
In today’s complex global economy, currency fluctuations play a crucial role in shaping investment outcomes. While we’ve previously emphasized the importance of currency hedging in a U.S. investor’s international portfolio, there’s a subtle aspect that often goes unnoticed: the positive impact of weak currencies for Japanese and European companies and U.S. tolerance of it as a check on Chinese exports.
Let's do some analysis of the Consumer Price Index, the best-known measure of inflation. What does inflation mean at the micro level — specifically to your household?
Cboe’s Rob Marrocco goes around the world of ETFs, discussing everything from the potential ETF share class structure to what comes next for the industry. VettaFi’s Lara Crigger highlights year-to-date ETF flows, provides an update on spot ether ETFs, and goes in-depth on the prospective Texas Stock Exchange.
I work on facilitation and teambuilding quite a bit with teams of all sizes, so I am always either coming up with my own new ideas for engaging options or scouring the market to learn what others are doing.
A planner using a fee-offset model sets an annual fixed fee for their services. Then any commissions earned from the sale of products, usually insurance products, are credited back to the client, offsetting and reducing the annual fee by the amount of the commission.
Here’s why giving up the pleasure of talking will lead to more conversions.
It is always interesting when commodity prices rise. The market produces various narratives to suggest why prices will keep growing indefinitely. Such applies to all commodities, from oil to orange juice or cocoa beans. For example, Michael Hartnett of BofA recently noted.
A key measure of underlying US inflation stepped down for a second month in May, a pleasant surprise for Federal Reserve officials looking for signs that they can start to lower interest rates.
Oracle Corp. reported better-than-expected bookings and announced partnership deals with tech rivals, giving a boost to Chairman Larry Ellison’s effort to redefine the software maker as a major competitor in the business of cloud computing.
If there’s one corner of the equity market that’s trying investors’ patience, it’s small-caps.
When JPMorgan Chase & Co. arranged a series of trades to shift the risk of losses from $20 billion of its loans, some of those dangers wound up at a familiar place: rival banks.
JOLTS (job opening data) had a massive surprise, three standard deviations below consensus estimates, the driving job openings to unemployed workers ratio back to pre-pandemic levels.
We have gained a number of new investors and get regular vetting interest from investors who need to understand the roots of our stock-picking discipline.
The needs of retirement plan sponsors and savers are changing, and advisors may want to consider a value proposition for the “next normal” in the shifting retirement landscape, according to Mike Dullaghan, Retirement Strategist at Franklin Templeton.
The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is one of the world’s most important security portfolios. Yet, its ongoing importance for markets and financial conditions is often underappreciated.
