Soft Landing or Recession? “Gettin Macro wit It!”
A soft landing now seems to be the prevailing wisdom both on Wall Street and Main Street. To ascertain the collective opinion or “wisdom of the crowd,” there is a wonderful tool available online called “polymarket.” Polymarket is a so-called prediction market in which people can wager real money on a vast array of potential…
The difference between up and down markets: A Razor’s Edge
On these pages, we’ve often used the phrase “a random walk around an upward drift” to describe stock market behavior. This was not original on our part. The stock market was first characterized as a random walk in 1903 and several academic papers have been published over many decades on the random walk nature of…
Market Pause with Fed Meeting Next Week
The Federal Reserve Board meets next week to determine its next policy move. Consequently, all eyes are on the Fed and it seems safe to say that stock market participants are fixated on the next Fed move. Presently, according to data provided by the CME Group, the bond market is pricing a 73% chance of…
The Waiting Game
Jerome Powell’s remarks at the Jackson Hole meetings last week seemingly foreshadow a coming change to Fed Policy. He said: “My confidence has grown that inflation is on a sustainable path back to 2%.” The market is now pricing a 70% probability of a 25-basis point rate cut and a 30% probability of 50 basis…
Long Term US Equity Returns: Why Active Management is Difficult (Part Three)
In the previous two installments of this series on active management, we’ve covered a fair amount of ground. As such, a short recap is in order. We’ve established: 1) The stock market provides a positive return over long-term periods following a random walk around an upward drift. We showed this using the Russell 3000 index…
Long Term US Equity Returns: Why Active Management is Difficult (Part Two)
Below is a long-term return chart for the Russell 3000 Index. As discussed last week this represents the largest 3000 companies in the US stock market. Some of these stocks are large capitalization companies and some are medium and small capitalization companies. It is a good representation of the US stock market. Here is the…
Long Term US Equity Returns: Why Active Management is Difficult (Part One)
In these pages we typically reference the S&P 500 Index because it is a widely used and well-known index. In this and following notes, however, we are going to use the suite of Russell US Indices because of their elegant design and formulation and the resultant insights that can be brought forth from them. To…
Pause, Reversal, or the Beginning of a New Trend?
The degree to which stock market returns since the 2022 market lows have been dominated by a narrow group of large cap tech stocks receives a lot of attention in the financial media. This coverage is justified, because the degree to which index returns have been dominated by these companies is overwhelming. To put it…
Data Dependent
The market is now placing nearly a 100% probability on a September rate cut based on Powell’s recent comments on inflation progress. We will learn more from Powell after the Fed’s July 30-31 meeting comments. As of today, we’re asking the question: might this expectation be too optimistic? Powell has made it abundantly clear that…
How to manage money in an uncertain world
The capital markets are inherently uncertain. We financial and investments practitioners engage in all kinds of research, analysis and innovation to help manage this uncertainty. And the industry has made massive strides in creating a framework for understanding better the drivers of uncertainty and for managing the potential for bad outcomes within our clients’ portfolios.…
Alternative Investments: What they are and how WealthPlan approaches them
Alternative Investments is a catch all phrase to capture any investment that does not fall under the broad category of publicly listed stocks and bonds, or registered funds containing stocks and bonds. If you ask a hundred people what an alternative investment is, you probably get a hundred different answers. The reason is that “Alternatives”…
Quarterly Recap – Market Broadens: Small Caps Lead, Bonds Rally, NASDAQ lags
It is fair to say that capital markets experienced a reversal in the third quarter of 2024. What had led in the prior two years lagged, and what had lagged, led. This was welcome news to those that have been patiently waiting for an equity market environment that favored more than the so-called Mag 7.…