Blog
Earnings Rise, Macro Factors Dominate
A little over eighty-one percent of companies have released their third quarter earnings reports according to Bloomberg. Sales and earnings...
Read MoreStocks and Bonds Pull Back in the Third Quarter
Equities pulled back in the third quarter after a first half of the year that was good to great for most major equity indices. The information...
Read MoreInflation Remains Key for Consumers and Investors
Rising inflation and the increase in interest rates that followed were major causes of the 2022 bear market. The subsequent market recovery has...
Read MoreMarkets Rally on Better Than Feared Reports
About eighty-nine percent of S&P 50 companies have announced their second quarter financial reports. Sales are up a mere 0.32% while earnings are down 8.25% through August 8th according to Bloomberg. Despite this, the S&P 500 continues...
Read MoreTech Stocks Lead Equities Higher
Technology stocks led the markets higher in the first half of 2023. The move surprised many investors since it came on the heels of terrible...
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Are Chinese Equities Investable?
The US equity markets outperformed foreign equity markets for the decade ended 2021. For the last year and a half, we are seeing early...
Read MoreGood Enough Quarterly Reports Stabilize Markets
Coming into the second quarter, many investors were worried that earnings disappointments and 2023 guidance warnings would send the market lower...
Read MoreMoving Locations
We hope you are doing well this week. We are writing to let you know our office is moving. After 8 years on East-West Highway, we will be moving locations. Beginning May 1st, 2023, our new office address will be:New Potomac Partners,...
Read MoreA Strong, but Volatile Quarter for Financial Assets
A Strong, but Volatile Quarter for Financial Assets As the year began, many market commentators felt the first half of the year would be difficult for...
Read MoreSilicon Valley Bank Fails
Banks regulators shut down SVB Financial Group on Friday after portfolio losses led to a run on the bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named as the receiver....
Read MoreEarnings and Management Projections Better Than Feared
Financial markets fear of inflation waned in the back half of 2022 while the fear of a recession and a big drop in earnings grew. The concern of...
Read MoreA Difficult Year for Financial Markets
2022 was a tough year for investors, and there were few places to hide. The chart below shows the total return paths of the S&P 500,...
Read MoreTax Loss Harvesting in a Down Market
After three very strong years for asset prices in 2019, 2020 and 2021, 2022 has been a bad year for investors. Not only has the S&P 500 Total...
Read MoreMidterm Elections and Financial Markets
This morning we awoke to discover that the neither the House nor the Senate have been decided. Republicans probably regained control of the...
Read MoreAsset Prices Continue to Fall
The third quarter was another disappointing three months for investors with both equities and bonds declining. The S&P 500 fell 5.28% in the...
Read MoreExpect Volatility Before the Rally Reasserts Itself
The S&P 500 has rallied impressively off its June 16th close of 3,666.77. It ended August 16th at 4,305.20, representing an impressive two month...
Read MoreStrong Corporate Earnings Reports Support U.S. Equities
The start of 2022 was a major disappointment for the S&P 500 and global equity indices. Higher inflation, rising interest rates and geopolitical...
Read MoreBear Market in Stocks and Bonds
Equity and fixed income markets continued falling in the second quarter of 2022. Equities officially entered a bear market while fixed income...
Read MorePortfolio Construction Issues in a Low Interest-Rate Environment
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Chair Powell Reappointed, Brainard Elevated to Vice Chair
The announcement took longer than expected, but President Biden nominated Jerome Powell for a second term as chair of the Federal Reserve. It was largely expected that Powell would be renominated, but some doubts crept into markets...
Read MoreMarkets Press Pause in the Third Quarter
The first two quarters of 2021 were great for global equity markets. The third quarter saw the rate of ascent in equity markets slow in some...
Read MoreChinese Real Estate Developer Triggers Pullback
The debt problems at China Evergrande Group, a large Chinese real estate developer, were the ostensible trigger for a cumulative five percent...
Read MoreProductivity and Profits
The S&P 500 is near its all-time closing high despite COVID-19, job losses, and a severe, brief recession. There are several contributing factors that may be transitory in nature. Easy monetary policies at home and abroad have helped...
Read MoreBull Market Continues in the Second Quarter
The second quarter saw strong equity gains in the United States and overseas. The S&P 500 rose 8.17% and is now up an impressive 14.41% through the first half of 2021. The small and mid-capitalization stocks rose less than the S&P 500...
Read MoreQ&A with New Potomac Partners on Interest Rates and Inflation
Lately we have been getting similar questions from clients regarding interest rates and inflation. Below are our abbreviated responses to these questions but please contact us if you would like to have a deeper discussion on these or...
Read MoreEasy Financial Conditions Power Asset Markets
Equity markets powered higher in the first four months of 2021, adding to the strong returns in 2020, despite a once in a lifetime pandemic. This led to a swift unprecedented rise in unemployment, a service economy that was decimated...
Read MoreStocks and Bonds Diverge in the First Quarter
Equities recovered from their March 2020 plunge to generate strong returns last year. Bond markets rallied strongly though August 2020 before stabilizing and generating solid annual returns. The first quarter of 2021 saw the returns...
Read MoreThe American Rescue Plan Passes
The House of Representatives passed a $1.9 trillion bill known as the American Rescue Plan on March 10, 2021. The level of vitriol seems to have fallen on both sides even if the era of hyper-partisanship continues. All but one of the...
Read MoreGameStop and Financial Markets
As most people know by now, GameStop shares experienced a meteoric rise in January before crashing back to earth. Retail “investors” on a Reddit message board tried to initiate a short squeeze on the heavily shorted stock....
Read More2020: A Year to Forget and Remember
2020 was a year for the history books. COVID-19 created a pandemic unlike any we have seen in the last 100 years. Fatalities from COVID-19 in the United States and globally are now estimated to be in excess of 340,000 and 1.8 million,...
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