Insights Investments

“The stock market is a giant distraction to the business of investing.” Jack Bogle, Founder of Vanguard With stocks up five months in a row, we’ve hit some weakness so far in August, which is fairly normal as we discussed in Stocks Don’t Like August, Now What? Here’s the truth, investors have been rather spoiled …

Barry Gilbert, Vice President, Asset Allocation Strategist There is a commonly shared chart out there (with lots of slightly different variations) that has occasionally run into some criticism. The chart shows stock market returns if you missed the best market days each year. Carson’s version is below. The point of the chart is straightforward and …

We’ve gotten a lot of questions on China, including what’s happening there and how it’ll impact the US, and potentially, financial markets. We’re going to tackle all of those in this blog. 1. What’s happening in China? The economy is in trouble. Retail sales are up just 2.5% year over year, well off the pre-pandemic …

Another month, another slew of economic data that not only shows that the economy is resilient, but it may in fact be accelerating. Here’s a quick recap. Retail sales and food services rose 0.7% in July. One month may be noisy, but even if you take a 3-month average, retail sales rose 7% at an …

“When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?” -John Maynard Keynes One of the main reasons we were overweight equities at the start of this year was because virtually no one else was, as we explained in mid-December in Is Anyone Bullish?. Sure, there were a few bulls, but …

I’ve looked at thousands of portfolios over my career, most of them made up of mutual funds and/or ETFs but sometimes with individual stocks and bonds thrown in or even making up the entire portfolio. One thing that has repeatedly struck me is how sometimes adding “more,” more positions, more asset types, more specialized pieces, …

Consumer credit card has recently been in the news after it hit a record $1 trillion. However, Ryan walked us through several reasons why this eye-popping number is not that concerning. On the business side, rising bankruptcies have also been making headlines month after month, as chapter 11 filings this year exceed what we saw …

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” -Henry David Thoreau It finally happened, US consumers officially have more than $1 trillion in credit card debt, an all-time record. Not surprisingly, many claimed this was a sign the consumer was tapped out and simply spending and buying everything on credit cards. …

Inflation has been top of mind for investors over the past year and a half, both from the perspective of what that means for the economy as well as monetary policy. So, the latest release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which tracks a basket of goods and services purchased by households, looms large every …

We came into 2023 with a view that stocks would rebound quite strongly, and the economy would be able to avoid a recession. As a result, we were overweight stocks over bonds in our tactical portfolios. We continue to maintain this overweight, since we believe equities could see even more gains before the end of …

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” -Peter Drucker Last week, roughly 30% of the S&P 500 market cap reported earnings, and the spotlight was on Apple and Amazon. Despite the obligatory note of caution every CEO utters, I’m hearing companies talk a lot …