Insights Investments

The economy created 187,000 jobs in July, slightly softer than the 200,000 that economists expected. The last couple of months were revised lower, and so it’s always helpful to take a 3-month average, which is now running at 218,000. That’s stronger than the pre-pandemic average of 183,000. In short, job growth remains strong. You will …

“I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” -Will Rogers What happened? Rating agency Fitch downgraded the U.S. government’s longer-term credit rating to AA+ from AAA. This was the second time in history a rating agency did this, as S&P Global Ratings did it in August 2011 after a government …

Consumer confidence has been rising since last summer, and over the last couple of months, it has jumped even more. Both the University of Michigan and the Conference Board’s measures of consumer confidence have risen 22 points since last summer. A simple reason is… gas prices. Confidence hit a bottom right around the time gas …

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower Another month and more strong gains. Make that five months in a row, the S&P 500 finished higher. The S&P 500 is now up close to 20% on the year, just like everyone predicted. 😉 We came into the year overweight stocks and remain …

Sonu and I were honored to be joined by Tom Lee, Managing Partner and the Head of Research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, this week on the Facts vs Feelings podcast! I’ve been a fan of Tom for many years and you might know him for being one of the very few bulls coming into this …

The Federal Reserve (Fed) raised the federal funds rates by 0.25% at their July meeting, taking rates to the 5.25 ­– 5.0% range — the highest in 22 years. This was widely expected. In fact, the Fed’s statement behind the decision was mostly unchanged relative to June, except for a subtle, but important change. Instead …

Barry Gilbert, Vice President, Asset Allocation Strategist This is my inaugural blog as a member of the Carson Group Investment Research Team. I am thrilled to be at Carson and to have the opportunity to work with such a great community of advisors. There will be a lot of data and charts to come in …

Ryan and I recently hosted Meb Faber of Cambria Investments on our Facts vs Feelings podcast. We covered a lot in that episode, but I want to pick out one thread in particular, i.e. dividends vs buybacks. As we discussed, dividends are one way corporation can return excess cash to shareholders. However, they can also …

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” – Winston Churchill How about that? As soon as we released our Mid-Year Outlook and talked about this bull market broadening out the rest of this year, with other areas besides just technology and communications leading, we find the Dow up nine days in …

We just got a bunch of data to round out the economic picture in the second quarter (Q2). Long story short: Not only do we see no sign of recession, but it also doesn’t even look like the economy is looking for a “landing” at this point. I realize this could change, but so far …

“You can learn a lot by looking.”  -Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra Stocks had one of their best starts to a year ever after six months in 2023 and the fun has only continued so far in July. If you’ve followed us since late last year then you know that we expected a good …