Weekly Market Commentary
Pulling the economy out of the shed. If you’ve ever stored tools or machinery in a shed or garage for an extended period of time, you know ...
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Jun 7 -
Jun 7The Electric Vehicle Market
The good news for electric vehicle manufacturers is that battery costs have been plummeting over time, and that the cost of electric vehicles may soon achieve parity with ...
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Jun 1The Energy Revolution May Be a Long and Winding Road
Although it’s pulled back from its peak, Tesla’s stock has still risen more than tenfold in the past two years.
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Jun 1
Weekly Market Commentary
Are we at a tipping point? One side effect of the pandemic was a collapse in demand for oil, which led to “the largest revision to the value ...
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May 25Inflation and the Money Stock
The combination of dovish monetary policy and stimulative fiscal policy has given rise to inflation fears.
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May 19Checking in on Speculative Investments
Here’s the current 10-year breakeven inflation rate, which reflects market expectations of the average inflation rate over the next 10 years.
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May 17
Weekly Market Commentary
Uncle Inflation is here. Will he overstay his welcome? Ever since the financial crisis, central banks have pursued expansionary monetary policies to encourage reflation and avoid deflation.
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May 12On Unemployment
The jobs report released last Friday contained unexpectedly bad news. Normally a gain of 266,000 jobs would be a strong month...
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May 10
Weekly Market Commentary
Like a gender reveal gone wrong, last week’s employment report delivered an unexpected surprise.
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May 3
Weekly Market Commentary
It’s Spring and economic recovery is in the air. Last week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported the U.S.
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May 3A Quick Inflation Update
Here’s the current 10-year breakeven inflation rate, which reflects market expectations of the average inflation rate over the next 10 years.
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Apr 26
Weekly Market Commentary
The Markets It wasn’t just the price of pork chops. Last week, as investors weighed the news, strong corporate earnings were offset by higher grocery ...
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Apr 20Quarterly Market Commentary
First Quarter 2021 Key Takeaways. The market marches on. On the heels of its post-recession resurgence last year, stocks have continued their remarkable runup.
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Apr 19Weekly Market Commentary
Where are Treasury bonds going? The direction of bond yields is influenced by investors’ expectations for economic growth, among other factors.
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Apr 12
Weekly Market Commentary
Investors didn’t stumble over inflation last week. Why not? Inflation – rising prices of goods and services – can be measured in a variety of ways.
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Apr 12Is Step-Up in Basis Reform on the Horizon?
The Biden Administration is seeking to enact a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which then raises the question of how to finance this government spending.
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Apr 5March Job Recovery
The market’s recovery over the past year can be attributed in part to expectations that COVID would be largely suppressed and that the economy could then regain ...
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Apr 5
Weekly Market Commentary
Zoom, zoom, zoom. Big economies tend to recover from recessions about as quickly as semi-trucks accelerate from stop lights.
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Mar 29A Quick Fed Update
In recent years the Fed’s communication style has become increasingly direct...
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Mar 29
Weekly Market Commentary
Last week, unemployment claims were looking good and consumers were feeling good...
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Mar 23The Potential of a Roaring Twenties
Last week we discussed optimistic economic growth forecasts for 2021, highlighted by a Goldman Sachs projection of 8% growth...
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Mar 22
Weekly Market Commentary
What are professional asset managers thinking? Bank of America recently published the results of its March global asset managers’ survey...
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Mar 17Economy Is Ready To Take Off
3,2,1 Takeoff! We may still be cooped up far more than we want to be, but if Goldman Sachs is right, the economy is ready to take off. As ...
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Mar 8What’s in the $1.9 Trillion COVID relief bill?
This weekend the Senate passed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. The House is expected to approve the bill later this week and send it on to President Biden ...
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Mar 1
Weekly Market Commentary
Students of financial markets may have noted a historically unusual event last week.
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Mar 1Inflation and Interest Rates
After the yield curve flattened in 2020, with the US 10 year rate falling to under 0.6% and the 30 year rate briefly slipping to under 1%, we’ve started to see significant ...
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Feb 22
Weekly Market Commentary
It’s a contrarian’s dream come true. Contrarian investors like to buck the trend.
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Feb 22It’s Not Your Father’s Fed
The Fed has long been known as a chief fighter of inflation, ever since Paul Volcker in the 1980s hiked interest rates sharply in an effort to bring ...
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Feb 15
Weekly Market Commentary
Way back, when radio disk jockeys played 45-rpm vinyl singles, the A-side of a disk was the song the record company was promoting and the other side.
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Feb 15Diversifying with Emerging Markets
The stunning recovery of US and global markets has been generally excellent for portfolios, but leaves a challenge going forward...
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Feb 8
Weekly Market Commentary
It’s not a black diamond ski run yet, but the yield curve for U.S. Treasuries is steeper than it has been in a while.
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Feb 8Selling Short Selling Short
The Gamestop short squeeze has prompted discussion of short selling, in which an investor who believes a stock is overvalued borrows shares of that stock...
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Feb 1
Weekly Market Commentary
They say people watching the same event often see different things.
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Feb 1What’s Up with GameStop?
If a group of Redditors dislike hedge funds, dislike the idea of shorting a gaming company that has sentimental value for many...
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Jan 31Quarterly Market Commentary
Fourth Quarter 2020 Key Takeaways. Once again, as abnormal as 2020 has been, as we still sit months away from widespread COVID vaccine implementation...
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Jan 25A Few Perspectives on Debt
The Biden Administration has proposed an additional $1.9 trillion in spending on a COVID relief package, and unsurprisingly, many Republicans ...
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Jan 25
Weekly Market Commentary
Last week, as COVID-19 vaccination efforts continued, there was speculation about stock market corrections and asset bubbles.
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Jan 19
Weekly Market Commentary
Investors were rocked by economic data showing the economy hit the brakes hard in December.
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Jan 18A Bit on Bitcoin
Bitcoin has been in the news quite a bit lately, both for its meteoric rise and its sharp selloffs.
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Jan 11Fallout from the Georgia Senate Runoffs
The November 3rd election appeared to be a mixed bag for the Democratic Party.
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Jan 4
Weekly Market Commentary
Last week was the cherry on top of a turbulent year for investors.
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Dec 28
Weekly Market Commentary
U.S. stock markets remained calm as a fresh chapter opened in the coronavirus stimulus saga last week.
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Dec 28On Forecasting and the End of 2020
We were going to close out what’s been a very interesting 2020 by discussing 2021 capital market forecasts.
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Dec 21
Weekly Market Commentary
Congress is at $900 billion, will they hear $1.4 trillion, $1.4 trillion, governments at $900 billion, who’ll go $1.4 trillion, $1.4 trillion…
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Dec 21Congress Comes Through
We don’t expect to see much in the way of bipartisan legislation in the coming years, but perhaps Democrats and Republicans were imbued with the holiday spirit
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Dec 18What’s Next for the Fed?
What’s Next for the Fed? The Federal Reserve meets on December 15th and 16th. With COVID-19 cases spiking and the economic recovery faltering, the ...
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Dec 14Weekly Market Commentary
The Markets When it comes to beverages, frothy can be delicious. In what may be the least inspiring description of fizzy drinks ever written, a group ...
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Dec 7Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary
Joe Biden is expected to nominate Janet Yellen for Treasury Secretary for his administration...
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Dec 7
Weekly Market Commentary
Major stock indices in the United States hit all-time highs on Friday, despite a lackluster employment report and a surge in COVID-19 cases...
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Nov 30Thankfully, Malthus was Wrong
For many of us, Thanksgiving in 2020 was a more subdued affair, as rising caseloads of COVID-19...
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Nov 30
Weekly Market Commentary
Last week, vaccine optimism immunized investors against signs of economic weakness.
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Nov 23Potential Economic Recovery in 2021
The last time the United States elected a new president during a crisis, in 2008, the recovery was a painful and protracted one.
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Nov 23
Weekly Market Commentary
The U.S. economy is like a semi-trailer truck. No one likes being stuck behind a semi at a stoplight because big trucks don’t go from zero ...
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Nov 17A COVID Vaccine… Great for the world, but merely good for the shareholders?
News broke a little over a week ago that preliminary results for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine showed that the vaccine reduced symptomatic cases by 90%...
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Nov 16
Weekly Market Commentary
Vaccine can be a powerful word. It’s worth 14 points in Scrabble (42 on a triple word square) and, last week, it was worth a whole lot more ...
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Nov 10The S&P 500… Post-Election Summary
As with all elections, about half the country will be pleased (and half the country displeased) with the final outcome.
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Nov 9
Weekly Market Commentary
It’s said markets hate uncertainty, but that wasn’t the case last week. Despite tremendous uncertainty about the outcome of the United States election, major ...
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Nov 2The S&P 500 and its Market Cap Giants
By the end of the third quarter of 2020, the S&P 500 had completed a remarkable recovery and, after more than a 30% loss in March, closed up 5% YTD.
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Nov 2
Weekly Market Commentary
Last week, financial markets and economic data told very different stories. Reviewing economic data is a bit like looking in a rear view mirror.
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Oct 28Quarterly Market Commentary
Third Quarter 2020 Key Takeaways. As much as we are still mired in the COVID‐19 crisis, not to mention 2020 election mudslinging, markets have largely continued to shrug off the ...
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Oct 28Schneider AEHR Test Systems Press Release
John M. Schneider, President of Pittsburgh-based JMS Capital Group, resigns from Board of Directors for California-based AEHR Test Systems.
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Oct 19Weekly Market Commentary
It was a turbulent week for investors. Waves of positive and negative news buffeted financial markets last week.
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Oct 12
Weekly Market Commentary
Yes. No. Maybe? Markets were sharply focused on the status of stimulus last week. First, it was on. Then, it was off. Then, it might be on. Then, ...
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Oct 62020 Election Preview
Despite all the turmoil in the world, led by COVID‐19, the US Presidential Election horserace has had a very consistent result for months: Joe Biden is clearly leading, ...
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Oct 5Weekly Market Commentary
Last week, the third quarter of 2020 came to an end – and the fourth quarter delivered a doozy of an October surprise.
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Sep 28Weekly Market Commentary
For four weeks, the U.S. stock market has sparked and sputtered like a campfire in light rain.
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Sep 14Weekly Market Commentary
Weekly Market Commentary September 14, 2020 The Markets Last week, the Nasdaq Composite Index set another record. So far, 2020 has been memorable for many reasons, not the least of which ...
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Sep 8Weekly Market Commentary
Weekly Market Commentary September 8, 2020 The Markets Stock markets in the United States retreated a bit last week. U.S. stocks have been trending higher for months. Last week, ...
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Aug 31Weekly Market Commentary
Weekly Market Commentary August 31, 2020 The Markets The stock market is rallying like it’s 1986. August has been a good month for stock investors. At the end ...
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Aug 17Weekly Market Commentary
The Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index finished the week within a whisker of its February high, reported Randall Forsyth of Barron’s.
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Aug 10Weekly Market Commentary
There was good news and bad news in last week’s employment report. The good news was the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered better-than-expected data about ...
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Aug 3Weekly Market Commentary
Last week delivered a mixed bag of financial and economic news.
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Jul 24Quarterly Market Commentary
If the first quarter of 2020 was all about financial shock, the second quarter was all about financial recovery. Not a recovery from COVID‐19 in terms of public health, ...
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Jul 20Weekly Market Commentary
Is the United States economy recovering or faltering? It depends on who you ask and which data you consider. For example, last week, the Department of Labor reported ...
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Jul 15Tips For Home Refinancing
As mortgage rates hit a record low, many Americans are considering refinancing their homes.
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Jul 13Weekly Market Commentary
Please don’t scream inside your heart. Last week, a reopened Japanese theme park asked patrons to wear masks to help reduce the spread of coronavirus.
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Jul 6Weekly Market Commentary
What a quarter! Who could have guessed a global pandemic would produce outsized stock market returns? Near the end of last quarter (March 23), the Standard & Poor’s 500 ...
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