We all know that markets dislike uncertainty, and that this administration was likely to provide more surprises than usual, but almost no one was expecting the April 2 announcement of new tariffs on much of the world, friends and rivals alike, that were much higher than the tariffs being charged on U.S. goods by those … Continued

Between February 19 and March 13, the S&P 500 lost around -10.1%. Considering that 10% corrections have occurred on average every 1.5 years, with the last one being in October 2023, many observers were expecting that a pullback may be likely in 2025. With markets coming off their best two consecutive years since the 1990s, … Continued

A striking aspect to the current 2+ year bull market, which has seen the S&P 500 climb over +60% since October 2022, has been the sometimes difficult-to-explain levels of nonchalance by market participants in response to typically worrisome signals in the economy and markets. Core inflation has been mostly flat for six months in a … Continued

Many of us are now a few weeks into pursuing our New Year’s resolutions for 2025. (I won’t ask how you’re doing if you don’t ask how I’m doing!) Many resolutions that we make require some sort of habit or behavior change, and often our success at achieving these goals will be correlated to the … Continued

We’d like to start this edition of the Capital Markets by thanking our readers and clients for another year of partnership and trust. Our prayer is for a blessed Advent season and Christmas for you and your families, communities and churches. As we look back on 2024, there are a number of historical events and … Continued

It’s been well-documented that markets crave certainty, and by early Wednesday morning following November’s election, traders were already pricing in a mostly certain outcome of Republican control of both the White House and Congress. As investors, this took off the table one of the markets’ known unknowns — who was going to win the 2024 … Continued

The S&P 500 notched another strong quarter in Q3, finishing September up over +20% so far for the year. The index has closed at a record high 47 times this year and is on track to make it the fifth year out of six with a +15% or more gain. While the S&P 500 finished … Continued

The S&P 500 had its best week of the year in the second week of September. The only problem was that the prior week had been the index’s worst week of the year. Markets have been moving in a “W” shape since mid-July, when the S&P 500 hit its last record high. A market with … Continued

Many investors perceive the “risk” in investing refers to only to the potential of markets going down, or of an investment losing money. In fact, investment risk is most often measured by variance, or volatility — by how wide the spectrum of potential outcomes is — both up and down. In markets, higher returns come … Continued

The S&P 500 ended the first half of 2024 up over +15%, in large part driven by the same familiar factors that have pushed the market higher by +24% in 2023, and now over +50% since October of 2022. Optimism surrounding softening inflation, falling interest rates and a productivity boom from artificial intelligence have been … Continued