The S&P 500 ended November up over +16% year-to-date and is set to once again turn in double-digit gains —its sixth out of the last seven years. Four of those years saw returns of +25% or more. Despite starting the year with consternation around trade policy and tariffs, since bottoming in early April, the stock … Continued

The S&P 500 is up around +32% from its April 8 low at the time of this writing, continuing a relentless push higher that has accelerated in recent weeks. Markets have been cheered by the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates by a quarter point in September, while signaling at least a couple of … Continued

In some ways, a whip-saw market with historic volatility was not a far-fetched outcome for the first half of 2025. Following the 2024 election, and with a January inauguration looming, many strategists were in fact calling for elevated volatility and uncertainty heading into 2025. The way the first 100 days of the new administration went, … Continued

The S&P 500 gained over +6% in May, ending the month up nearly +15% from April 21, when trade tensions between the United States and China first began to visibly thaw. U.S. stocks are now slightly higher than where they started the year, fixed income is mostly flat, and international stocks are up double digits. … Continued

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