Last week you heard a lot about the longest bull market in our countries history. The Purest definition of a bull market is “a market advance without a pull back or sell of greater than 20%”. We do not necessarily agree with the "longest bull market" headlines from last week. Both 2011 and 2015 witnessed massive drawdowns at the stock level with over 70% of issues down 20% in 2011 and 63% during 2015. The Russell 2000 was down by 30% and 27% in each respective year and global equities also e… View More
August 2018
Post 1 to 5 of 5
The major indices, with the exception of the Nasdaq, ended higher for the week despite heightened volatility. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.41%; the S&P 500® and the Russell 2000® Indices rose .59% and .36%, respectively. The Nasdaq’s -.29% decline was due, in part, to a sell-off in Tesla; the company disclosed an SEC subpoena of directors following the tweet from CEO Elon Musk about a pending deal to take the company private; the SEC was already investigating potentially m… View More
Small and Mid-Cap companies have been the best performing sector of the market this year and last week was no exception. The Russell 2000® Index, last week’s best performer, rose 0.80% followed by the Nasdaq which gained 0.35%. The S&P 500® Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.25% and 0.59%, respectively. Small cap stocks continued to perform well; strong earnings reports and upwardly revised guidance supported the momentum provided by the economy. A survey among econo… View More
With the mid-term elections approaching, an ongoing tariff war with China, and an apparent soft patch in Europe, we continue to ask ourselves the question of whether we’re on track for the longest expansion in U.S. History or at the end of the road. To help answer this question, we look at various economic data points to understand the US economy’s trajectory. During the month of June, we saw robust employment gains in the US with 213,000 new jobs. Coupled with the growth in jobs, US wa… View More
Lawrence Kudlow, President Trump's head economic advisor, coined the phrase, “Corporate profits are the mother’s milk of the stock market." Without profits, stocks will not go up in value. Corporate profits for Q2 have been coming in better than expected and should be leading the market higher. We believe current trade negations and the mid-term elections are currently weighing the market down. President Trump is pivoting away from trade spats with traditional US allies towards greate… View More