Perspectives

With the ever-growing popularity of online shopping and online communications, you should always have your guard up in the cyberworld. Criminals will use any situation to their advantage–especially when it comes to annual holidays. Below you’ll find a few examples of commonly used seasonal and holiday scams, and what you can do to protect yourself. Fake Shipping Notifications End of the year holidays invite a greater likelihood of this common phishing attack, but this is a scam you must … View More

2023 certainly was a challenging year for investors. Multiple expansion despite flattish earnings confounded most investors even as a much-anticipated recession did not materialize. Investors enjoyed falling long-term interest rates in the back part of the year, even as the Fed raised rates multiple times reaching the 5 ¼% level. Equity concentration accelerated with the Magnificent 7 far outpacing the average stock. Volatility levels were low most all year, especially for stocks. By year’s e… View More

The Federal Reserve declared victory today, projecting a soft landing as its base case in the years ahead, with more cuts in short-term rates, and with inflation gradually getting back to its 2.0% goal without a recession. Unfortunately, we think the Fed is declaring mission accomplished too early. The Fed didn’t change short-term interest rates today, nor did it alter the pace of Quantitative Tightening, but it made major changes to its projections for short-term interest rates. Not one poli… View More

Lately, there has been much discussion about how soon the Fed will have to cut rates as many believe they are too restrictive. While we are cautious about the ultimate message rates have for equities, we are even more concerned about how little balance sheet runoff is discussed in the context of cuts. If we look back to 2019, the last time the Fed began cutting rates during balance sheet runoff, the runoff lasted just a few more weeks before the Fed ultimately had to reverse course due to repo m… View More

The S&P 500 was up (+0.8%) for the fifth week in a row. Small cap stocks again powered higher (Russell 2000 +0.1%). Treasuries had a strong week with the ten-year yield falling 25 basis points. Best sectors were real estate (+4.7%) and materials (+2.8%); sectors losing ground included communication services (-2.5%) and energy (-0.1%). Source: Bob Doll, Crossmark Investments   Chart reflects price changes, not total return. Because it does not include dividends or splits, it should no… View More

Don’t forget to give to Charity this Holiday Season! As the end of the year and the holiday season approaches, we will all see an uptick in charitable solicitations arriving in our mailboxes and by email. Since some charities sell their contributor lists to other charities, frequent contributors may find themselves besieged by requests from various charities with which they are unfamiliar. Watch Out for Charity Scams! You need to be careful, as scammers out there are pretending to be l… View More