John Hancock: Weekly Market Recap Week Ended August 27th
Taper talk U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Friday confirmed that the central bank expects to begin tapering its bond purchasing program later this year. However, he didn’t set a specific date, and he warned against rushing to tighten monetary policy in response to recent inflation. Stocks rallied following his speech at the […]
LPL: Leading Indicators Forecasting Continued Growth
Economic Blog Friday, August 20, 2021 With increased concerns about the Delta variant, high inflation, and recent misses on economic data, it can be easy to forget that we’re still in the middle of a robust economic recovery and leading indicators continue to support a positive outlook. On Thursday, August 19, the Conference Board […]
Federated Hermes: Maybe Inflation Is Not Transitory After All?
We see inflation as a sustainable trend. BOTTOM LINE The S&P 500 hit its 49th record high of the year last Monday at 4,480, up 104% from the pandemic low in March 2020 and up nearly 20% so far this year. Our full-year target is 4,500, so we’re practically there in mid-August, though our full-year […]
John Hancock: Weekly Market Recap Week Ended August 20th
Record-breaking earnings Nearly 91% of S&P 500 companies reported their earnings for the second quarter. Nearly 87% of the reported companies have actual revenues above the mean revenue estimate. A dip in retail therapy Even as sales continue to be well above prepandemic levels, spending on goods retreated over the last month. U.S. […]
LPL: What’s Happening With Bond Yields?
Why Are Yields So Low? This week in the LPL Market Signals podcast, Ryan Detrick is joined by Marc Zabicki and Lawrence Gillum, where the team discusses one of the big questions lately: how in the world are bond yields so low? Coach K Coach K was a speaker at LPL Focus this year and […]
Schwab: Fed Tapering
As the Federal Reserve transitions from merely talking about tapering its bond holdings to actually tapering, investors may be left wondering what it might mean for the markets and their portfolios. Here’s a quick review of the Fed’s policies, what happened the last time the Fed tapered, and whether it will be different this […]
John Hancock: Weekly Market Recap Week Ended August 13th
Revenue outperformance The quarterly earnings season that’s now wrapping up is expected to produce a record number of companies beating Wall Street analysts’ revenue expectations. As of Friday, 87% of S&P 500 companies had exceeded second-quarter revenue estimates—the highest so-called beat rate since FactSet began tracking that data in 2008. Over the past five […]
Janus Henderson: Taking Cues From A “Methodical” Fed
Key Takeaways The trajectory of interest rates in 2021 has been notable for how rapidly they priced in economic recovery and then, beginning in mid-June, the degree to which that view was tempered. Both instances, in our view, are examples of the market getting ahead of itself. We, too, expected rising rates in the wake […]
LPL: While Tough For Equities, August Has Been Good For Fixed Income
Most investors are aware that seasonal patterns exist in equities, but they may not be as familiar with the seasonal patterns in fixed income markets. As pointed out in the LPL Research Market Blog on Monday, August 2, stocks have historically been relatively weak in August and September. This temporary increase in equity volatility is […]
John Hancock: Weekly Market Recap Week Ended August 6th
Jobs surge A better-than-expected monthly jobs report on Friday may have eased concerns about the U.S. economic recovery’s resilience amid the recent spike in Delta variant cases. In July, the economy generated 943,000 new jobs—the largest monthly gain in 11 months—as the unemployment rate fell to 5.4%. Average hourly earnings grew 4.0% on a […]