We wanted to share a piece with you that was written by FirstTrust. We think their comments about how various virus's have impacted the markets over the years are worth considering. Please call or email us with any questions. Sincerely, Fortem Financialwww.fortemfin.com(760) 206-8500 Latest News Will We Have a Corona Virus Recession Read Story … View More
Authors
Post 341 to 350 of 564
The latest news on the coronavirus and the Super Tuesday primaries caused wild market gyrations last week. Joe Biden’s unexpected primary wins gave him a delegate lead over Bernie Sanders. The coronavirus, however, overtook the Super Tuesday results. China reported a slowing rate of new cases (99 new cases reported on March 6th) for a total of 80,651. Globally, the case count rose to 101,927 with 3,488 deaths. Strategies to contain the virus have led to school closings, work-from-home policies… View More
Last week OPEC and Russia met to discuss cutting oil production by 1.5 million barrels per day; a move in response to slowing demand due to the Coronavirus outbreak in China. Russia decided NOT to participate in the cut, and in response, OPEC has "declared a price war" on Russia and has flooded the market with oil, increasing its production and causing a sharp drop in the price of oil (-30%). Historically, oil has been a proxy for the overall condition of the economy and stock market. This made… View More
The Fed decided to make an inter-meeting move and cut rates -50bp today. The size of the move, as well as the emergency decision, fit with a desire to respond forcibly to evolving market conditions. The FOMC statement read “the coronavirus poses evolving risks to economic activity. In light of these risks and in support of achieving its maximum employment and price stability goals, the Federal Open Market Committee decided today to lower the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/2 perce… View More
The equity markets tumbled last week on coronavirus fears; despite a late-Friday rally, all of the major indices fell more than 10% last week into correction territory. The worst performer, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, lost a record 3,500+ points (-12.36%), followed by the Russell 2000® Index (-12.04%), the S&P 500® Index (-11.49%) and the Nasdaq (-10.54%). The S&P 500® posted its worst weekly performance since the financial crisis. The decline from the Index’s record high on F… View More
We wanted to share with you some background on why we invest in balanced portfolios. During periods like February 19 through February 28, 2020, when the stock market comes under pressure, bonds tend to perform quite well. Over this period, the S&P 500 was down 12.4%, the Nasdaq was down 13.2%, and the Dow Jones was down 13.3%. The Barclays Aggregate Bond Index however was up 1.6% during this period. Because of this inversely correlated relationship between stocks and fixed income, fixed inco… View More
We want to share a short note on our thoughts. With the coronavirus now above the fold of every national newspaper, the complacency that’s dominated markets over recent months is finally being challenged. This is also evident in the sharp ETF outflows – over the last 3 days, some $16bn has been pulled from the SPY and nearly $3bn from the HYG (both records). As we wrote yesterday, a decent chunk of the market is sufficiently oversold, but it takes more time to chip away at sentiment. With s… View More
Monday, fear over the Coronavirus finally gripped investors, as both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 index fell over 3% - the largest daily declines in two years. These drops wiped out all the gains for the year. Frankly, it’s amazing to us that the market had been so resilient! Maybe it’s because recent history with stocks and viruses is that markets overreact leading to significant buying opportunities along the way. Over a 38-day trading period during the height of t… View More
Coronavirus-related economic fears continue to dominate markets, but we believe effects will be short term and limited. Once investors begin to look past near-term risks, we think areas of the global financial market that have benefited on a relative basis (growth styles, defensive areas and bond market proxies) could take a hit. On balance, we think the equity bull market should continue, but we are concerned that valuations look stretched in some areas. Investor attention remains dominated b… View More
Markets are off sharply this morning as the virus headlines appear to have worsened over the weekend, yet we’re still struck with how complacent the options market has been. The daily put/call ratios remain very low, inconsistent with the type of fear often associated with an exogenous event like Coronavirus. This likely has to change, and lower prices are a catalyst. Ultimately we suspect this is a correction in an ongoing bull market, but better S&P support is still a ways off in the 305… View More