On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve Committee announced (as we have been expecting) that they would not raise rates again in 2019. Powell indicated that the Fed's pausing is because of a more significant slowdown in growth than anticipated. Much of this "slow down" is being measured through "Industrial Production." We think the magnitude of the slow down may be a little overstated. Below is a chart of U.S Industrial production over the last five years. As you can see, the current drop i… View More
For the first time since October, the S&P closed above the 2815 level to end last week. Technology has driven this last leg higher with the equally-weighted Nasdaq 100 right on the cusp of fresh all-time highs and the Semiconductors continuing to exhibit leadership. More broadly though, the market still appears to be in the midst of a consolidation phase with the Russell 2000 still below its February highs and the Transportation stocks again lagging. These aren’t major blemishes, but … View More
While last week marked just the second down week of the year for the S&P, many individual names have been consolidating since mid-February. The equity markets declined, with the worst 1-week performance this year, on mixed economic data. For last week the Russell 2000® Index, the weakest performer, fell 4.26%, followed by Nasdaq (-2.46%), the Dow Jones Industrial Average (-2.21%), and the S&P 500® Index (-2.16%.) Low trading volumes suggest that many investors are sitting on the… View More
Equity markets were mixed last week as no significant events motivated investors to buy or sell. The Nasdaq led the indices this week with a 0.90% gain, followed by S&P 500® (0.40%), Dow Jones Industrial Average (-0.02%) and Russell 2000® Index (-0.03 %). Early in the week, President Trump announced a postponement of additional tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese products with no extension date provided. Reports later in the week indicated that President Trump and President XI may m… View More
President Trump’s announcement last night delaying an escalation in China tariffs from going into effect on March 1 shows that we are moving towards a deal in the coming month.Trump is becoming more pro-growth and is looking for a deal ahead of his re-election. Avoiding the escalation of tariffs prevents an additional $50bn of tariffs from going into effect in CY 2019. We are having a harder time seeing a path to removing existing tariffs, which will be largely dependent on the Chinese making … View More