After months of carefully communicating the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) plan to reduce its asset purchases toward the middle of 2022, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell seemingly sped up that timetable during his Congressional testimony last week. While not officially announced policy yet, the expectation is that the Fed will now accelerate its tapering plans and end its…
Here comes December, historically a pretty solid month for stocks, but now we have the Omicron variant wreaking havoc on markets. “What a difference a week makes. A week ago stocks were at all-time highs and the economy was strong. Now all we have are uncertainties and questions,” explained LPL Financial Chief Market Strategist Ryan…
The incredible bull run of 2021 continues, with the S&P 500 Index only 0.02% away from the 66th all-time high this calendar year, tied with (for now) the 65 set in 1964 and behind only the record 77 set in 1995. “We’ve run out of superlatives to describe what we’ve seen so far this year, so…
One of the more surprising developments in markets over the past six months has been the persistent decline in longer-term Treasury yields. This, coupled with the recent spike in short-term rates as the market has moved to price in rate hikes, has caused most measures of the yield curve to flatten dramatically. This can be seen…
