Financial Insights Archives
Q3 Market Commentary
The 3rd quarter of 2022 started out strong, with the S&P 500 Index climbing almost 15% from the end of June to the middle of August. Then, the Federal Reserve indicated they might have to be more aggressive with interest rates to respond to the rising inflation numbers. The markets around the globe took this as bad news…
Read MorePursuing a Better Investment Experience
Whether you’ve been investing for decades or are just getting started, at some point on your investment journey you’ll likely have questions regarding how to improve your odds of investing success. Petersen Hastings is here to help. Learn more about the 10 key principles, using data and reasoning, that may help improve your odds of…
Read MoreQ2 Market Commentary
The 2nd quarter of 2022 was mostly negative for stocks and bonds as the markets reacted to the highest inflation rates since the 1980s. The Federal Reserve has responded to the rising inflation numbers by increasing the Federal Funds Rate by 0.5% in May, then another 0.75% in June to set the target rate between…
Read MoreCybersecurity Tips to Better Protect Your Data
The following are tips for consumers to consider in reducing the risk or impact of data breaches.
Read MoreHave the Tech Giants Been DeFAANGed?
Investors expecting FAANG1 stocks to continue the extraordinary performance of recent years must be disappointed by their returns in 2022 (see Exhibit 1). Four of the five stocks lagged the broad US market through May 5, with Amazon, Facebook (now known as Meta), and Netflix suffering big-time losses. The group collectively underperformed the Russell 3000…
Read MoreQ1 Market Commentary
2022 has started out mostly negative for both the global stock and bond markets, as the economy responds to increasing prices and the conflict in Ukraine. Rising prices started well before the Russia/Ukraine conflict as strong demand for products was met with a simultaneous shortage of supply for almost everything. A simple economic concept illustrates that when quantity…
Read MoreMarket Update: The Impact Of Inflation And Geopolitical Conflict On The Markets
Stock and bond returns have been under pressure since the end of 2021 as increasing prices indicated that the inflation rate was the highest it has been in 40 years. This usually means that the Federal Reserve will try to slow the economy down. They have a couple of tools to facilitate that, with the…
Read MoreNavigating Geopolitical Events
Recent conflict between Russia and Ukraine is an important reminder that geopolitical risk is a part of investing in global markets. Navigating geopolitical events requires expertise and flexibility. Global Developments and Their Impact Geopolitical events like military or economic conflicts can affect stock markets in many ways. These events are generally widely followed by investors.…
Read MoreHedging Inflation Long-Term: Gold vs. Stocks
There’s no lack of financial press reporting on the effect of inflation on our day to day lives. We don’t need to read about it in popular media to feel inflation’s effect each time we fuel up our vehicles, buy groceries for our families, or pay for the variety of goods and services we consume…
Read MoreMarket Commentary: Fourth Quarter
Every year on New Year’s Day, I look at Google Trends and reflect on what people searched for during the year. For me, it gives me time to reflect on just how many things happened during the year, how fast topics of interest changed, and what kind of information people looked for. It certainly does not come…
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