Posts Tagged ‘Market Commentary’

Happy New Year! Global markets finished the year strong. Quarter 4 brought the S&P 500 Index up 9.07% for a 31.49% YTD return. Small companies represented by the Russell 2000 Index rose 9.94% for the quarter to put them up over 25% YTD. International stocks represented by the iShares MSCI EAFE Index also increased 8.17%…

Through the month of September, the global markets have had a strong year. Quarter 3 brought the S&P 500 Index up 1.7% for a 20.55% YTD return. Small companies represented by the Russell 2000 Index cooled off a little bit with a -2.4% for the quarter but are still up over 14% YTD. International stocks…

If you are a die- hard women’s soccer fan or if you like following and supporting national sports, you might have tuned into the Women’s World Cup Soccer tournament. The U.S. women had the difficult task of defending their title as the World Cup champions. At the beginning of the tournament, many people had predicted…

REBOUND! It’s what we might have been yelling at the TV as we watched our favorite team during the men’s NCAA basketball tournament. March madness is certainly an exciting time for basketball fans as they anticipate their tournament bracket doing well. REBOUND is exactly what has happened to global equities over the last three months.…

2018 is a wrap. In a year where we had the World Cup, the Winter Olympics, an election, restructured trade deals, and many other events, people are still very interested in their investments, making money, and achieving their financial goals. According to Google Trends: the most searched “what is…?” was “Bitcoin.” Number seven for “How…

 The third quarter of 2018 was generally good for the U.S. stock markets, especially large growth companies. The fairly strong U.S. markets were mostly offset by foreign stock market performance. The strengthening U.S. dollar provided a strong headwind for foreign investments, especially the emerging markets asset class. The U.S. economy seems to have responded to…

After a very tumultuous first quarter, the second quarter of the year seemed pretty tame.  The talk of tariffs and diplomatic meetings with North Korea dominated most of the financial headlines, while the major stock indexes bounced around near zero for the year. The U.S. stock market represented by the S&P 500, and international stock…

The first quarter of 2018 is a tale of two periods—the first three weeks of January and the remaining 60 days. At the beginning of the year, the positive momentum from last year continued with stable, solid global stock market gains. At the end of January, the largest U.S. stocks represented by the Russell 1000…