Last week the stock market had the biggest rally since the pandemic bear market beginning in March 2020. Only after large market moves is it “easy” to determine why such market moves actually happened. Hindsight analysts always look smart! Going forward, predictions are all over the map, but the consensus for GDP growth for 2022 is still 3.6%, indicating strong economic growth. 2023 is still in the range of 2.5% toward the higher end of growth over the last 10 years.
This week, the Federal Reserve raised the Fed Funds rate from 0-.25% to .25-.50%. This raise has been promised since the end of last year. It is not a surprise and is probably the first of a number of rate increases this year. The Fed has raised its expectation for inflation this year only to over 4% with lower expectations to 2.6% for 2023, above the Fed goal of 2%.
Action item: Download Form 1099s for all applicable accounts. For SAS managed accounts at TD Ameritrade Institutional: Log in with your username and password at www.advisorclient.com Choose tab "Documents" Then choose from the left "Tax Documents" Finally, download all listed 2021 Form 1099 documents Do the same for all other accounts outside of SAS/TD Sign up for e-delivery of tax documents by logging into www.advisorclient.com, then clicking My Profile > Communication Preferences. Perspective Out of...
Action item: Download Form 1099s for all applicable accounts. For SAS managed accounts at TD Ameritrade Institutional: Log in with your username and password at www.advisorclient.com Choose tab "Documents" Then choose from the left "Tax Documents" Finally, download all listed 2021 Form 1099 documents Do the same for all other accounts outside of SAS/TD Sign up for e-delivery of tax documents by logging into www.advisorclient.com, then clicking My Profile > Communication Preferences. A tsunami...
We are officially in correction territory as far as the SP 500 and Nasdaq 100 are concerned. The Fed has been promising an increase in the fed funds rate as well as a halt to the Fed's purchases of bonds. Quantitative easing is over for the time being.
According to a certain slice of Wall Street, each year we hear that this is the year of the stock picker. The latest is Goldman Sachs stating that this is the year that “alpha” returns. Alpha is a calculation that differentiates the value that an investment strategy brings to an investment strategy or stock picking ( https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/alpha.asp). Every year, we hear this same analysis! Why and who proclaims this? Well, it is the Wall Street...
In our work, because our relationship with clients is more than about the data and outcome of financial planning scenarios, we talk about many issues. This has been our practice since the beginning and because I have an M.Ed. in counseling and experience as a therapist, psychology and mental health are always concerns of ours. We are financial planners with a strong interest in mental health and many of our conversations with clients and each other involve issues of mental health.
The big news today after the stock market closed was a major disappointment on Metaverse or Facebook earnings with an after-hours decline in the stock price of 20%. Spotify joined Meta in disappointing earnings and also dropped after hours. This is one day after Alphabet or Google reported blow-out earnings and moved the market higher in general today. Volatility continues on a daily basis as measured by the Volatility Index or VIX that uses options...
There have been two consistent messages from the Federal Reserve since the last quarter of 2021-rates are heading higher and the economy is growing.
Lo and behold the first two weeks of 2022 are testing the “best investment strategy” of 2022 as articulated by Jason Zweig from the WSJ and quoted by us last week. Buying the dips because stocks will bounce back has not worked so far. That might change tomorrow but so far “don’t fight the Fed” is dominating market action. Markets decline faster than they go up and, sure enough, market averages are facing sharp declines...
Stocks have sold off in the first couple of weeks in anticipation of the Fed following through with either 3 or 4 interest rate raises in 2022 based on concern about inflation and confidence that the economy is in sound shape-whatever that means. Does their analysis include the omicron impact on the economy? So many questions and few answers. Jason Zweig in his weekly column in the WSJ says “I think the best investment for...
Happy new year and thank you for being valued clients for another year. Whew! We made it and it feels good that we can say our goodbyes to 2021. My wife reminded me that although we had many problems in the past year, there was good happening too. We have some stability and predictability with our government. The political chaos at the top is calmer. A vaccine that is very effective, with booster shots has...
