Recent Commentary

  We are almost halfway through earnings season.  Earnings announcements are always important but maybe more so this quarter due to investors’ eagerness to see how inflation, including wage growth, is affecting companies’ bottom lines and outlooks for 2022.    So...

  There were a record number of new issues in 2021, but only 22% of IPOs were profitable. Yet people still pour money into them.  Investors hope to find the next Apple, Microsoft, or Tesla, but the odds are stacked against them.  Especially since few investors...

It is still very early to say much definitive about the Omicron variant of COVID. We do know that it has spread beyond the origin, it has a significant number of mutations on the spike protein of the virus, and has relatively high transmissibility.  Testing by vaccine...

Earnings results are deteriorating as earnings season rolls on. Beat rates are less than the last two quarters but still remain above average.  Both revenue and EPS misses are being punished.  Individual stocks have been down 3.2% on average for a miss on earnings...

Q.  If the government shuts down on October 1st, are stocks in for a rough patch? Goldman Sachs recently concluded that U.S. government shutdowns generally have not meaningfully impacted equity returns. In the 14 government shutdowns since 1980, the S&P 500 posted...

Fed Chair Powell's speech last Friday at the Jackson Hole economic policy symposium is key for investors to gauge short and intermediate-term monetary policy.  The bottom line is that easy monetary policy will remain for some time to come. The large number of hawks on...

This quarter's corporate earnings reports have been stellar. With about 40% of S&P 500 companies having now reported, 91% beat analyst expectations, the highest level on record according to Refinitiv.  But that doesn't mean their stock prices rose as a result.  In...

Technology stocks are back. After underperforming the broader market since last October, they sprang to life in June and early July.  Inflation fears have cooled which have sent rates lower, and the economy may be experiencing peak growth before the inevitable...

The booming economy will be a tailwind for corporate revenue while much of the pandemic-era cost cutting remains in place, boosting profit margins.  In fact, the S&P 500 components’ forward net profit margins stand at a record-high 12.8%, according to Yardeni...

Since the start of April, 87% of reporting companies have topped EPS forecasts, 75% have exceeded sales forecasts, 16% have raised guidance, and just 2% have lowered forecasts.  Overall, S&P 500 earnings growth is currently on pace to total 44% in the first...