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Fall is here, the leaves are changing, the temperatures are falling and Halloween is around the corner. Unfortunately, the markets pre-empted Halloween’s arrival with their own ‘frightful’ performance. To start the third quarter, stocks rose 13% from July 1 until mid-August. Then, the Consumer Price Index came in higher than expected and the Federal Reserve…

Summer is upon us but there have been very few lazy days so far in the markets. In the second quarter, the S&P 500 fell 16%, mostly in June after record inflation data from April and May, bringing the Year-to-Date return down 20%, the worst start to a year since 1970. The rest of the…

With the Kansas Jayhawks beating the North Carolina Tar Heels in the NCAA basketball championships, March Madness is officially over. And for the markets, March was truly a month of madness as stocks and bonds declined significantly before a modest rebound. Overall, the first quarter of 2022 saw new highs for stocks early in the…

The final quarter of 2021 capped off a year with equity returns far higher than most investment strategists predicted or expected. While the S&P 500 gained 11% in the quarter, MSCI EAFE (international stocks) was up just 2.7% while MSCI Emerging Markets stocks fell 1.2%. And the Bloomberg Aggregate Bond index was flat. Both U.S.…