Market Insights
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September 6, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
The Federal Reserve’s highly restrictive interest rate policy is taking its toll, as interest rate sensitive sectors of the economy are rolling over. The pace of job creation continues to slow but…
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August 22, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
The Federal Reserve’s focus is shifting from inflation to the labor market as continued economic strength comes into question. Recent revisions have shown that job growth over the past year was not as…
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September 5, 2024 | COMMENTARY
How short-term bubbles can lead to revolutionary innovation and in turn, long-term economic growth. We anticipate the AI investment boom to follow the same patterns we’ve seen throughout history. Last Thursday, Nvidia…
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August 16, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
Volmageddon isn’t what it used to be. Perhaps increased interest in the index has made the VIX an example of Goodhart’s Law—when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Equities…
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August 9, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
On Sunday night the Bank of Japan (BOJ) unexpectedly raised interest rates, adding fuel to the fire in already skittish equity markets. Investors were on edge after the prior week’s payroll report…
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August 6, 2024 | COMMENTARY
After a decade of tech dominance, we’re seeing a major rotation in the market. Large-cap growth stocks, led by giants like Microsoft, have recently been overshadowed as money flows into small-cap value stocks. Over just two weeks following the…
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July 30, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
After a remarkable stretch of outperformance, the magnificent seven are finally taking a break. Recent selling pressure has been concentrated in the largest stocks, dragging the broad indices lower…
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July 30, 2024 |
As the public becomes more informed about artificial intelligence and machine learning, here are our five core principles of responsible use of Artificial Intelligence as it specifically relates to making investment decisions.
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July 23, 2024 | COMMENTARY
Over the last decade, the largest tech companies have consistently and significantly outperformed the rest of the market. Last week, seemingly catalyzed by the July 8th CPI report, we saw a complete unwind of the trade…
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July 18, 2024 | COMMENTARY
By many measures market indices sit at extremes. Concentration and the outperformance of growth stocks are both at historic highs—reminiscent of the tech bubble. While the valuations of the largest companies have expand…
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July 12, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
A surprise decline in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) set off a massive rotation in the equity markets. Only time will tell whether this is a change in trend or a repositioning. The economy clearly isn’t…
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June 28, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
Performance of the technology sector vs the broad market is reaching extremes, as investors continue to pile into the momentum trade. Recent price action has been bizarre, with the S&P 500 price…
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June 17, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
The Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) left the Federal Funds Rate unchanged in June. The committee also updated their economic projections, which appear stale after a spate of weaker than expected…
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June 7, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
U.S. Nonfarm Payrolls smashed expectations again but there are signs below the surface that the labor market is coming back into balance. A balanced labor market with less employee turnover may allow…
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May 23, 2024 | ECONOMICS & INVESTING
Have Inflation concerns returned? We’ve long been prepared to move on from the over analysis of monthly inflation data, confident the majority of inflation would prove transitory, leaving investors to focus on economic growth…
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May 17, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
Recent economic data has surprised to the downside, strengthening the case for rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. So far, markets are looking through the near-term weakness as companies’ profit…
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May 2, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
Earnings season is well underway, and thus far, the data has exceeded expectations. This may be partially explained by an unexpected surge in consumer spending in March, following a weak start to the…
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April 26, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
Slowing wage growth and sticky inflation could become a problem for U.S. consumers. Those at the lower end of the income spectrum are already struggling. As interest rates creep back towards the highs…
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April 18, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
Interest rates are moving higher as continued economic strength has tempered the market’s expectations for rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. With less than a week to go until the first advance release…
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April 17, 2024 | COMMENTARY
The Decathlon strategies had an excellent quarter with all asset allocation models beating their asset mixture benchmarks (on a net and gross basis). This was achieved despite below neutral equity exposure for most of the quarter. Once again…
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April 4, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
The U.S. economy continues to stand out relative to its developed world peers, despite sending many mixed messages. Consumers are still spending but, in addition to higher credit card debt, they are…
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March 15, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for February rose in-line with expectations, but the headline number remains higher than the Federal Reserve’s target and there remain some concerning readings under the…
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February 23, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
It may be too early to claim victory on inflation. Higher than anticipated inflation in shelter pushed up core inflation more than expected, but that wasn’t the only concerning category in the report…
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February 16, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
It may be too early to claim victory on inflation. Higher than anticipated inflation in shelter pushed up core inflation more than expected, but that wasn’t the only concerning category in the report…
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February 2, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
The U.S. economy continues to defy expectations. January’s non-farm payrolls report smashed expectations and December’s report was revised higher. Productivity growth in the fourth quarter was higher…
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January 29, 2024 | ECONOMICS & INVESTING
For much of 2023, investors were leery of holding traditional risk assets given the attractive prospects of riskless cash yielding over 5%, and the poor trailing performance of nearly all cash-flowing assets. While the recent decline in rates…
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January 26, 2024 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
Consumers are perking up as we begin the new year. Sentiment is beginning to turn on the future economic outlook, and consumers are feeling positive about their financial health. Economic momentum…
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January 19, 2024 | COMMENTARY
We expect the best opportunities of 2024 to be outside of the largest U.S. companies. This could bode well for active management as it would mean more securities that outperform passive indices rather than less. We are well positioned…
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December 29, 2023 | FIRESIDE CHARTS
As we usher in the New Year, it’s an opportune time to reflect on the dynamics of the global economy and the financial markets. In this post, we’ll take a step back to explore seven charts that we’re…