Heading into the new year, and the 2nd year of the 4-year presidential cycle, I would have expected to see a little more volatility, especially towards the end of the month. But so far, it’s been relatively calm. The S&P 500 had a mid-month pullback of about -2.5%...
As we close out 2025, it’s hard not to notice how different the end of the year looks compared to how it began. The first few months were volatile by any standard. At one point, the S&P 500 experienced a nearly -20% drawdown, while both the Small Cap Index and...
Ok, NOW we get the pullback that was expected in the September/October period. It already looks like the wave of fear has passed and we got a common 5%-ish pullback (I’m showing -5.07% on the SPY ETF). Textbook typical, nothing out of the ordinary. We still are in...
While October hasn’t been as “scary” as it could have been, the S&P 500 did manage a very quick -2.98% drawdown in two days (Oct 9th & 10th). But this pullback gave us an opportunity to add stock market exposure in a couple of models where we were looking to...
Contrary to market norms and general expectations, September has been surprisingly quiet, with no signs of market volatility. As of this writing (9/24/25), we’re halfway through what is typically the worst week of the entire year, but we’re only seeing very mild...
We were expecting volatility to pick up in August, but that hasn’t really happened. After a quick drop at the end of July, most broad indexes marched higher – at least until the middle of the month. After that, I think the market took a vacation and largely went...
This slow grind higher continues! July tends to be a strong month for the US Indexes according to seasonality, and it did grind higher, just not very quickly. But looking at seasonality, August is where things could get interesting. Or at the very least, more...
Much like in May, we saw the market hit a peak right at the midpoint of the month and then drift lower for a bit. But this time, it looks like the US Large Cap indexes are trying to continue their move higher. Seasonality also suggests that July tends to be a positive...
The first half of May felt like a solid continuation of the rally that started in the 2nd half of April (after the messy, tariff-driven market madness). However, since mid-May several US market indexes are slightly negative. So the rally is starting to show...
The month of April brought continued volatility, largely driven by headlines – so much so that the fundamental and technical views of the market didn’t provide much helpful guidance. And while there is a lot of debate as to how the current economic situation (mostly...
The month of March gave us something we haven’t seen since 2022 – a 10% pullback in the S&P 500. And while that can feel pretty brutal while it is happening, we’ve seen it recover about half of that drop already. The question now is: Can the market return to new...
The market volatility continues! After a positive January that recovered December losses, we’re now seeing another market pull-back that has the S&P 500 Index back below even for the month of February. But so far, this is all just in-line with what typical...
