The new year is off to a volatile start. It's not exactly bad, but it's not that great either. If you look at January by itself, the market looks strong. But if you look at it next to December or even back to November, the S&P 500 hasn’t made much progress...

2024 has been a surprisingly mixed year. While the main US indexes (the S&P 500 and NASDAQ-100) showed solid performance, most diversification beyond these two indexes did little to help portfolios. The US Small Cap, International, and Emerging Markets Indexes all...

Here we are, in the final stretch of 2024.  And with both the US election and the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decisions (mostly) behind us, we should now be able to finish the year on a positive note.  Historically, we are now in the best 3 months for the stock...

Usually, this time of year is much more volatile than what we’ve seen so far.  And quite often September and October are the months that have the biggest market drawdowns or biggest sell-offs in any given year.  But this year?  Nope, this fall has been surprisingly...

Volatility (often measured by the VIX index) has been relatively higher since mid-July, as expected for this part of the year. However, the stock market indexes haven’t been down as much as Seasonality would normally suggest this far into September. That’s not to say...

Things are getting interesting out there in the market.  August started off with a drastic sell-off, led by the NASDAQ and Technology sectors.  Other indexes like the S&P 500 and Russell 2000, and even bond indexes, eventually followed.  Then, as if there was no...

The second half of 2024 started off well enough for most global stock markets.  That is, until we hit mid-month, and what had been the clear leaders so far this year became the weakest parts of the market.  Technology and Communication sectors had been exceptionally...

We are just about at the halfway point of 2024, and so far, there is a surprisingly large rift between what is working and what is not.  It should be of no surprise that any index that has included Nvidia (NVDA) stock has done well this year.  And if not, then not so...

While the market is looking good so far year-to-date, most of that “goodness” happened in January and February, and now the market has been sideways (hasn’t really made any progress) since mid-March.  April gave us a classic 5% pullback in the S&P 500, and May...

We are finally seeing the small pull-back or “correction” in the broad markets that we had been expecting since the year began.  So far, the S&P 500 has had a fairly classic 5% pullback that started right as the month began and lasted until the 19th.  What has to...