Is the Global Economic Slowdown in the Past? The financial markets over the past six months, with the general increase in volatility, have led investors to feel like they are riding a rollercoaster. We had persistent declines in the fourth quarter of 2018, and then a strong rebound in stock prices during the first quarter…
“Roads? Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads” If time travel with Marty McFly and Doc Emmett Brown taught us anything, the future may never be certain. With 2018 now in the books, the one certainty investors have been forced to come to terms with, is uncertainty. While the fourth quarter of 2018 was extremely…
October 26, 2018Special Market Update The Current Decline, Market Outlook, and the Weatherstone Investment Strategy October has turned into a volatile month, as concerns over rising interest rates caused a rapid 5% drop in stocks over a two-day period earlier in the month, followed by a brief rebound over a few days, which then lead…
Rising Rates and Weakening Global Growth May Hamper the Post-Election Stock Market Rally Patrick Henry, one of the Founding Fathers of our country, is also well known for his quote that, “I know of no way judging the future but by the past.” That is sound advice and it is typically prudent to pay attention…
Tug of War Weakening Global Economic Growth and Positive Post-Election Historical Trends 2018 has been a challenging year for financial markets around the world. The combination of slowing economic growth outside of the U.S., interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, trade and tariff skirmishes with major trading partners, and the historical tendency for investors…
Here we are, midway through 2018 and we have an economy that is performing well, along with financial markets that are struggling to produce positive returns. If the stock market is a proxy for the underlying economy, then why the disconnect, and should we be concerned? Consider the returns of many of the major market…
Sir John Templeton, one of the greatest money managers of the past century was famous for his observation that the bottom of a bear market or significant stock market decline was also the “point of maximum pessimism.” Historical analysis shows this tends to be true, and the opposite also tends to be correct: a peak…
This past week the stock market, as measured by the S&P 500, wrapped up its best January performance since 1997, up 5.6%. It was also its worst weekly performance in two years, with the S&P 500 down 3.85%. Many investors are wondering what is going on with the market, and is this something that we…
Welcome to 2018! Despite the expectations for 2017 being a year of above-average volatility due to the big political shift caused by the Presidential election, it didn’t happen. As we moved into the new year, as far as stock markets were concerned, all the drama going on in the nation’s capital was more of a…
One of the biggest challenges that we as investors face is our own natural tendencies, or as many economists describe it, our behavioral biases. These cover such areas as anchoring biases, where we adjust our expectations of where prices should go, based upon where prices have recently been. The disposition effect, whereby we tend to…