The month of April proved to be a particularly stormy continuation of market volatility, bringing with it negative returns in both the stock and bond markets all around the world. In the United States, the S&P 500 declined over 8.7% and the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index was down almost 3.8%, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ 100 Index was down over 13.3%, its worst single month since October 2008. Read More

Last Friday, Vanguard and other fund companies announced they would be selling all holdings related to Russian stocks or bonds over the weekend, pursuant to international sanctions. Read More

By Phil Daniels, CFP®, AIF® When most people think of investing, they think of public markets – the stock and bond markets we all see discussed on television.  However, there is another way to invest that has been around for a much longer time, but only more recently has become more accessible to investors –… Read More

Overnight, Russia officially attacked Ukraine, and global markets are responding negatively. All of this comes on the heels of what has already been a challenging start to the new year, especially for US stocks. International stocks had fared better year-to-date, which was largely the result of a more hawkish US Federal Reserve relative to other… Read More

To be clear, the title of this article isn’t a prediction that a bear market is imminent.  In fact, there are a lot of reasons to think it may be a while before the next full blown bear market which would be marked by a 20% or greater decline. The US economy is still growing… Read More

The year 2021 was one of persistent optimism. It began with the hope the pandemic would wane and the world would look more normal by the end of the year. Although we’ve continued to make good progress toward that goal, COVID remains stubbornly persistent and fiendishly adaptable. The US stock market was fairly resolute in… Read More

It’s impressive to see how far we’ve come since the pandemic began, but many storylines continue to unfold. From near complete global lockdowns to the discovery, large scale production, and now global distribution of the vaccine, slowly but surely, progress is making its way through the global economy. Early on, the rebound in the US… Read More

The second quarter saw the continuation of a powerful economic recovery due to fading of the pandemic and massive fiscal and monetary stimulus. US vaccinations have increased significantly with 46% of US adults now fully vaccinated, 54% with at least one dose, and 86% of the population over age 65 having received at least one… Read More

It’s fair to say a lot happened in the first quarter of 2021. We began the quarter with a contested election, and then the inauguration of a new administration. The investing lexicon expanded as we experienced our first (but likely not the last) “meme stock craze”. By the end of the quarter, 97.6 million people… Read More

For most of the last decade, the US stock market had been trending generally higher year after year. That was until the fourth quarter of 2018 gave us a scare. Back then we remarked how it was the first drop of greater than 15% in seven years and how unusual that was (because on average it happens once every three years – see the chart below, a version of which we also shared in our 2018 year-end market commentary). Read More