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

Following the best quarterly performance for US stocks in 23 years, the S&P 500 continued to move higher throughout most of the third quarter. At one point in early September, the S&P 500 was +15.9% for the quarter and posting new all-time highs. Read More

Following the worst quarter for US stocks since the end of 2008, we have managed to tally the best quarter in 23 years, with the S&P 500 up 20.5% in the second quarter (including dividends). Since 1949, this was the fourth-best quarter – which followed the fifth-worst quarter. 2020 Q2 also featured impressive performance from… Read More

The first quarter of 2020 was a pretty rough one. The S&P 500 ended the quarter down 20.0% (down 19.6% on a total return basis, including dividends) – the worst quarterly return since the fourth quarter of 2008. As everyone knows by now, this was all due to the coronavirus and the toll of this… Read More