Market Review

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Our monthly Market Review commentary provides a simple, easy-to-understand assessment of the economy and financial markets.

Have specific questions? Feel free to send us a message.

Twirls in the Sand

Corners of the Marketplace

Marketplace valuations have reached new heights, and interest rates have revisited lows. So naturally, it is normal to experience more uneasiness and weariness around the limits of financial returns, creating heightened awareness in all those involved. Indeed, anything vaguely connected with the delta-variant, inflation, credit defaults, government deadlocks, and challenging ...
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Money and Politics

Money & Politics

A significant sum of US dollars has gone into global market operations since the last round of stimulus efforts began. Specifically, the M2 money stock increased to over 20 trillion US dollars from the 15.5 trillion dollars in place less than twenty four months ago. This magnitude of US dollar ...
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Financial Institution

The Non-Invisible Hand

This recent, cyclical economic upturn has caused demand for goods and services to increase much faster than supply, creating pockets of disequilibrium throughout the economy. Free and fair markets representing physical assets, products or services, labor, and even financial sector components have one common characteristic: each seems to be experiencing ...
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Hourglass

Change is Speculative

In little time, the temporary and deflationary change that COVID-19 brought reversed into another leg up for the business cycle and inflation. Trillions of dollars went into the economy to keep expenditures upright through the pandemic. Without the increase in money supply, government loans, and transfer payments, the economy may ...
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Rotations

Looking at Rotations with an Economic Lens

The distinction between value and growth stocks attracts a lot of attention in the intersection of asset management and research. Portfolio management decisions are usually not made without making some considerations for the two investment styles. Value stocks became famous on the belief that they pay investors a risk premium ...
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Two roads diverge

Unpacking Inflation

Running large government deficits over an indefinite timeframe is generally inflationary to the economy. The purpose of federal deficits is to increase the supply of money when economic conditions are challenging. The US government has used significant deficit spending to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, concerns are growing that the ...
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Steps

SPAC Impact on Investing

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) have become a popular topic for discussion in the mainstream conversation of finance in recent months. The primary purpose of a SPAC is to make a public offering of a private company. In SPACs, private companies are able to go public without needing to go ...
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Circles

Expansionary Links

People need currency to conduct financial transactions in the economy. The demand function for currency says that lesser quantities of currency are demanded when interest rates are high, and larger quantities are in demand when rates are low. Currency supply, on the other hand, is generally fixed at any one ...
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Couple playing video game

A Short Seller Squeeze

An unusual amount of stock speculation has taken place in a handful of distressed stocks as of late. One such stock is GameStop, a video game retailer, which has become a subject of popular conversation and a source of hedge fund pain. The GameStop story paints a current event example ...
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Tinted Lens

2020 in Hindsight

A historic year has finally come to an end and this new year will help usher in a wave of optimism. 2020 was undoubtedly a challenging year for all, but societies around the world were able to display resilience and prove that human ingenuity is capable of solving complex problems ...
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Vaccination

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November brought several large events that drove equity returns higher. The trailing one-month returns on stocks were large enough to push all year-to-date returns on the major stock categories positive for the year. The returns on out-of-favor stock categories like small-cap, value, and international saw their year-to-date losses reverse into ...
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Tunnel of Trees

A Better Time Ahead

The election month for a new president and congress is finally here, and the new administration will definitely step in with a tall order to fill. Uphill challenges will obviously be met as conditions for human disease prevention and economic policy are still in need of help. The economy is ...
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Digital Graph

Inside the Stock Index

Monthly returns in the total world stock index slid for the first time since the recovery began in April. Even with returns slipping in September, the total world stock index hangs on to slim gains to finish out the first three-quarters of the year. Returns in the total world stock ...
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