For the first time in a decade, the S&P 500 Index posted a calendar year loss. Meantime, the domestic investment-grade fixed income market barely managed to turn positive for the year, the primary savior likely having been a flight to safety wrought by the equity market’s decline. The recent, rather sharp rebound in equities has […]

For the past two years, we’ve made a point to highlight the natural ebbs and flows of global investible markets. A major part of the rationale was that over the past couple of years markets have been much less ebby and flowy than history suggests is possible...normal. Acknowledging that market-related headlines have turned qualitatively ugly […]

Usually not so many at once. While international equity markets have been pressured most of the year, U.S. equities are sharply lower since the end of September. While it’s generally usually more than a bit of a guessing game establishing causes for such shifts in market performance, we think the sudden severity of the recent […]

International stocks have strongly underperformed U.S. stocks this year. Such a large gap may lead many to questioning the value of owning stocks outside the U.S. As part of our investment approach, we see the inclusion of international equities as a natural extension of the diversification we pursue in all our portfolio exposures. Indeed, we […]

For the second time this year, the S&P 500 Index has experienced a near 10% dive from its short-term peak. As those short-term peaks were also all-time peaks, the plunges have generated an extra amount of drama in regard to their meanings. A range of obvious pressures remain: healthy-at-the-present but unknown future macroeconomic performance against […]

Thinking about the past three months, the word divergence comes to mind. Within equities, U.S. stocks continued to pull away from global peers as the U.S. economy furthered similar feats of distinction. Beginning later in the quarter and hastening in the current one, the domestic bond market sank anew, representing for many a departure from […]