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Taking Stock of the Tech Turbulence
April 10, 2018 | Market Commentary
Recent news in the tech sector has been weighing on markets. An Uber self-driving car in Arizona killing a pedestrian, Facebook fighting a vicious public relations battle over user privacy and data collection, and President Trump repeatedly attacking Jeff Bezos and Amazon are just a sample of a …
Escalating Risks of Protectionism and Tariffs
March 22, 2018 | Market Commentary
In a recent post, we discussed some of the sector implications that could result from recently enacted steel and aluminum tariffs. Here, we explore the potential second-order effects that a protectionist trade policy can have—both on the US, and on the broader global economy. For the first …
Inflation Worries Are Picking Up
March 19, 2018 | Market Commentary
The Federal Open Market Committee’s two-day policy meeting begins tomorrow, March 20, and investors are assigning a high probability that policymakers will hike interest rates by 25 basis points. With respect to the inflation outlook, the magnitude and frequency of changes to the Fed funds rate …
President Trump Approves Steel and Aluminum Tariffs
March 09, 2018 | Market Commentary
Last week, President Trump announced new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that have the potential to roil markets and impact trade relations with key allies and trading partners. The controversial tariffs, 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum, were formally approved on March 8 with few notable …
Implications of Tax Reform on Fixed Income
March 01, 2018 | Market Commentary
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is having a notable impact across wide swaths of the economy, and the fixed income market is no different. The bill’s key achievement of lowering the corporate tax rate is certainly a favorable outcome for a number of businesses and their investors. Smaller tax …
What Happened and What’s Next for Fixed Income
February 13, 2018 | Market Commentary
Looking Back: An Era of “Goldilocks” The past year brought cheer across the financial markets. The world saw synchronized global growth and soft inflation readings, and with the exception of recent market gyrations, volatility persisted near historically low levels. Nothing was “too hot or too …
Volatility Awakens
February 06, 2018 | Market Commentary
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) gave up more than 1,100 points yesterday in its largest one-day point decline on record. The S&P 500 dropped 4.1% for the day, and the CBOE Volatility (VIX) Index more than doubled. The downward move in equities began early last week, and the selloff …
Implications of the Federal Government Shutdown
January 22, 2018 | Market Commentary
Early Saturday morning, after Senate lawmakers failed to pass a short-term funding bill, the U.S. federal government began a shutdown of all non-essential services in the first federal government shutdown since October 2013. To reopen the government, the Senate needs a 60 vote supermajority, …
Retail Fights Back
January 19, 2018 | Market Commentary
Amazon gets all the headlines and for good reason; the online retailer is a juggernaut and has so far disrupted nearly every corner of retail. Its subscription service, Amazon Prime, is growing by millions of people each year, and after its recent acquisition of Whole Foods, Amazon has …
A Bitcoin Education
January 03, 2018 | Market Commentary
Bitcoin is on a meteoric rise. The cryptocurrency rose more than 13x in 2017 and has risen exponentially since first breaking onto the scene early this decade. While bitcoin’s price has soared at an astounding, orders-of-magnitude scale, the road has not always been smooth. From the day of the …
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