George Hosfield, CFA, discusses Ferguson Wellman's quarterly strategy titled, "Inflation's Flame Flickers," which addresses the narrow market leadership, the impact of higher interest rates on inflation and how assets are priced at this stage of the economic cycle.
George Hosfield, CFA, discusses the firm's quarterly strategy titled "Stalemate," which highlights the Fed's ongoing battle to tame inflation along with our views on the health of the banking industry and capital market expectations for the balance of the year.
Director and Chief Investment Officer George Hosfield, CFA, discusses the Fed raising interest rates, peaking inflation and our view on equities and volatility across all asset classes in our Investment Strategy titled, “Balancing Act.”
While market participants were keenly focused on fresh inflation data this week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed another milestone, passing 40,000 for the first time. Whenever the stock market reaches a new territory, we always want to revisit what the world was like when our firm was founded in 1975. When Ferguson Wellman opened its doors, the Dow traded at a price of 616.
This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a strong jobs report for the month of August, with nonfarm payroll employment rose by nearly 1.4 million.
This week, Alphabet Inc., parent company to Google, became the fourth company to join the “trillion-dollar market value club,” that includes Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. Besides the significance of their “trillion dollar” size, why do we care so much about the market value of these companies?
With a week subdued by a day of mourning, traders hoped market volatility would follow suit: it did not. In less than three trading sessions the S&P 500 traded down five percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 1,400 points and small cap stocks lost 6 percent.
Trade concerns weighed on stocks this week resulting in a 1 percent decline for the S&P 500, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling close to 2 percent. Large-cap industrial stocks have taken the brunt of the pain due to their exposure to export markets, as well as increasing steel and aluminum costs due to recent tariffs.
Stocks picked up where they left off in 2017, rising across market caps and geographies for each of the first four trading days of the new year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average eclipsed the 25,000 mark this week and it took just 23 trading days to gain its latest 1,000 points—the fastest such gain in index history.
The slow creep higher in the markets continued this week. The S&P 500 finished the week up 0.12 percent with financials stocks leading the way, up 2 percent. The ADP jobs report on Wednesday and the nonfarm payroll today gave us “not too hot, not too cold” readings.
