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.”
This week, the equity market had a “shoot first, ask questions later” response to news surrounding DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup company that claimed to achieve ChatGPT-level performance at a fraction of the cost. This news sent a shockwave through the technology sector, sparking a frenzy of speculation and questions about AI innovation.
When my family gathers around the holidays, we enjoy catching up on Jeopardy episodes with our two daughters. As they are both educators, it can be difficult for my wife and me to keep up, but it can also get pretty competitive. In one episode, I had the upper hand as the category was the “Magnificent Seven.” Luckily, this didn’t refer to the movies but to the seven stocks dominating the stock market. In investing circles, the term “Magnificent Seven,” or Mag-7, is well known, and I was surprised it had become recognizable enough to be a Jeopardy category. Unfortunately, while I was the first to “buzz in” and answer correctly in this category, I wasn’t as fortunate the rest of the game.
Chocolate-loving parents may be in for a sour surprise as they rummage through their children’s Halloween candy this year. With cocoa prices double the levels seen last year, food companies are getting creative, reducing the size of chocolate bars and adding more non-chocolate treats to their Halloween candy bags for sale. Trick-or-treaters weren’t the only ones to experience an eventful week, as an action-packed capital markets provided investors with their own bag of surprises to unpack.
Nvidia has become a daily fixture in tech news, but amid the constant buzz is a remarkable phenomenon with its unprecedented revenue and earnings growth.
It was an action-packed week headlined by Wednesday’s economic “doubleheader.” The Federal Reserve’s June meeting took place the same day as the release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation report.
As expected, the Federal Reserve raised its target interest rate this week by 0.25% to 5.25 – 5.50%, marking the eleventh increase since March of 2022, bringing the interest rate to its highest level in 22 years.
“Have you used ChatGPT?” Wherever I go, whatever the context, I keep getting this same question. Clearly, the excitement around artificial intelligence (AI) is real… look at the stock market.
In an otherwise quiet week on Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 turned the page on one of its longest-running bear markets. Rebounding by over 20% from its October lows, the blue-chip index has officially surpassed the threshold marking a new bull market. What is notable about the advance from last fall’s lows is how few stocks have participated in the upturn.
This week, there was a plethora of economic and company-specific news for investors to digest. Specifically, the release of first quarter U.S. GDP, reported quarterly earnings by major technology companies and the unanimous vote by Twitter’s board to approve Elon Musk’s offer to take the company private. In response to this news, the market declined 4%, with all of the weekly losses occurring Friday afternoon.
Some while ago as I was preparing for my first solo overseas flight, I told a friend in the aviation industry that I disliked turbulence; the stomach-churning drops and swings were too sudden and unpredictable for my appetite.
This week, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell announced that later this month the Fed will begin “tapering” its asset purchase program now that the economy has moved past the need for extraordinary stimulus. As a reminder, to combat the recessionary effects of the pandemic and stimulate the economy, the Fed reduced interest rates to 0% and reintroduced an asset purchase program to the tune of $120 billion per month. By any measure, this is a remarkably large stimulus program.
A week that began with the sharpest pullback in equities since last fall concluded in remarkable fashion, as investor concerns about the economic repercussions of rising COVID-19 infections gave way to an increasingly constructive second quarter earnings season.
Last November, Pfizer announced a 95 percent efficacy of their COVID-19 vaccine. Since that time, there has been a notable shift in leadership within the stock market.
On the back of the strongest election week returns since 1932, markets rallied sharply to begin this week as Pfizer announced 90 percent efficacy on a COVID-19 vaccine. Even more, the industries performing best were those most sensitive to economic momentum, instead of the “stay-at-home” trade that has dominated the market for the majority of the year with Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google accounting for around 80 percent of the S&P 500 return.
For many, 2020 has been a year to forget. Headlined by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing global response, stimulus from central banks and governments has helped limit the damage, as the U.S. economy has now experienced its shortest and steepest recession ever.
The aggressive fiscal and monetary response to the COVID-19 crisis has been unprecedented in terms of speed and magnitude. A common topic we receive from clients is about the risk of inflation as a result of the response to the crisis.
Adoption of socially responsible, or more commonly referred to as Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing, has gone into a parabolic growth phase.
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 some 90 percent of the S&P 500 having now reported third quarter earnings, investors have responded favorably to a plurality of companies delivering better than expected numbers.
