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.”
Financial markets were volatile this week, influenced by mixed messages from the Federal Reserve. The Fed minutes released on Wednesday were dovish, suggesting little chance of a Fed rate hike, while San Francisco Fed President Williams
The stock market was up for the week with the S&P 500 returning .20 percent. During the week, the S&P 500 climbed to an all-time high on Thursday. Bonds were higher in price and lower in yield with the 10-year Treasury moving from a
With the opening ceremonies of the Rio Olympics set to begin tonight and on the heels of a strong number in the month of July in which the U.S. added 255K jobs, stocks ended the week with a bang. This was meaningfully ahead of
The circus of two political party conventions and some big economic news did not sway the markets this week. Domestic equity markets remained relatively flat even with the S&P 500 setting another intra-day high. International equity markets
U.S. stocks ended the week near record highs with the S&P 500 trading above 2,170 and the Dow above 18,545. A gain for the week would mark the fourth consecutive weekly advance.
PORTLAND, Ore. – Ferguson Wellman Capital Management and West Bearing Investments were recently named by Financial Times to their “FT 300 Top Registered Investment Advisers” list.
According to their detailed methodology, the RIAs are first examined via the RIA database an
Investor confidence rallied the S&P 500 this week with the index climbing to all-time highs mid-week and returning more than one percent by the week’s end. Bonds were lower in price and higher in yield with the 10-year Treasury moving from a 1.43 percent yield on Monday to a 1.59 percent yield at
July 12, 2016 – Ferguson Wellman Capital Management has been named by Financial Advisor magazine as a top investment company.
Financial Advisor named Ferguson Wellman 45 out of 205 U.S. firms in the $1 billion-and-over asset category of their registered investment adviser (RIA) rankings. Ferguson Wellman is the
We are pleased to present our firm's 40-Year Report. In addition to sharing some milestones Ferguson Wellman and West Bearing Investments reached in 2015, we have collected facts, history and imagery that reflect who we are as a company and how Ferguson Wellman has grown over four decades. To read the report, please click here.
U.S. markets took Monday off to celebrate the 240th anniversary of our “Brexit.” Equity markets started the week by selling off while digesting cautious tones from the Bank of England. That news was counteracted Wednesday with a
PORTLAND, Ore. – July 8, 2015 – Ferguson Wellman Capital Management and its division, West Bearing Investments, are pleased to announce that the firm has been named by Portland Business Journal as top money managers in their 2016 Wealth Management and Financial Services Guide.
Great Britain threw investors a curve ball with its vote to exit the 28-nation European Union. Leading up to the vote, equities and commodities strengthened in anticipation of just the opposite outcome, so the reaction in asset prices after the vote was predictable —stocks and commodities fell while bonds and gold rose.
As we came into the week, markets were continuing to sell off in response to the U.K.’s vote to leave the EU. After falling 1.8 percent on Monday, the S&P 500 began to rally on Tuesday. Through today, the market was up over 3 percent this week. International stock marke
Great Britain threw financial markets a curve ball last night in voting to exit the European Union, with 52 percent of voters electing to leave the 28-nation economic block. In the days leading up to last night’s vote, equities and commodities
Stocks finished the week off by only 0.80 percent, recovering some of the losses suffered Thursday after the Fed voted to keep interest rates unchanged. Similarly, the Bank of Japan and Bank of England are also maintaining their monetary
Stocks finished the week roughly flat while flirting with all-time highs intra-week followed by selling off on low volume late in the week. More importantly, interest rates continue to test new lows. The 10-year Treasury yield fell from 1.8 percent
by Deidra Krys-Rusoff Senior Vice President
The S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and NASDAQ ended the week nearly flat from last Friday, despite a volatile trading day today. The financial sector retreated 1.4 percent, as investors’ hopes of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike dwindled on the release of today’s nonfarm payrolls report. Utilities and phone stocks rose this week, benefitting from the prospects of lower rates. The Bloomberg Commodity Index rose to a seven-month high and is nearing a level marking of a 20 percent advance from the gauge’s January bottom, close to meeting the common definition of a bull market. The dollar dropped and ended the day trading at $1.14 per euro. International markets were mixed, with European stocks slightly down and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index advancing 1.5 percent to a one-month high. The benchmark 10-year Treasury rallied, with rates falling 15 basis points over the week to yield of 1.70 percent.
What’s in a number? A lot, when the number is the nonfarm payrolls reporting significantly weaker than even the most pessimistic economist expected. May’s payroll numbers rose by a mere 38,000 versus the consensus estimate of 160,000. The report further muddied the economic waters by revising the April increase downwards to 123,000 from 160,000 and March’s numbers to 186,000 from the robustly reported 208,000 increase. The Verizon strike temporarily played into these numbers, subtracting roughly 40,000 from the overall job growth that should reverse after the strike ends. This boost, up to what would have been a gain of 78,000, is still shockingly low. The report shows that the labor market deceleration was widespread. Private-sector hiring was at 25,000 versus 130,000 in April and government hiring added a scant 13,000 jobs to the May numbers. Job losses were seen in construction, manufacturing and wholesale trade. Hiring in the paid professional and business sectors also showed slowing.
Markets initially took the news hard: The S&P 500 Index initially dropped as much as 1 percent from a recent seven month high, the dollar sold off against the euro, and bond prices increased dramatically – dropping the yield of the benchmark 10-year Treasury to 1.70 percent from 1.80. However, U.S. equities pared the early losses to around 0.2 percent as commodity producers extended gains.
The unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent, but this is unfortunately attributed to declining labor force participation or labor force dropouts. This year’s earlier rebound in jobs participation may be stalling out. One good piece of information from the government report was that the broader U-6 unemployment rate (which reflects underemployment) remained steady at 9.7 percent. Another positive note is that average hourly earnings advanced last month by 0.2 percent, which resulted in earnings 2.5 percent higher than last year’s levels.
The weak jobs number almost certainly takes a Federal Reserve rate hike off of the table for June. The Fed governors have repeatedly stated that their policy decisions will be data-dependent and we didn’t have to wait long to hear how the Fed governors feel about the number. Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations this morning and stated, “In this environment, prudent risk management implies there is a benefit to waiting for additional data to provide confidence that domestic activity has rebounded strongly and reassurance that near-term international events will not derail progress toward our goals.” Prior to the jobs report release, the market was pricing in one to two hikes for the remainder of the year. Now the market is placing odds of a hike below 50 percent for July, September and November.
One stand-alone jobs number does not make a trend and this could easily be a one-time blip on the radar. As noted earlier, unemployment numbers are often revised in months following releases and this extremely low number may be revised upwards in coming months. While predicting unemployment numbers is a fool’s game, we can confidently predict that everyone will be watching and waiting for the June unemployment numbers release on July 8.
Our Takeaways for the Week:
On June 23, voting citizens of the United Kingdom will vote on a referendum to leave or remain in the European Union. This possible departure has been nicknamed “Brexit”, a word that merges “Britain” and the word “exit.” The European
Ferguson Wellman is pleased to announce that Michael Garcia has joined the firm as chief technology officer. He is responsible for strategic planning and implementation of all information systems and related hardware, integration of all existing and new operation systems and management of all technology vendor relationships.
