Spice Up Your Yields

The 30-year bear market in bonds has reduced yields to paltry levels. The 10-year Treasury has frequently hovered near 1.6% in recent months, yet it has averaged 6% over the past 50 years. Because bond prices move in the opposite direction of interest rates, investors...

Market Update – Spring 2013

Supported by an accommodative Federal Reserve, U.S. economic fundamentals continue to grudgingly improve.  Unemployment is slowly falling, home prices are rising, and corporate earnings and profitability are near record highs.  Stimulative Fed actions appear to be...

Market Update – Winter 2013

The end of 2012 produced some major media-induced worries with November’s Election, December’s Mayan end-of-the-world prediction and the Fiscal Cliff.  And yet, despite all those looming disasters, we’ve just come through a year in which stock returns were not...

Market Update – Fall 2012

The strong stock market in recent months seems to suggest that things are pretty good, while our analysis warns us that serious risks and challenges remain. Here are some of the short-term positives the market has been reflecting: The European Central Bank (ECB) is...

Market Update – Summer 2012

Fueled by the lack of bad news out of Europe, the market continues its climb back to the 2012 high it reached in April. There is hope that fiscal and monetary cooperation in the region could keep the fiscal crisis from spinning out of control. However, recent market...