Last year, Barron’s magazine asked ten top strategists to predict where the S&P 500 would end 2020. Their range was 3,000 to 3,700. The final number was 3,756 for a year-over-year return of 16.3%—much better than expected. Had the strategists possessed foreknowledge that a global pandemic would shut down the services economy and send unemployment…
2020 is making it harder to talk about “markets” as if they are a common entity and not thousands of individual companies facing dramatically different challenges and opportunities. I could say that “the market” is up through the third quarter, but that would be a poor description of the year so far. What has really…
9 minute read Here’s what 2020 has thrown at us so far: a global pandemic, economic depression, tens of millions unemployed, zero-percent interest rates, unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus, an explosion in the debt and deficit, and social unrest in the form of riots and protests. And there’s a presidential election in four months. Meanwhile…
When it comes to your finances, “go with your gut” might not be the wisest adage to follow. In fact, it may work against you, particularly in periods of market turbulence. Before jumping to conclusions about your finances, consider what biases may be at work beneath your conscious radar. Recency bias refers to the tendency…
Last quarter was unprecedented in many ways. Global economic activity basically stopped as the world sought to slow COVID-19 infections and protect the health care system by ‘flattening the curve’. The efforts seem to be working, with strong evidence that the worst of the contagion has passed. Virus-induced deaths will likely turn out to be…
In investing, there are years when nothing happens and there are years when decades happen. 2020 will be one of the latter. At today’s close, the S&P 500 is down 29% from the February 19 highs. This is the sixteenth “bear market” in the modern era—defined as a decline of 20% or more from a…
Yesterday the Dow fell 1,190 points—the largest point decline in history. It sounds apocalyptic, but it was only the 125th worst percentage decline. It matters how we measure these things. Yet all we hear are stories about points. Take from that what you will. In all, the S&P 500 lost 11.45% this week, a swift…
The outbreak of the coronavirus has damaged investor confidence, resulting in back-to-back declines of 3% in the S&P 500 on Monday and Tuesday. It’s unsettling, but not uncommon; we’ve now had 80 such daily declines of 3% or more since 1990. Putting aside today’s performance, U.S. markets fell 7.6% from last week’s record high; notable,…
Time to read: 8 minutes We’re starting the new decade amid a record economic expansion. While it hasn’t been a particularly strong expansion, it certainly has been durable. The widespread narrative this time last year was that without a trade deal with China, the economy and the market wouldn’t get traction. Clearly that was not true,…
A Marathon for Everyone Recently, I went to cheer on a friend running in her first marathon. The excitement of watching thousands of people accomplish such an amazing goal was an experience like no other. I waited at the last bend before the finish line so I’d have a good vantage point for cheering my…
