brought to you by Phil Blancato, Osaic's Chief Market Strategist ECONOMIC REVIEW1 The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index reached a nine-month high of 7, easily beating consensus expectations of 99.5. This marked the largest monthly gain since March 2021 as higher stock and home prices, along with a more accommodative Federal Reserve (Fed) helped increase […]
brought to you by Philip Blancato, Osaic's Chief Market Strategist ECONOMIC REVIEW1 New home sales increased 4.1% month-over-month in September to an annualized rate of 738,000, which beat consensus This marked the largest monthly gain since last year. Sales have risen 6.3% compared to a year ago. Declining mortgage rates leading up to the Fed’s […]
brought to you by Phil Blancato, Osaic's Chief Market Strategist ECONOMIC REVIEW1 Retail sales rose 4% in September, beating consensus expectations of a 0.3% increase for the month. Retail sales are up 7% in the last year. “Core” sales, excluding the often-volatile categories of autos, building materials, and gas stations, rose 8% in September and […]
brought to you by Phil Blancato, Osaic's Chief Market Strategist ECONOMIC REVIEW1 The latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report revealed headline inflation was hotter than expected on both a month over month (MoM) and year over year (YoY) basis, rising 0.2% and 2.4%, respectively. The YoY reading declined compared to last month, but it was […]
Living the realities of risk and reward. Asset allocation is important because it helps investors manage the risk and rewards of investing. In general, investments have different levels of risk and the potential return (or reward) for taking that level of risk is a higher return. For example, investing in stocks typically has greater risk […]
The Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index hit a new all-time high last week. The S&P 500 has had quite a year. Despite a sharp downturn in August when investor confidence was ruffled by concerns about economic growth, the Index was up about 20 percent, year-to-date, at the end of last week. The gains were […]
Rates moved lower and stocks moved higher. In 2022, the United States Federal Reserve (Fed) began raising interest rates as it battled high rates of inflation. That year prices rose 8 percent, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. In 2023, prices increased more slowly (4.1 percent), but still advanced at a pace that was […]
There was good news last week! Inflation continued to trend lower. The Consumer Price Index showed that inflation was 2.5 percent year over year (yoy) in August. That’s lower than economists had expected, and a significant decline from July’s 2.9 percent. Food and energy prices have been falling faster than some other prices because the […]
Investing in September can be like biting into a jelly doughnut and finding boiled cabbage—full of unwelcome surprises. “History suggests September is the worst month of the year in terms of stock-market performance,” reported Isabel Wang of Morningstar. The Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index “has generated an average monthly decline of 1.2%...dating back to […]