Author Archive
July 2018 – Monthly Commentary
July 2018 The dog days of summer are upon us and the U.S. market has been relatively calm despite the daily barrage of news from around the globe. That’s not to say that global macro events are not on the mind of investors. Quite to the contrary. Donald Trump’s trade war is making the headlines daily, the health of the European banking system continues to be a worry, and the drama of The United Kingdom’s divorce ...
June 2018 – Monthly Commentary
June 2018 In the days and weeks leading up to the recent imposition of tariffs on China, nervous investors sold stocks and pushed bond yields lower. However since the tariffs went into place stock prices have risen, with the S&P 500 just ticks away from its recent high and less than 3% away from an all-time high. Apparently, investors have chosen to look past the immediate trade rhetoric and are focusing on the coming earning season, ...
May 2018 – Monthly Commentary
May 2018 The bastion of calm that swept over capital markets evaporated in May, as a number of emerging market economies and their markets suffered under the strain of bad policy. After years in financial purgatory following their 2001 default, Argentina is again facing financial strain. The serial defaulter returned to the global bond market two years ago with a $16 billion multi-tranche deal that received $70 billion in orders. Investor demand had grown so strong ...
April 2018 – Monthly Commentary
April 2018 Now that we’re well into the new year and the first quarter earnings season is almost fully behind us, it makes sense to pause and try to understand where we are in the economic cycle and what we should expect in the near term future. The most notable recent change is the stock market. Compared to February, volatility has diminished markedly. However, the “buy the dip” mentality that drove stock indices to ever higher levels ...
March 2018 – Monthly Commentary
March 2018 March has followed the pattern of the previous two months, with heightened equity market volatility creating worry for anxious investors. Despite that worry, the bond market has been a bastion of calmness with the 30-year bond trading in a relatively benign range of 3.22% to 3.00%. Given the continued strength of the U.S. economy, we had expected the bond to come under price pressure pushing the yield closer to 3.5%. That ...
February 2018 – Monthly Commentary
February 2018 Six weeks ago, as we closed out January, the S&P 500 Index settled just below its all time high. Financial pundits at the time were saying that a healthy correction would be good for the market. The term healthy correction has always seemed an oxymoron. How can a decrease in the value of one’s investment portfolio be described as healthy? Yet, the term has been in the lexicon of Wall Street for as long as traders have ...
January 2018 – Monthly Commentary
January 2018 The Federal Reserve, in managing the U.S. economy, is tasked with the dual mandate of ensuring full employment and stable inflation. The mandate is somewhat contradictory in that at full employment the tight labor force is likely to force wages higher which, in turn, risks pushing the overall level of inflation higher. That is, of course, if the numbers accurately reflect the actual rate of inflation, which we regularly argue is not ...
December 2017 – Monthly Commentary
December 2017 While the team at Halyard evaluates the economic and market backdrop on a daily basis, we like to commit those thoughts to paper periodically, and especially so as we kick off the new year. Our starting premise this year is that the United States economy closed out 2017 with unmitigated strength. From a sector by sector perspective, we’re delighted to find the strength was broad based and not concentrated in any one ...
November 2017 – Monthly Commentary
November 2017 In 2004, an acquaintance left his job as a banking clerk to become a real estate sales agent. Almost overnight his income doubled as the homes he represented sold briskly. The market was so hot that he was working seven days a week and his income soared well over $200,000. However, in 2006 sales began to slow and buyers were grumbling that home prices had grown out of reach. Builders ...
October 2017 – Monthly Commentary
October 2017 Last month marked the 30th anniversary of Black Monday, October 19, 1987, prompting us to take a look back at how the Dow Jones Industrial Average has evolved since that infamous day. Of the 30 stocks in the index at the time, Bethlehem Steel, Eastman Kodak, GM, Union Carbide, U.S. Steel, and Woolworths have all gone through bankruptcy. Some reorganized and reemerged, but most didn’t. Sears, which also was part of ...
