The stock market suffered another day of steep losses yesterday, with the S&P 500 falling -3.2%. Small stocks were hit even harder, with the Russell 2000 down -4.4%. It was the fifth day so far in 2018 that the S&P 500 has
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Hurricane Florence appears poised to blast the Carolinas in the coming days, with 1.7 million people currently under evacuation warnings and some 5.4 million covered by various hurricane watches and warnings. It's a
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Rising and Falling Uncertainty
Worries abound, from Chinese trade wars…to midterm campaign-related uncertainty…. [But] I’ve crunched data since long before PCs arrived, [so I know that] the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has
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Every day seems to bring new headlines about the next recession — what will cause it, when it will hit, and how bad it will be. Today, for example, MarketWatch is prominently displaying this article: "Why a major trade war
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At the end of SMI's June article, What the Flattening Yield Curve Says About the Economy and Markets, I wrote the following:
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In the decade since the 2008 financial crisis ended, interest rates have dominated most discussions of the economy and financial markets. The Federal Reserve assured this would be the case by lowering short-term interest
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On April 17, less than an hour into its scheduled journey from New York to Dallas, Southwest Flight 1380 suffered an explosion in one of its two engines, causing shrapnel to pepper the plane’s wing and fuselage. The
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The winds of change blew through the financial markets in February, leading to the first stock-market correction (a decline of at least 10% from the previous high) in two years. What caused the correction, and
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After nine long years of Federal Reserve policies dominating the economic and investing landscape, it's understandable if many readers are experiencing acute "Fed fatigue" and have largely tuned out news relating to it.
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If one were to ask a group of investors what factors drive the stock market, any number of answers might emerge. Fear and greed. The Federal Reserve. Interest rates. The business cycle. All of these are partial truths —
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