Barry Gilbert
16 Charts (and Tables) to Know This Election Year Revisited
“Americans will always do the right thing – after exhausting all other possibilities.” -Winston Churchill The Carson Investment Research Team began covering the election back in March with our “16 Charts and Tables) to Know This Election Year.” With Election Day now 11 days away and early voting taking place in many states, we thought …
Barry Gilbert
October 25, 2024
The Starting Point for Effective Portfolio Management
I’ve looked at thousands of portfolios over my career, most of them made up of mutual funds and/or ETFs but sometimes with individual stocks and bonds thrown in or even making up the entire portfolio. One thing that has repeatedly struck me is how sometimes adding “more,” more positions, more asset types, more specialized pieces, …
Barry Gilbert
October 23, 2024
Peak Interest Rates One Year Later
Tomorrow, October 19, will mark the one-year anniversary of the peak in the 10-year Treasury yield. According to CBOE’s US Treasury Yield Index, the 10-year Treasury yield peaked at 4.99% on Thursday, October 19, 2023. Even with the recent backup in yields, that’s about 0.9%-points above the current level. Bond returns over the last year …
Barry Gilbert
October 18, 2024
Ghosts of Elections Past: Some Lessons from 2016 and 2020
We are now within four weeks of election day, although early voting is already taking place in an increasing number of states. My colleague Sonu Varghese provided an excellent update on the election Tuesday. If you read it, you’ll notice it’s called Part 1. Watch for Part 2 next Tuesday. One of our top market …
Barry Gilbert
October 10, 2024
6 Reasons Q3 Was Extraordinary for Markets
Whether you’re engaged with the market every day or only once in a while, sometimes it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. We just finished the third quarter of 2024, and really it was an extraordinary quarter. If I had to pick out one theme, it would be expanding market breadth, something we …
Barry Gilbert
October 2, 2024
Doomsayers Have Their New Indicator: The Yield Curve Uninverts
The pandemic and post-pandemic environment has been a breeding ground of economic anomalies born out of deep disruptions and policy extremes that have echoed across the years. That doesn’t mean good economic analysis doesn’t hold true; it does mean that good analysis takes some extra work. You couldn’t just paint by numbers over the last …
Barry Gilbert
September 18, 2024
Carson Investment Research AI Blog Roll Call
Have you noticed Carson has been talking about artificial intelligence (AI) a lot lately? Below is a little roll call of 20 of our blogs (and a podcast) on AI so far in 2024. Among the authors, you’ll see the names of Carson’s Portfolio Managers, Jake Bleicher and Sr. Analyst, Investment Blake Anderson, come up …
Barry Gilbert
August 29, 2024
Recession Narrative Fades on Strong Retail Sales
As long as employment is strong, consumer spending will be strong. Yes, job gains slowed in July but prime age (25-54) participation in the labor market remains near record levels, layoffs remain low, and aggregate income growth has been solid. Those numbers were the underpinning of a large upside surprise in July retail sales. Headline …
Barry Gilbert
August 16, 2024
Market Reaction to Inflation Muted (and That May Be a Good Thing)
There were few surprises in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data yesterday for July. The “headline” reading was in line with expectations at 0.2%, which brought the one-year reading down to 2.9% versus expectations of 3.0%. The core reading (excluding food and energy) was also in line with expectations at 0.2% for the month …
Barry Gilbert
August 15, 2024
Q2 GDP Growth Confirms Economic Resilience
This was a “goldilocks” GDP report, with enough strength to be reassuring but not so much that it weighed on the likelihood of a September rate cut. The economy grew at an annualized pace of 2.8% in the second quarter, after adjusting for inflation. This was well above expectations of a 2.0% increase and acceleration …
Barry Gilbert
July 26, 2024