Articles authored by Barry Gilbert

Carson Investment Research has released its Midyear Outlook 2024: Eyes on the Prize. It’s been quite a year so far, with continued job market strength (although with some slowing), strong earnings growth, and stock gains that surprised many to the upside, outpacing even our out-of-consensus views for continued market strength. As we put together the …

If you read Chief Market Strategist Ryan Detrick’s prescient blog on Wednesday, you knew this might be coming. Ryan reminded us that debates don’t usually have an impact on elections, but sometimes there is that one gaff or glaring fault that a candidate never fully recovers from. Last night former President Donald Trump did not …

Carson’s VP, Global Macro Strategist Sonu Varghese and Chief Market Strategist Ryan Detrick spoke with Dr. Jeremy Siegel in our latest Facts versus Feelings podcast, and I couldn’t but help borrow the title of this blog from the title of his must-read book, Stocks for the Long Run. Dr. Siegel has had such a strong …

In recent blogs we discussed the strength of household balance sheets and also how higher wages have been more than offsetting inflation, including for lower income workers. Today, we look at a third piece that helps explain consumer strength, the offsetting impact of higher rates on savers and borrowers. Consumers are penalized by higher rates …

“We are navigating by the stars under cloudy skies.” -Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell   The Fed is likely underestimating the neutral level of the fed funds rate, which it had at 2.6% in its last summary of economic projections, and will probably need to revise it higher. We believe the Fed’s neutral rate is …

In yesterday’s blog, our chief market strategist Ryan Detrick took a look at “Sell in May and go away” and provided a lot of important insight on what it may mean in current market context. While we’re entering a period of historical seasonal weakness, the seasonals alone aren’t strong enough to drive a change in …

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the interest rate environment, and especially what might happen to longer-term rates if the Federal Reserve (“Fed”) begins to cut the fed funds rate, even though the short-term increase in rates has been front of mind, but we’ll cover that as well. I’m going to cut to …

One of the hardest things to do as an investor is to look forward rather than look backward, which is why having a long-term plan is always so important. Still, there’s a lot we can learn about looking backwards if we’re focused on what it means for what comes next. Sometimes, that means going with …

The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index (LEI) gained month over month in February after 23 consecutive months of declines. Carson Investment Research’s proprietary leading indicator, which never signaled recession, continues to point to near-trend growth, versus the Conference Board’s forecast of slowing growth. The end of extended Conference Board LEI declines has generally been a …

We often get asked about whether stock returns have been just too good in the near term and have formed a speculative bubble. Our Chief Market Strategist Ryan Detrick debunked that idea in his blog yesterday. But occasionally we also get asked whether returns have been too good over the longer term. We take a …