Investments
Don’t Miss Facts vs. Feelings Livestream – Tricks, Treats & Twists
Feeling spooked by all the market uncertainty as we head toward the end of the year? From inflation to Fed policy to the labor market to geopolitical worries to the bull market to the election, there are a scary number of economic concerns to keep an eye on over the last couple months of 2024. …
Carson Group
October 23, 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
Talking with Two Titans of Our Industry
“If you take it from one person it is called stealing, but if you take it from everyone it is called research.” -Old Wall Street joke One thing that Sonu Varghese, VP, Global Macro Strategist, and I have started to do this year is conduct interviews leveraging Spaces on X. A “Space” is simply a …
Ryan Detrick
October 22, 2024
Funding the Future: OpenAI’s latest Capital Raise
OpenAI has dazzled both ChatGPT users and investors in the past two years. The company recently achieved another milestone — closing the largest ever private market funding round for a technology company, according to the New York Times.1 OpenAI raised nearly $7 billion at a $150 billion pre-money valuation. With revenue growing and business plans …
Blake Anderson
October 21, 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
Valuation Fixation Despite Market Rotation
The third quarter was a very strong one for markets, but in a different way than we have seen in recent periods. Leadership changed, often catching some managers off guard, but showing the broadening strength of this bull market. The chart below shows this simplistically, with the returns from Q3 in light blue, compared with …
Grant Engelbart
October 17, 2024
Why There Could Be Years Left to This Bull Market
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” — Heraclitus, ancient Greek philosopher First things first, no one knows how much longer this bull market might last, but as we’ve been saying for a long time now, we see no reasons to …
Ryan Detrick
October 16, 2024
Let’s Talk About The Election
As the election approaches, investors are bracing for potential surprises—will history repeat itself, or are we in for something new? This week on Facts vs Feelings, Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group, and Sonu Varghese, VP, Global Macro Strategist at Carson Group, dig into key forces at play—rising inflation, surging small- and mid-cap …
Ryan Detrick
October 16, 2024
Election Update Part 2: Potential Risks to the Outlook
We are now three weeks to election day, though about 4.7 million people have already voted. Most of those are mail-in ballot. About 55 million mail ballots have been requested (that’s 35% of the total votes cast in 2020), and 3.8 million have been returned so far. In part 1 of this election update, I …
Sonu Varghese
October 15, 2024
Tesla’s Bold Vision: From FSD to Robots
Tesla recently hosted its “We Robot” event, showcasing recent production innovations such as the CyberCab and Optimus Robot. While the company typically hosts an annual demonstration of its latest technology, this year’s event was expected to be groundbreaking. Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on X weeks before the event that “this will be one for …
Blake Anderson
October 14, 2024
Big Picture: Inflation Has Normalized
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed a little more heat than expected in September. Headline CPI rose 0.2% month over month while core CPI (excluding food and energy) rose 0.3%. Cue the worries about resurgent inflation. But the big picture takeaway remains fundamentally positive, and there’s even good news in some of the details, which …
Sonu Varghese
October 11, 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