Investments
Happy Second Birthday to the Bull Market 🎈🎂🎉
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” – Bertrand Russell, British philosopher First things first — our thoughts go out to everyone that has been impacted by Hurricane Helene and those in the path of Hurricane Milton. If …
Ryan Detrick
October 9, 2024
The Bull Market Turns Two
Is the bull market’s two-year run a sign of stability or the start of a shake-up? In this week’s episode of Facts vs Feelings, Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group, and Sonu Varghese, VP, Global Macro Strategist at Carson Group, dig into what’s driving market strength and what’s ahead. With GDP growth, profit …
Ryan Detrick
October 9, 2024
Election Update Part 1: Where the Odds Stand and What It Means
We have only four weeks to go to election day, although close to 2 million people have already voted, including close to half a million in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. We figured this would be a good time to do an update on where the race stands, and what it means (or could …
Sonu Varghese
October 8, 2024
Under the Hood: Financials Earnings Preview
The close of the calendar quarter means the opening of earnings season. Investors this week will parse results from some of the largest financial institutions in the world including JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, among others. Assessing the big picture, the financials sector (as proxied by XLF, the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF) …
Blake Anderson
October 7, 2024
Good News Is Good News, for the Economy and Markets
There’s been valid concern that employment conditions are deteriorating, ever so slowly. The unemployment rate has increased from a low of 3.4% in April 2023 to 4.3% in July of this year. Hiring also seems to have pulled back a lot, with the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) telling us that the hiring …
Sonu Varghese
October 4, 2024
The Year of the Active ETF
United States Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) assets just hit $10 Trillion for the first time. That is still around half of the assets in traditional open-end mutual funds but the gap is closing quickly. An increasingly larger part of this growth is coming from active ETFs, which have accounted for roughly a third of ETF inflows …
Grant Engelbart
October 3, 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
The Mega-Pod From Excell, Part 2
Are your financial decisions shaped by emotions or grounded in logic? The difference could have a bigger impact on your financial future than you think. This week on Facts vs Feelings, Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group, and Sonu Varghese, VP, Global Macro Strategist at Carson Group, host an insightful conversation recorded live …
Ryan Detrick
October 2, 2024
What’s Behind the Melt-Up in Chinese Stocks
Chinese stocks have melted up over the past week, with Mainland China’s main index, the CSI 300, surging a whopping 25% since September 23rd (through the 30th). Just on Monday (September 30th), the index surged 8.5%, taking it to the highest level since August 2023. China’s markets will be closed for the rest of the …
Sonu Varghese
October 1, 2024
The Bulls Take September, October Jitters, and a Fourth Quarter Preview
“October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.” -Mark Twain September to Remember Stocks had a rough start to September, but the bull market continued and it is looking like the S&P 500 will be …
Ryan Detrick
September 30, 2024
Guess What? The Bearish Narratives Look Even Worse Now
We just got a slew of economic data revisions from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and my first response was, Wow! A lot of this is backward-looking data, but it’s important to (re) level-set where we are, and the momentum associated with that. As my colleague Barry Gilbert said to me after these revisions, …
Sonu Varghese
September 27, 2024
Here’s the Real Dry Powder That Matters
Here’s the Real Dry Powder That Matters There’s been a lot of questions about the $6 trillion sitting in money market funds (MMF), and what’s going to happen to it as interest rates drop. Ben Carlson, Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholz Wealth Management, who pens the “Wealth of Common Sense” blog, wrote a …
Sonu Varghese
September 26, 2024