Mark Gordon | August 2, 2023
Last quarter treated investors to continuing strong equity returns. Global equites rose over 6% and are now up nearly 14% as of the end of June. Domestic equities saw particularly strong gains: nearly 9% for the second quarter. Global bond markets held their value: US bonds were down less than 1% and foreign bonds were up less than 1%.
Mark Gordon | May 22, 2023
Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen daily stories about the United States’ “debt ceiling” and whether the US might default on its debt. We’ve been working on a debt-ceiling explainer, but a recent conversation with a client has changed our focus.
Mark Gordon | April 25, 2023
Last quarter we reviewed 2022 equity returns. Although most equity indices went down last year, we saw that diversifying stock portfolios by adding small and value stocks likely helped blunt the bear market blow.¹ Today we’d like to follow up by reviewing bond returns of 2022. But first, a quick look at the capital-market returns from this past quarter.
Mark Gordon | January 24, 2023
In 2013, financial TV host Jim Cramer popularized the acronym “FANG” referring to four large tech companies: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. He grouped them because they had experienced outsized market gains. In 2017, commenters added Apple to the group and referred to the five companies as “FAANG” or “the FAANGs.” Although the long-term returns for these companies are solid, investors who piled into them based on the recent past have been treated to grievous losses.
Mark Gordon | January 24, 2023
Technically, a bear market occurs when stocks lose 20% or more of their value from top to bottom.³ But not all stocks go down in a bear market. Thus, when pundits refer to a “Bear Market,” they refer to a drop in the value of one or more major stock indices. Today we’ll examine the returns from other areas of the US market and explain why, despite the headlines, not all investors faced a bear market in 2022.
Mark Gordon | October 31, 2022
Last quarter saw the bear market continue. Global stocks went down almost 7%¹ and US bonds lost almost 5%.² We’ve seen several positive indicators, but war, inflation and a potential recession have battered the markets. Recently a client asked me, given the bear market and bad news, “How can you be so calm?” In the moment, I said something to the effect of, “It’s a combination of belief and experience.” Since that conversation, however, I’ve been thinking more about the question, particularly in light of the “Bear Market Toolkit” we released last quarter.
Mark Gordon | August 12, 2022
Last quarter was undoubtedly difficult for investors. Stocks went down across the globe. The US stock market dropped about 16%. In a pattern reversal, international stocks fared modestly better. Developed-foreign markets slipped 13% and emerging markets went down about 10%. Bond holders also experienced losses: the US bond market dipped almost 5%.
Mark Gordon | April 28, 2022
Markets were not kind to investors during the first quarter. Global stocks dipped almost 5.5%.1 Most all equity asset classes were down: US stocks dropped just over 4.5%, developed-foreign markets lost almost 6% and emerging markets went down almost 7%.2 In fact, across the major equity classes, we saw only two positive results.
Mark Gordon | January 31, 2022
Reviewing “Year 2021” feels very much like reviewing Year 2020: We’ve faced a major market-disrupting event, we are individually and collectively battling COVID, many of us are struggling to adapt, and our future feels quite uncertain. Also like 2020, despite mass disruption and uncertainly, global equity markets rose substantially.
Mark Gordon | November 2, 2021
Since COVID vaccines became available, clients have asked us questions along the lines of “How long can stocks go up,” “What’s going to happen once the pandemic is over,” or simply “What’s next?” Most clients, by now, can anticipate our answer: we don’t know. Yet that doesn’t mean we don’t know anything. Although we can’t predict what the markets will bring, it appears to our eye the markets are currently digesting several global and/or macro events. Depending on how they work out, markets could go up or down from here. We’ll discuss each of these in order of likely importance.
