Insights Investments

(Updated as of 3pm CST 4/9/2025) We had the largest tariffs in over 100 years on for about 12 hours, before President Trump paused them for 90 days for countries that did not retaliate. That’s a relief, though we could be right back here in 90 days. But hopefully this gives the White House time …

In this episode of Facts vs. Feelings, Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist, and Sonu Varghese, VP, Global Macro Strategist, break down the immediate fallout of last week’s tariffs announcement and how it could impact both the U.S. and the global economy. They dive into the plunging markets, how a trade war could trigger a recession, …

“It is about time in the market, not timing the market.” Old investment saying   As of now, the S&P 500 has avoided officially entering a bear market (down 20% from the February 19th closing high), but who knows, by the time you read this we might be there. I’ll take a different approach today …

Initial public offerings (“IPOs”) are considered a key indicator of investor risk appetite. Encouragingly, IPO activity across major U.S. exchanged has largely rebounded to long-term average levels. The consistency of recent IPO execution even looks similar to the late 2010’s, when global equity markets sustained years of gains. Notably, post-IPO returns reveal a meaningful divergence …

The economy created 228,000 jobs in May, well above the 140,000 that was expected by forecasters. Monthly numbers can be noisy (especially since some of the jobs created could be a rebound from lower-than-expected numbers after terrible weather January and February) and so let’s look at the three-month average. That’s running at 152,000, which should …

Tariffs are here and in a big, big way, much bigger than anyone expected. And it isn’t really reciprocal tariffs. The calculation of tariffs is based on the trade deficit the US has with each country, and nothing to do with actual tariffs other countries charge on US goods. For example, say a country exports …

Liberation Day is here, but we’re still waiting to for the exact nature of our liberation. Will it be reciprocal tariffs, with the US reciprocating other countries’ tariff rates on US goods? These will be enormously complicated to implement. Or will it be President Trump’s preferred approach of imposing a blanket 20% universal tariff on …

“It is uncertainty, far more than disaster, that unnerves and weakens markets.” -John Steele Gordon, American writer After serious consideration, we’ve decided to move all of our portfolios into Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory, because if you’ve ever had one then you know. Now that I have your attention, April Fool’s Day! Now …

Consumer discretionary stocks are off to a slow start in 2025. Amongst the equal-weight-sector allocations, an equal weight portfolio of all consumer discretionary stocks in the S&P 500 (as proxied by RSPD) has posted the worst return through March 25th. Commentary from several companies in the sector reveals a dynamic business landscape, influenced by the …

March Madness is a fantastic time of year to talk about playing offense and defense. As we wrote about in our 2025 outlook and have revisited a time or two since, in markets you can play offense with momentum and defense with low volatility. Combining these together in portfolios builds resiliency – something investors have …

“If pro is the opposite of con, does that make progress the opposite of Congress?” -famous quip Back on January 3rd, to mark the swearing in of the 119th Congress, we shared seven risks to our bullish policy outlook. That was still 17 days before inauguration day. Now we’ve seen the new administration’s policies gel …