Posts by wpusername4148

Dear Clients and Friends:Re: Q3 Investment Review Change may be happening in stock market leadership. In the third quarter, the S&P 500 produced the lowest return of the three equity indexes we follow. That hasn’t happened in many quarters since the bull market in technology stocks began over five years ago. The “Magnificent Seven” (the…

Dear Clients and Friends:Re: Q2 Investment Review What is Artificial Intelligence? From Wikipedia: Artificial intelligence (Al), in its broadest sense, is intelligence exhibited by machines, particularly computer systems. It is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and use learning and…

Dear Clients and Friends:Re: Q1 Investment Review The first quarter of 2024 proved to be much better for the stock market than anyone anticipated. In the first half of the three-month period, the Magnificent 7 and their ilk led the rally upward. However, in the second half of the period, better performance was generally provided…

Dear Clients and Friends:Re: Q4 Investment Review The last quarter of 2023 produced very good returns from both the stock and bond markets. For the first time since the year began, the super high tech grouping known as the “Magnificent Seven” merely performed in line with other stocks. It remains to be seen if the…

Dear Clients and Friends:Re: Q3 Investment Review Over the first half of the year, all of our benchmark financial indexes did well with common stocks leading the way. However long-term interest rates began to rise substantively around the middle of the year. This continued through the 3rd quarter and the result was the negative results…

Dear Clients and Friends:Re: Q2 Investment Review Since the beginning of this year, the S&P 500 stock index has done extremely well in contrast to the terrible performance, top to bottom, that occurred in 2022. All of our benchmarks have shown “good” performance so far in 2023. Benchmark Index Total Returns Quarter Ending 6/30/2023 Year…

Dear Clients and Friends:Re: Q1 Investment Review As shown below, the first quarter of 2023 continued the “interesting times” that the stock and bond markets have now been experiencing since the end of 2021 when the S&P 500 peaked at about 4800. Following some recovery over the past two quarters, it closed the first quarter…