Posts by Mike Verity

Capital markets have been a bit more cautious over the past week. The S&P 500 is about 1.7% below its intraday record high and the Nasdaq is about 2.7% lower. Tech & communications stocks, especially AI-related, are sitting on huge year-to-date gains as well as lofty valuations. Investors are beginning to debate whether an unhealthy…

In a change of trend, stocks closed lower in today’s session. Not sharply lower, you understand, but just enough to remind us that we can’t have a record high every day. This has been a very good year for investors. Broad stock market indices are now up somewhere between 8% and 12%. Even the bond…

Stocks opened broadly higher again this morning, brushing off a weaker than expected labor market report. The Dow is up 550 points and the S&P 500 is up .7%. Perhaps it’s all about expected interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. And indeed, some of the sectors rallying the hardest—real estate, materials, financials—are the ones…

Markets opened cautiously, and modestly, higher this morning. The Dow is up around 100 points and the S&P 500 is up .1%. Treasury yields dipped slightly at the open, as markets cement expectations for a .25% rate cut at the next Federal Reserve policy meeting on September 17. We got more evidence that the job…

Stocks continue to push higher toward record levels despite political/geopolitical nonsense—and even in the face of a weaker job market report released this morning. The S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq all gained ~1% in today’s session. It is becoming increasingly clear that the labor market is softening a bit. For a while we’ve been referring…

Moving Cautiously Forward   US stock market averages have enjoyed a sort of tentative recovery phase since washing out earlier this month. Year-to-date the S&P 500 and Dow are down by only about 3%, and the Nasdaq is off by 6.5%. Certainly, it feels much worse than that given the extreme volatility we’ve experienced. Most…