Insights

Now that we’ve settled into the new year, let’s do a quick review of the markets, jobs, inflation, the Fed, and lay out some big, round numbers to keep in mind as we move into 2022.

Our firm has been quoted in over 40 articles this year, including in U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, Yahoo! Finance, Business Insider, TheStreet.com, and more. Here are our thoughts on active and passive investment management that we wrote in a recent response.

New highs every month, so why are investors bearish?

A deeper dive into inflation data.

Inflation, temporarily higher for longer. What that means for investors.

Since our last Market Insights update, the S&P 500 made several new highs and even made it to thirteen straight weeks with a new high. The Nasdaq crossed 15,000 for the first time and the largest companies have recently outperformed the S&P 500, including Microsoft, Alphabet (aka Google), Amazon, and Facebook.

Typically, the month of August has not been friendly to equity investors. Even though we have seen eight new all-time closing highs for the S&P 500 during August alone, the daily give and take has left the index flat month-to-date. Still, the number of record closing highs have been quite impressive this year. Last Monday’s closing high was the 49th year-to-date. With no significant pullbacks, this leaves the index up 18.4% on a total return basis as of yesterday’s close.

The S&P 500 continues to make new highs, with the market up over 17% this year (including dividends) and up about 38% over the past 12 months. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is around 35,000, while it touched 30,000 for the first time this past November.

We take a deeper dive into one part of the services we offer that includes planning, investments, business services, and taxes. We take you behind the scenes into our Investment Department, where we research stocks on a weekly basis. For the written transcript or to view the video, please click READ MORE below.

Although it has not been a straight path higher, the S&P 500 index has logged 29 new record closing highs year-to-date. Retail investors have perhaps been emboldened, as the financial channels continue to spotlight the parabolic moves of latest “meme” stock(s) targeted by the WallStreetBets and other Reddit crowd traders.