Stocks gave back some of the gains made in August as economic and trade fears kept bubbling up. In this environment the bond market remained red hot as interest rates plunged yet again. This boosted our portfolios relative to benchmarks as we have been taking more interest rate risk (but less stock risk) than most other portfolios for quite a few years now. ...read the rest of this article»

With rising trade tensions as the catalyst and a backdrop of suspiciously low interest rates, August is looking to wipe out much of the recent gains with a roughly 800-point one-day drop in the Dow and interest rates plunging to levels last seen right before the last presidential election. ...read the rest of this article»

The stock market continues to rebound from all the traumatic events of the past year or so. Strangely, this is not due to particularly strong expectations for growth globally; it appears to be mostly related to interest rates declining in anticipation of an economic slowdown.  ...read the rest of this article»

The sharp rebound in stocks in early 2019 ended just as rapidly in May, with a 6.36% drop in the Vanguard 500 index fund including dividends. In late April, just days after the U.S. stock market broke through the old highs from September 2018 and gained back all the losses from late last year, stocks started falling. At one point in early June, the Nasdaq was back down around 10% from the recent highs—a percentage drop considered a correction (a bear market is 20%). ...read the rest of this article»

The stock market has recovered all of the losses since the previous peak in late September 2018. This quick reversal was largely because interest rates are now lower than last year, and the Federal Reserve will not spark the next recession by raising rates, as inflation is mild at best. ...read the rest of this article»

With the Federal Reserve now more worried about the global economy than inflation, investors continued to jump back into stocks — causing U.S. markets to almost completely erase the sharp slide late last year. ...read the rest of this article»

With foreign markets, value stocks, and lower credit risk bonds weak in February and our relatively low allocation to the hotter areas of the market (like tech and small cap), our model portfolios lagged the U.S. market. ...read the rest of this article»

What December took away January gave back. With the sharp rebound that started right after Christmas, the stock market has recovered a little over half the losses from the 20%+ drop that started in late September.  ...read the rest of this article»

Any way you slice it, December was the sort of month where the benefit of not taking on too much risk and avoiding popular strategies worked, basically the opposite tack from the previous months. ...read the rest of this article»

November was a rocky month for stocks and bonds, but it ultimately ended on a positive note. Our portfolios did well compared to the Vanguard STAR fund, which has recently had more downside than our portfolios and potentially less upside as investors shift their portfolio strategies. ...read the rest of this article»