S&P 500

The busy retail season is in full swing, but what can investors make of the longer-term outlook for consumer stocks? Sophie Steel of BlackRock Fundamental Equities looks beyond the seasonalities to three factors that are reshaping the opportunities across consumer sectors.

Disruptive trends and fatter tail risks highlight the importance of selection within asset classes and regions.

As we celebrate the holiday season and ponder what we are thankful for, it’s also time to take stock of one’s investments. Here, David Mann, Head of Global Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) Capital Markets, opines on an ETF anniversary he’s thankful for—and offers some tax-planning food for thought.

As we wrote about in our 2022 Global Outlook, COVID-19 is becoming endemic rather than pandemic. We anticipate a winter wave of COVID, potentially with new variants like omicron.

After a year of rebound and recovery, we believe that economic growth, inflation and investment returns are likely to moderate in 2022.

Overall common stock index performance can be a very confusing thing to most investors. From a cyclical standpoint, the history of stock price performance in the U.S. is closely associated with the Federal Reserve Board. When the Federal Reserve Board reverses an accommodative interest rate policy, it is affectionately referred to as “pulling the punch bowl.”

Inflation vs. deflation – while headlines get filled with “inflation” concerns, historical data shows “deflation” remains a threat.

The S&P 500 index is up more than 20% so far this year, but more than 90% of its member stocks have had “correction” level drawdowns—more than 10% from a peak—at some point this year. In short, while overall stock market performance has been strong, there has been a lot of churn beneath the surface.

Although you can learn a great deal from the past you can only invest in the future. Today many believe the future of the Internet and technology is the Metaverse. Therefore, I have begun putting together a portfolio of stocks that are poised to participate in the next stage of technology growth – the Metaverse.

While the new US infrastructure investment bill didn’t have any initiatives directly targeting the municipal bond market, there are still implications for munis in the longer term, according to our Municipal Bond Director of Research Jennifer Johnston. She explains the ramifications for investors in the space.

It appears as though we may be heading towards an inflection point in early 2022 whereby we begin to see the rate of growth continue its deceleration to the downside. Whether inflation follows suit remains to be seen, though my base case in the direction of change in inflation could surprise to the upside again in December and perhaps even January.

Online sales during 2021’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping holidays ended up being slightly less than those of the previous year, representing the first time such a decrease has been recorded.

Bear with us as (no pun intended) you read this longer-than-usual outlook!

Many investors buy gold to protect against inflation. However, it's not as effective a hedge as believed. In my article below, I discuss how gold’s relationship to money, and as a result inflation, changed.

On Friday, news of a COVID-19 variant identified in South Africa, and the announcement of new travel restrictions, sent markets reeling. This is obviously not the only variant, and it won't be the last, either.

Could the Fed trigger the next “financial crisis” as they begin to hike interest rates? Such is certainly a question worth asking as we look back at the Fed’s history of previous monetary actions.

U.S. and global stocks fell sharply Friday amid spiking fears about a new COVID variant, named Omicron, emanating from South Africa, where it’s spreading quickly. The S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite indices closed down more than 2%, while the Russell 2000 fell nearly 4%.

In this video I present 8 undervalued dividend growth stocks with dividend yields ranging from 2.51% to 5.11%. All these companies are undervalued in what is a very overheated stock market today.

The COVID-19 crisis spurs cohesion, but fresh challenges await.

Investor participation and interest in private equity continues to grow. Investors are attracted to private equity for different reasons, including access to the significant investable opportunity set that exists across the universe of private companies, along with lower volatility when compared to public equities.

The charts and comments below are drawn from the “Clips That Matter” feature of our Over My Shoulder service. Because we know a picture is worth a thousand words, my co-editor Patrick Watson and I select a few important charts and graphics and send them to subscribers each week with some brief comments. Many say these clips are their favorite part of the service.

The last 20 months have taught us to question everything. What is the future of work? Can American democracy survive? Will Baby Boomers keep consuming more than their fair share? And what comes after “trillion”? Howard Marks’s latest memo examines paradigm shifts that could reshape the economy, markets and the world for many years to come.

In this video, I will be comparing the investment merit of Bank of America Corp. versus Citigroup Inc. I will be comparing these two money center banks and evaluating them based on income, growth, and total return potential.

There are certain features of valuation, investor psychology, and price behavior that emerge, to one degree or another, when the fear of missing out becomes particularly extreme and the focus of speculation becomes particularly narrow. We’ve suddenly hit a motherlode of those conditions. Emphatically, this is not a forecast. It's a statement about current, observable conditions.

Rarely is there any sector that has everything going for or against it—and that is true today of the Information Technology sector.

Do rising interest rates matter to the stock market? Many in the financial media and advisory community are scrambling to locate periods where rates rose along with stocks. Has it happened? Absolutely. However, it was only a function of timing until it mattered.

Inflation and what it means for investing is one of the biggest issues I have been hearing about recently. The topic can generate quite a bit of anxiety. But before we start to worry, let’s take some time to understand what actually happens when inflation hits the economy. Then we can panic—or not.

A prominent feature of the post-Great Financial Crisis period has been the persistent decline in velocity, which is why the Fed has had to pump so much money into the system for so long. Absent an increase in the money supply, the drop in the velocity, all else equal, would have likely been the backdrop for a long recession.

While the Fed notes valuations are elevated, the crucial message to investors gets obfuscated. From current valuation levels, the expected rate of return for investors over the next decade will be low.

With less than two months left in what has been an extraordinary (and mystifying) year on multiple fronts, stocks have maintained a largely uninterrupted trek higher (at the index level) in the face of myriad headwinds...

Information technology is one of the fastest growing sectors in the stock market. Consequently, technology stocks offer the potential for the highest long-term total returns. But unfortunately, there is a fly in the ointment.

In 2014, famed UK stock picker Terry Smith wrote a piece, titled Shale: Miracle, Revolution or Bandwagon?, in most ways mocking investors excitement in the oil and gas business in the United States of America.

Investors need a more flexible, opportunistic approach to investing, given the current low interest rate environment with the likelihood of interest rates rising over the next few years, according to Stephen Dover, Head of Franklin Templeton Investment Institute. He opines on inflation, debt, and changing economic sweet spots.

Achieving “net zero” by 2050 will require a shift in the global energy mix, from both a supply and consumption perspective. This has implications for portfolio allocations and alpha generation but there are diverse perspectives on the emergent risks and opportunities related to this shift.

Alphabet $GOOGL, a.k.a. Google is not your ordinary company or stock. This is a powerful growth stock that despite its near $2 trillion market cap continues to grow at a high rate.

Strikes and quits show workers are feeling emboldened.

Charting the stock market “melt-up” in prices, and the Fed’s naivety of the laws of physics may be of benefit to younger investors. After more than a decade of rising prices, accelerating markets seem entirely normal, detached from underlying fundamentals. As a result, new acronyms like “TINA” and “BTFD” get developed to rationalize surging prices.