Aoifinn Devitt – Chief Global Market Strategist Illinois is currently in the middle of a 17-year cicada brood which is overlapping with the normal emergence of a regular brood. The last time this brood emerged…
Chris Kamykowski, CFA, CFP® – Head of Investment Strategy and ResearchTim Side, CFA – Investment Strategist Monthly Observations Markets Rebound Sharply Heading into Summer Markets rebuffed the adage of “sell in May and go away”,…
Mark Webster, CFA – Senior Investment Research Analyst Artificial Intelligence (AI) is thriving these days to speed up analysis, sift through noisy information, create procedural efficiencies, and enable human workers to improve their productivity. Within…
Aoifinn Devitt – Chief Global Market Strategist Have we now entered the antifragile era for markets? This concept, made popular by Nassim Taleb, loosely means something that benefits from chaos and volatility and is made…
Monthly Observations Sharp Downdraft Upends Markets Markets were doused with a bit of seasonal April showers as an uptick in geopolitical drama, surprise to inflation trends, and a sharp change in interest rate expectations weighed…
Tim Side, CFA – Investment StrategistChris Kamykowski, CFA, CFP® – Head of Investment Strategy and Research Early this year, January 11th to be exact, we received an email from our Fixed Income team following the…
By Anna McDonald, Director of Family Learning When your child walks across the high school graduation stage, it’s a significant moment in a child’s life, your life as a parent, and the lives of those…
Markets continue to be noisy this week – as they digest market jitters at the end of last week (when the SPX fell by the most in one week – 1.6%, since October, and lost…
Following 2023’s sweeping comeback performance, 2024 wanted a piece of the action. It was a quarter of warm springs and chill winds from the Middle East and Russia/Ukraine. Japan continued to rise, while China continued…
Aoifinn Devitt, Chief Global Market Strategist Coming off of the usual post-Oscars drama, the real original screenplays kicked off mid-week with inflation numbers and a concern that 2024 is already getting too hot to handle.…
Aoifinn Devitt, Chief Global Market Strategist Maybe it is because it is an election year, but we still have China on our minds. Despite the fact that China continues its decline on the global market…
Chris Kamykowski, CFA, CFP® – Head of Investment Strategy and Research Early 2024 has seen all-time highs in the equity markets seem as frequent as Taylor Swift sightings at Kansas City Chiefs’ football games. Multiple…
Aoifinn Devitt, Chief Global Market Strategist Better than expected. It has been a bit of a mantra for the year so far – better economic growth, better trend of inflation, a better outlook for jobs…
By Aoifinn Devitt, Chief Global Market Strategist “Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.” Lyndon B. Johnson In this election year we probably also have politics, and stump…
Download Recap PDF MONTHLY OBSERVATIONS Mixed Bag of Returns to Start 2024 On the positive side, U.S. economic data continued to point to strength in the underlying growth trajectory. That said, markets expectations for rate…
By Aoifinn Devitt, Chief Global Investment Strategist While the jobs numbers last week led to euphoria in markets, this week saw a little bit of buyers’ remorse – albeit selective. Earnings are on a positive…
Chris Kamykowski, CFA, CFP® – Head of Investment Strategy and Research Tim Side, CFA – Investment Strategist We are a far cry from 2022’s mid-term elections when investors were hit with four-decade high inflation levels,…
By Aoifinn Devitt, CFP® – Chief Investment Officer Here in Chicago Thanksgiving was sunny but brisk. Now it is just very brisk. It is a reminder that winter – albeit delayed – comes around after all. The…
By Aoifinn Devitt, CFP® – Chief Investment Officer As the holidays approach, there is a miracle in the air. But not the usual festive kind. Consumers were already starting to expect lower inflation – and Tuesday’s CPI…
Investment Team Click here to download the PDF Monthly Observations No Calendar Effect This Time October was a challenging month for investors as both stocks and bonds fell lower. While markets initially looked through the…
By Aoifinn Devitt, CFP® – Chief Investment Officer October turned out to be a little spooky after all. The month launched somewhat unsteadily, reeling from a “September effect” which did exactly what it said on the tin…
By Aoifinn Devitt, CFP® – Chief Investment Officer Many of our clients have read this recent article in the Wall Street Journal and have asked us to respond. It cites the banner performance of the traditional 60/40…
By Aoifinn Devitt, CFP® – Chief Investment Officer It’s cooling down outside now, but earnings season is heating up. As expected the outlooks are looking warm and cozy, at least so far, with a wide range of…