The Weekly Insight

Would it surprise you if we told you the party in power in Washington will use its power to juice the economy prior to an election? It shouldn’t. Both parties have been doing it for years. But the current Administration is taking a novel approach to this task that some are calling “Stealth QE”. It’s impacting the markets today (in a good way), but it may have longer term consequences which would i...

The market’s recovery last week continued and – with the exception of Big Tech – has left us back where we started before the downturn started in July. That move was further spurred by Jerome Powell’s comments at Jackson Hole on Friday where he basically announced rate cuts are coming in September. That’s all good news, but how does this change our outlook on risk in portfolios? Read more here: ht...

We’ve all done it before: get so sucked into an idea that we miss the big picture. It happens in the markets time and again. Author and expert in behavioral investing Daniel Crosby has a term for it: Overprecision. He defines it as “excessive certainty in the precision of private beliefs”.  Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-overprecision/

At the beginning of last week it seemed panic was starting to settle into the market. The momentum created by the “bad” jobs report on August 2nd fed into a historically bad day in the Nikkei which lead into Monday’s open. The rout was on…until it wasn’t. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-panic-that-wasnt/

What a morning it’s been for the markets! Volatility has spiked and the Dow plummeted nearly 1,000 points at the open this morning.   Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-why-all-the-volatility/

Fed week is upon us yet again, but there is little question what Chairman Powell and company are going to do this week: not much. Barring any surprises, the market is set for the first rate cut to begin in September. But what, exactly, does that mean for the markets and your portfolio? How have rate cuts impacted the economy in the past? Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-in...

Well, where do we start this week? There’s earnings season. Or the rotation from mega cap tech stocks to the rest of the market. Or the sitting President who just dropped out of the race 107 days before Election Day. Or how about the greatest IT failure in the history of…well…computers. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-crowd-struck/

Where do we even start? Love Trump or hate him, there’s no denying we just experienced a dark weekend in American history.  There is no place in a democracy for these kinds of disgusting acts. But as crass as it may seem, you come to us to understand how events will impact your portfolio. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-panic-or-certainty/

It isn’t often we get politicians from the left and the right uniting on an important issue. But it’s happening right now. Leading Democrats and Republicans – including both Presidential candidates – are committing to no changes in the Social Security and Medicare system. The only problem is…the math.   Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-math-doesnt-lie/

Maybe it’s appropriate that, just a week before Independence Day, American politics took yet another messy turn.  We could debate for days the best outcome of our upcoming Presidential election – but what our readers/listeners are more concerned about is what the latest drama may mean for the market. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-a-messy-presidential-election/

We've all heard about NVIDIA. The A.I. microchip maker is the darling of the stock market, up nearly 200% in the last year, and now officially the second largest company in the S&P 500. But what's the story? And should we be concerned about what it could mean for the market on the downside? Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-whats-the-deal-with-nvidia/

The Fed was back last week. And their meeting timed up perfectly with the release of the latest CPI data. Chair Powell and his crew said what everyone expected: they reduced their planned rate cuts for 2024 from three to one. And…no one believes them. Which is a bit of a recurring (if inaccurate!) theme over the last two years. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-they...

We spend a lot of time at Insight delving through economic data, research on companies, analysis of market trends, etc., etc. But every now and then, something happens in the market where we are just…dumbfounded. Why did this happen? Who benefits from it happening? What the heck is a Roaring Kitty? Well…this week we’re going to dive right into one of those weird events and break down the story of...

We had a longtime friend of the firm who was famous for his tagline: “Let’s make it weird!”. He loved the awkward or absurd. Well, he would have loved last week. Markets trying to figure out how to digest the incoming economic information while at the same time processing the conviction of a former President – and current presidential candidate – on 34 felony counts was, if nothing else, weird. We...

It’s been a tremendously good start to the year in markets. But with the Fed hitting the delay button and the election season upon us, the potential for volatility is rising. This week we made some significant changes in our portfolio strategies to address these concerns. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-it-could-be-an-interesting-summer/

There’s an old saying in the market: “Sell in May and go away”. If only it were that easy, we’d do it every year. But it’s not. This May, however, there seems to be a confluence of great market returns with some potential drivers of volatility that are forcing us to look closely at our portfolio strategies in the coming weeks. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-takin...

As of this morning, the S&P 500 is just 40 points off its all-time high. It’s been a remarkably good run since the market bottomed in September of 2022. But upside is an easy conversation. Negative returns – and the exponential benefit of avoiding them – is a much harder conversation. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-importance-of-negative-returns/

We have some big baseball fans at Insight. And those who are fans of the game know that the flashy plays – i.e. home runs – may put butts in the seats, but it’s the boring stuff like On Base Percentage (OBP) that wins games over a long season. There is a direct correlation between that idea and building a sustainable, long-lasting investment portfolio. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.co...

It’s going to be a busy week in the market.  Normally that crops up when we have a Fed meeting – as we do on Wednesday.  But this Fed meeting is likely to be…uneventful.  Everyone already knows they’re not cutting rates.  Instead, the excitement this week comes from 175 companies – fully 35% - of the S&P 500 reporting earnings.  And if the trend from previous weeks continues, that should be ve...

In last week’s edition of the Weekly Insight, we encouraged you to buck the trend and take a “deep breath” as the market experienced a bit of volatility.  We’re still strongly in that camp – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking out into the future and assessing the risks over the horizon.   Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-next-recession/

The start of April hasn’t been fun (which seems like a silly thing to write on Tax Day…is it ever fun?). More stress about inflation.  War clouds looming in the Middle East. This is one of those moments when things in the market can start to feel scary.  But just how bad has it been?  And what kind of impact are these issues starting to have on the market? Read more here: https://insightwealthgrou...

The market had one of its worst weeks of the year last week. And the why was familiar – even if it was something we were hoping to have behind us. The economic news we received was just a bit too good for investors liking. PMI data, GDP expectations, and jobs data all combined to raise concerns that the Fed won’t be cutting interest rates. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-...

We’ve had a lot of different devils on our back the last four years: COVID, inflation, bear markets, etc., etc. Which is likely why this moment feels a bit…weird. As we enter a fairly unassuming earnings season (3.6% growth in earnings expected), there just isn’t a big problem lurking around the corner…yet. Will that leave us some runway for the next month or two?  Read more here: https://insightw...

It was Fed Week last week. And it was almost a non-event. Powell & Co. didn’t change the expected path of rate cuts, and the market responded well with the S&P 500 closing the week above 5,200 for the first time ever.  But there was another discussion buried below the headlines: what the Fed is going to do with its balance sheet holdings? This is an important, if not regularly discussed, t...

For the last two years, every move the Federal Reserve makes has had a direct correlation to the performance of the stock market.  This week’s Fed meeting may be no different, but some interesting things happened last week which showed the market is moving away from the Fed as the sole determinate of success or failure. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-moving-on-fr...