The Federal Reserve (Fed) ended its two-day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting yesterday and, as expected, announced plans to reduce (taper) its $120 billion a month bond purchase program starting this month. The Fed plans to reduce its Treasury purchases by $10 billion each month and its mortgage securities purchases by $5 billion a month, which was in line with our expectations. The Committee only provided guidance for its November and December purchase plans but the expectation is the reductions will remain consistent in future months as well, but may vary based on economic conditions. This provides the Fed flexibility to change

The Dow Jones Industrial Average started trading more than 125 years ago and yesterday it closed above 36,000 for the first time ever. Along the way, the S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Russell 2000 (small caps) all closed at new all-time highs as well.

“We understand all of the worries. Labor shortages, inflation, the pandemic, the Fed, Washington drama, supply chain bottlenecks, and a slowing economy,” explained LPL Financial Chief Market Strategist Ryan Detrick. “But the other side of the coin is earnings have been really good and the stock market is looking forward to better times, not looking in the rear view mirr

When Turkey cut interest rates last month, it was the 1000th interest rate cut since Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, according to analysis by Bank of America. Moreover, since then, central banks globally have bought over $23 trillion of assets to help support financial markets. Now, with many major developed economies recovering from the COVID-19 shutdowns and inflationary pressures remaining stubbornly high, central bankers are likely going to start to reduce monetary accommodation over the next few years. As central bankers start to reverse course though, markets are aggressively reacting to hawkish surprises that are seen coming out of

With Halloween over the weekend, what better to write about this week than what scares us? If our positive near-term market outlook proves to be overly optimistic, we believe one—or perhaps more than one—of these five things will likely be the culprit: inflation, an aggressive Federal Reserve, profit margin pressures, pulling forward of seasonal gains, and potentially overly bullish sentiment. 

Inflation

Central bankers are slowly acknowledging that inflation may be stickier than expected and that risks continue to tilt to the upside. At the same time, the baseline view remains that inflation will settle ba