Fourth quarter earnings season has been outstanding. As good as it has been, perhaps most impressive is the strong guidance corporate America has provided. In response, we have raised our S&P 500 Index earnings forecast for 2018 and our S&P 5

Are we out of the woods yet? After the fastest correction from a record high in the history of the S&P 500 Index, stocks staged an impressive comeback last week. The S&P 500 put together its best week since 2013, rallying more than 5% off the

After an extraordinary two-year period of market calm, the major U.S. equity markets slipped into correction territory last week. A perfect storm of investor worries collided over the past six trading days, including inflation, monetary policy, and t

Did stocks just melt-up, setting up a possible melt-down? Friday’s sharp decline, the biggest since the Brexit vote in June 2016, might have led us to forget that just a few days ago many claimed the stock market was melting up. The strong fini

The equity market action over the past year is truly historic on many levels. It is important to recognize how unique this time frame has been and that a more volatile 2018 may be likely, and quite frankly normal. This week we will highlight some of

It’s early in the season, but with about 50 companies having reported fourth quarter results, S&P 500 Index earnings are tracking a 12% year-over-year increase [Figure 1]. A solid 79% of the companies have bested earnings estimates, while 8

We favor U.S. and emerging market (EM) equities for tactical global allocations. After reviewing our thoughts on the U.S. equity markets in last week’s Weekly Market Commentary, we thought we’d expand our 2018 equity outlook with a focus

2017 was truly a remarkable year for the U.S. stock market with record breaking abound. The S&P 500 Index produced 12 positive monthly returns for the first year ever. The Dow Jones Industrials Average produced 71 record highs — its highest

The bull market continues to march higher. The S&P 500 Index is near one of the most overbought levels in history and this has many wondering how much longer the rally can continue. The longer-term technical indicators continue to look strong, bu

Upbeat as Expected

Companies remained generally upbeat during the third quarter earnings season, based on the LPL Research Corporate Beige Book Barometer. This is hardly surprising, given actual earnings results were good again and estimates of fu