Kat Van Slyke, the protagonist in my guest’s new novel, is a woman living a seemingly wonderful life. She runs a thriving apparel business that she built herself. She has a son who is a budding baseball star, and a role model in her father, who was once a star major league player. She lives in a fancy condominium, travels by private jet and has an expensive vacation home. But through a series of events, most of which were of her own making, her life quickly unravels. In that downward spiral, she learns many important lessons about business, family and life.

The BEA's Core Personal Consumption Expenditures Chain-type Price Index for January, released last week, shows that core inflation is below the Federal Reserve's 2% long-term target at 1.53%. The January Core Consumer Price Index release is currently lower, at 1.41%. The Fed is on record as using Core PCE data as its primary inflation gauge.

The late-February spike in U.S. Treasury bond yields sent ripples throughout the global markets. As yields surged to the highest level in a year, stocks and commodities sold off sharply, while the dollar rallied.

As more plan participants worry about retirement income security, demand for guaranteed income solutions is growing—and plan sponsors are pondering the options.

There is hope that economies will see a more sustainable and robust recovery this year, given unprecedented levels of monetary and fiscal stimulus and as more individuals are vaccinated against COVID-19. But one question for investors is what happens next—will inflation and higher interest rates be a consequence?

In the near term, markets should not be too worried about a possible spike in demand driving up inflation and interest rates, causing asset prices to fall across the board. But longer-term inflation risks are skewed much more to the upside than many investors and policymakers seem to realize.

"This pandemic has magnified every existing inequality in our society – like systemic racism, gender inequality, and poverty." Melinda Gates

Much statistical analysis in finance depends on the assumption that variables have normal distributions. This assumption is far from correct. As a result, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb has rightly pointed out, most statistical results in finance are wrong. Now, a disciple of Taleb has tried to extend Taleb’s research by relating it to an obscure mathematical concept.

How long will the effects of COVID be felt in potential growth, the tourism sector and bankruptcy filings?

Was the March 2009 low the end of a secular bear market and the beginning of a secular bull? Are we in the beginning stages of another secular bear?

A technical indicator with a reliable history is signaling that 30-year Treasury yields will soon decline.

This morning the Institute for Supply Management published its monthly Manufacturing Report for February. The latest headline Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) was 60.8, an increase of 2.1 from 58.7 the previous month and in expansion territory. Today's headline number was above the Investing.com forecast of 58.8 percent.

The February US Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index conducted by Markit came in at 58.6, down 0.6 from the 59.2 final January figure. Markit's Manufacturing PMI is a diffusion index: A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector; below 50 indicates contraction.

Clients face three big risks in retirement from the sequence of returns, volatility and asset shortfalls. Michael Hirthler, the founder and chief investment officer at Pennsylvania-based Jacobi Capital Management, explained to me how he uses the Big Picture app to explain those risks to his clients.

A goal of environmental, governance and sustainable (ESG) investing is to reduce carbon emissions and improve the quality of the environment. New research shows this effort is succeeding.

Quick take: Based on the February S&P 500 average of daily closes, the Crestmont P/E is 166% above its arithmetic mean and at the 100th percentile of this fourteen-plus-decade monthly metric.

The markets took a tumble to start this week as rising interest rates and inflationary pressures begin to weigh on outlooks. Those worries quickly diminished as Jerome Powell changed the rules to reassure Wall Street that “QE” is here to stay.

Yields have jumped so much, in fact, that they’re giving stocks a serious run for their money. The 10-year yield is now higher than the S&P 500 dividend yield, which may have added to the selling pressure that cost stocks close to 2.5% yesterday.

What normalcy will it be? I don’t expect to simply go back to the way things were. The economy as it was structured in December 2019 is gone forever. The world is different now. The economy will be different, too.

The S&P 500 dropped three out of the five days this week, ending Friday down 0.48% from Thursday. The index is now up just 1.47% YTD and is 3.14% off its record close. 

Valid until the market close on March 31, 2021.

The S&P 500 closed February with a monthly gain of 2.61% after a loss of 1.11% in January. At this point, after close on the last day of the month, four of five S&P 500 strategies are signaling "invested" — Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI), Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF (VEU), Vanguard REIT Index ETF (VNQ), and Invesco DB Commodity Index Tracking (DBC) — unchanged from last month's quadruple "invested" signal.

"Travel on all roads and streets changed by -10.3% (-28.1 billion vehicle miles) for December 2020 as compared with December 2019. Travel for the month is estimated to be 244.1 billion vehicle miles." The 12-month moving average was down 0.98% month-over-month and down 13.2% year-over-year. If we factor in population growth, the 12-month MA of the civilian population-adjusted data (age 16-and-over) was down 1.04% month-over-month and down 13.5% year-over-year.

Despite the recent weakness in equities, Raymond James CIO Larry Adam expects positive stock growth over the next 12 months.

We hope you enjoy Harold Evensky's latest NewsLetter.

The Queen’s Gambit miniseries helped propel Netflix to a winning earnings report last quarter, but in fact the chess strategy it is named after has helped propel chess players to winning games for decades.

For the last year or two big tech has been hot, so has new tech. For prudence sake, it might be time to take a little money off the table. No one can time the market, and the bubble has risen far further and for a lot longer than any rational person could have predicted.

Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Draghi, has a well-earned reputation for turning around difficult situations. But can he reverse Italy’s relative economic decline? And what does his program mean for Italian bond yields?

Inflation is back on investors' minds lately, and some may be wondering how to position their portfolios to confront this potential new scourge.

From cloud computing and automation to self-driving cars, technology continues to be one of the world’s hottest sectors. Our Chief Market Strategist Stephen Dover and Portfolio Managers Donald Huber and John Remmert believe active investing in technology and innovation is a global story, and government support and spending in next-generation technologies is likely a long-term positive.

Even the most promising future can change drastically by a life-threatening event. A healthy individual may require around-the-clock care and supervision after an accident, creating the need to solve complex financial planning problems.

President Biden’s coronavirus stimulus package has the intention of flooding the economy with money at a time when economic growth is sputtering. Ironically, it contains one provision likely to create exactly the opposite of what he intends: raising the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.00 per hour.

Our positive 2021 economic outlook, combined with better-than-expected company fundamentals, supports strong credit performance and spreads.

The February Final came in at 76.8, down 2.2 from the January Final. Investing.com had forecast 76.5. Since its beginning in 1978, consumer sentiment is 10.9 percent below the average reading (arithmetic mean) and 9.9 percent below the geometric mean.

This morning's release of the publicly available data from ECRI puts the WLI at 153.2, up 3.6 from the previous week's revised figure. The WLIg is at 22.1, up from last week and the WLI YoY is at 1.43, up from last week.

The latest Chicago Purchasing Manager's Index, or the Chicago Business Barometer, fell to 59.5 in February from 63.8 in January, which is in expansion territory. Values above 50.0 indicate expanding manufacturing activity.

Personal Income (excluding Transfer Receipts) in January fell 0.14% and is down 0.6% year-over-year. However, when adjusted for inflation using the BEA's PCE Price Index, Real Personal Income (excluding Transfer Receipts) MoM was down 0.48%. The real number is down 2.0% year-over-year.

Opponents of Harvard College’s affirmative action policies asked the Supreme Court to bar colleges from using race as an admissions factor, setting up what could be a defining showdown for higher education and the court’s conservative majority.

House lawmakers kicked off an effort to tackle dominant technology companies, vowing a revamp of competition laws to curb their power.

The rout in popular technology shares accelerated after the 10-year Treasury rate spiked as much as 23 points, fueling worry that the Federal Reserve will be forced to raise interest rates.

The BEA's Personal Income and Outlays report for January was published this morning by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The latest Headline PCE price index was up 0.34% month-over-month (MoM) and is up 1.45% year-over-year (YoY). Core PCE is now at 1.53%, below the Fed's 2% target rate.

PPB Capital Partners is a platform to access alternative funds with investment minimums as low as $100,000 and no sales charges or platform fees. It was launched in July of 2008, meaning that it successfully navigated the 2008 financial crisis. PPB has successfully invested in over 250 funds and it is actively working with over 100 private wealth firms around the U.S., with nearly $2 billion in capital commitments. PPB delivers a process to operationally streamline the often complicated and onerous process of investing in the private markets.

Here is an advance preview of the monthly moving averages we track after the close of the last business day of the month.

After receiving the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus from China, it took Moderna just two days (two days!!) to generate the sequence of the vaccine. In less than a month, they produced the first clinical batch of the mRNA-1273 vaccine that has now seen tens of millions of doses distributed.

The latest Conference Board Leading Economic Index (LEI) for January was up 0.5% from the December final figure of 109.7.

Five out of the twelve Federal Reserve Regional Districts currently publish monthly data on regional manufacturing: Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Richmond, and Philadelphia. The latest average of the five for February is 18.1, up from the previous month's 13.6. It is well below its all-time high of 25.1, set in May 2004.

Join Henry Song, portfolio manager for the Diamond Hill Core Bond and Short Duration Securitized Bond strategies for a discussion about opportunities in the investment-grade fixed income market including a breakdown of the securitized markets and the importance of looking beyond the benchmark for investments in investment-grade fixed income.

Mr. Song will also offer his insights into the importance of maintaining an allocation to core fixed income as a key component of an asset allocation.

Today’s low bond yields and high equity valuations have led many to jettison the traditional 4% initial safe-withdrawal rate assumption. But I will show that the optimal “safe” withdrawal rate depends considerably on the retiree.

Rather than worrying about the prospects of higher long-term expected inflation, the US Federal Reserve is exuding confidence that it can maintain price stability should the need ever arise. It should think again, before the inflation genie has escaped from the bottle.

The Second Estimate for Q4 GDP, to one decimal, came in at 4.1% (4.09% to two decimal places), a decrease from 33.4% (33.444% to two decimal places) for the Q3 Third Estimate and a slight increase from the Q4 Advance Estimate of 4.0%. Investing.com had a consensus of 4.2%.