Stocks dropped on Monday as the trade war between the United States and China escalated, with China announcing a retaliatory tariff hike on U.S. imports. The S&P 500 index closed down 2.41% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 2.38%, their worst day in four months.
Many of your clients may face uncertainty about whether they should claim various investment income on their taxes and, if so, how. This is especially true in light of recent tax code changes signed into law — the first major revisions since 1986.
Franklin Templeton’s Emerging Markets Equity team walks through events moving emerging markets in April and discusses the three things the team is thinking about today. The team believes the current market environment provides an attractive entry point for investors, particularly in the small-cap stock space.
What a difference three months can make! Today, the bear has run back into its cave, the Fed has turned dovish, interest rates have plummeted, and stock markets have mostly recovered.
What a difference three months make. For the full year 2018, every primary asset class was negative: the S&P 500 lost 4.6%, commodities were down 13.9%, long-dated US Treasury bonds were down 1.6%, and gold gave up 1.9%. Contrast that with the first quarter of 2019 – every one of those assets was up!
Our forecasts have come down due to the extraordinary performance of equities and credit in the first quarter. However, we continue to find pockets of opportunity across equities: we believe value stocks are trading at attractive levels globally, and emerging markets value stocks are priced to deliver more than 7% above inflation.
Is the stock market correct in its optimism that monetary normalization is over and equities have more runway in 2019?
The latest market viewpoints from our equity and fixed income managers around the world.
Investors were dour heading into 2019 and while the mood became sunnier in the first quarter, there’s still plenty for investors to ponder and many potential threats to the relative calm.
Markets are caught between incoming data that point to slower global growth and forward-looking factors that suggest improvement later in the year. With the pause in U.S. Federal Reserve rate hikes, we expect modest recovery in global cycle conditions.
This letter explores examples of cognitive and behavioral biases that can derail even the best investment strategy if not identified and guarded against.
There has been a lot of talk the past few years about the flattening of the US yield curve—which is a graphical representation of the spread between short- and long-term interest-rate instruments. More recently, some market commentators have focused on the inversion of one part of the curve—and what it means.
Strong performance during the period was welcomed, but we remain frustrated by the persistence of what we see as a bear market in logic.
China's A-shares are gaining a larger role in MSCI indices. Matthews Asia's portfolio strategy team offers its views.
The Schwab Center for Financial Research’s theme for 2019 was “be prepared,” and that still holds true. Here’s what we expect to see for the remainder of the year.
A brief monthly update on what's happening in the municipal bond market.
Just over a decade ago, global markets began to recover from the biggest shock in postwar history. These 10 charts show both how much has changed since then and how post-crisis market conditions may influence the next decade.
Emerging market equities saw mixed performances in February, with stocks in Asia faring better than stocks in Latin America and emerging Europe, which underperformed.
We remain cautiously optimistic on emerging markets (EM) in 2019 despite a challenging 2018.
Powerful retailing disruptors are reshaping expectations about shopping and shipping by digitizing retail markets across the globe. New conveniences such as ordering groceries with a simple voice command are upending the old-world order.
Studies have shown over the years that most economic rate projections are terribly inaccurate with forecasts bunched together from crowd behavior. So what to do? Run multiple scenarios, assign probabilities and spit out the most likely base case at that point in time.
We expect the formation of collateralized loan obligations to remain a positive technical driver for loan demand through 2019.
A review of last month’s market-moving events across countries and asset classes.
Recent volatility has created opportunities to invest in high yielding leveraged credit closed-end funds trading at a discount to net asset value.
How swift will the high-yield recovery be? How likely is it to be sustained? History sheds some light.
The fourth quarter of 2018 proved to be one of the most negative quarters for financial risk assets since the current bull market began in March of 2009. The S&P 500 finished down 13.5% and commodities were down an even worse 22.6%. As one might expect, safe haven assets performed well.
FIS Group, a manager of U.S. and global developed, emerging and frontier market equity portfolio strategies, issued its Q1 2019 Market Outlook, which provides a review of a tumultuous market in 2018 and offers predictions for what is to come in the year ahead.
Brandes believes increased market volatility and valuation readjustments in the final quarter of 2018 mean a better outlook for a global value investing approach in 2019 and beyond.
Wary investor sentiment, seasonal trading activity in loans, and a big institutional seller have combined to drive down loan prices over the last few weeks. The press has been all over this, using covenant-lite and loan-only narratives with which we disagree. We don’t see a sensational story here. The recent decline was mostly due to technical factors amplifying global macroeconomic worries.
Corporate profits and economic growth remain positive, but are past their peak. Investors may soon find that reaching the summit was the easy part. The real challenges occur in the climb down. Chief Investment Strategist Michael Arone, CFA and Head of SPDR® Americas Research Matthew Bartolini, CFA present three strategies to position for a market with potentially more downside than upside.
As 2018 comes to a close, it is a great time to discuss clients’ charitable giving strategies for next year and beyond.
Global markets are jittery as we start the new year with the same volatility drivers in place as last year. In our view, it's time for your clients to expect and prepare for periodic bouts of volatility.
Despite any positive economic signals, investors are anxiously eyeing a host of issues that could slow global growth -- and tilt the markets in a new direction.
Which issues are most critical to consider going into the new year? And what could be the consequences for the markets, both here and abroad? Read our annual outlook.
Investors’ obsession with the flattening U.S. Treasury yield curve dominated headlines for much of 2018. A flattening yield curve occurs when short-term rates are rising faster than long-term rates, which may eventually lead to an inverted yield curve, where short-term rates are higher than long-term rates. Historically, this has been a negative signal for the U.S. economy, often providing an early warning of an eventual recession, which is why the yield curve has been garnering so much attention recently.
-Global market performance remained challenged amid lingering volatility. -Concerns about softer growth, coupled with comments from the Fed, tempered market expectations for the path of future rate hikes. -An assortment of geopolitical developments continued to capture attention in November.
Bond investing is going digital. Find out how fixed-income managers who are integrating technology into their processes will be able to move from great ideas to executed trades faster and with better results than those who stick with the analog status quo.
In our 2019 Fixed Income Outlook, Matthews Asia's fixed income team discusses possible tailwinds for Asia bonds ahead.
As forces ranging from rising rates to trade disputes have raised the stakes for global markets and investors, our investing leaders step back for big-picture views of what these may portend for equity, fixed income, and real assets and other alternative markets.
Our senior investment leaders see plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the year ahead, but recognize investment opportunities may be more divergent.
The Federal Reserve is in the midst of an historic tightening cycle, and it has begun to impact the economy.
When a stock index falls by more than 10%, it is often said to have entered “correction” territory. That’s a fairly neutral term for what feels like a nerve-wracking drop to many investors. What does a correction mean? What’s likely to happen after a correction, and what can you do to help your portfolio weather the downturn?
When it comes to creating alpha, fixed-income managers that stay ahead of rapidly evolving technology will have an advantage over those that remain stuck in the analog world. But how do you assess how well your manager is navigating the changing technological landscape?
Preparing for the market turbulence that typically occurs in the run up to a recession.
Volatility returned and pulled markets across the globe into the red. Slowing growth momentum outside the U.S. further weighed on sentiment. Political developments from Latin America to Europe were a source of both uncertainty and assurance for markets.
The sweeping tax overhaul signed by President Donald Trump this year has many positive aspects for investors, while also creating both opportunities and challenges for financial advisors who use tax-efficient strategies.
Market Updates from across the region.
When it comes to US high-yield bank loans, we don’t mince words: we think the risk rarely justifies the potential reward.
