Making smart, informed investment decisions really involves a two-part process, in my view. The first part is looking at the macroeconomic environment – this tells you whether the global economy is generally expected to grow (i.e., whether stocks have a path higher). It means looking at metrics like GDP, inflation, interest rates, velocity of money, […]
Q2 earnings season is now in full swing, and there is arguably quite a bit riding on this quarter and this year’s earnings season, given the rather muted data seen in 2016 of +0.8% earnings growth on +2.1% higher revenues. The Energy sector was still largely to blame for last year’s fairly dismal aggregate earnings […]
The Financials sector has displayed some interesting characteristics over the last nine months or so. In the weeks following the election of Donald Trump, Financials had the best run of any sector in the S&P 500. From November 8, 2016, to the end of the year, the sector surged +16.8%, with Telecom coming in at […]
At Zacks Investment Management, we continue to favor individual corporate and municipal bonds for investors seeking income and diversification in their fixed income portfolios. U.S. treasuries, while not providing as much income, still remain a great way to lower volatility and risk present from equity securities. So far in 2017, our outlook has served us […]
Though this week’s column will delve slightly into the negative, I do want to make it clear that Zacks Investment Management maintains our base case for positive, single-digit gains in the U.S. stock market this year. That forecast has not changed, and ultimately, we see the positives like earnings growth and global GDP growth as […]
The global equities bulls are back, this time with a new term: “global synchronous recovery.” Whatever you want to call it, the facts are pretty straight – the global economy has seen broad-based growth in 2017, and we fully expect it to continue in the second half of the year. Our expectation is for the […]
There are a few trends shaping-up simultaneously in debt markets that are worth keeping a close eye on. I’ll cut right to the chase because this is important: if these trends continue as-is, history tells us a recession is likely in the works. That’s why investors need to keep checking-in regularly on the issues I’ll […]
Readers who are retired and are interested in travel may want to look across the Atlantic to Europe. A confluence of two economic forces – low inflation and a weak currency – has made travel in Europe relatively attractive over the last few years. As European Union inflation has puttered higher (less than 2% on […]
Investors often ask me which style and/or category of stocks they should favor in the current environment. Is now the time to own large-cap stocks? International? Maybe load up on value over growth? Small-cap? In reality, a broadly diversified equity portfolio should probably have some level of exposure to each category, with some categories overweighted […]
