Column

At first blush, the stock market looks like it’s marching higher at a steady and predictable rate. The S&P 500 index is up 9% this year after notching its third straight weekly gain. But there’s a lot going…

If the end of 2023 were a party for markets, the first few trading days of 2024 have certainly felt like the hangover. It may not be an entirely bad thing if the headache is a result of investors rethinking past decisions and planning to…

One of the more unfortunate consequences of higher-for-longer interest rates is the resurrection of the so-called Fed Model.That’s because the market-timing tool’s track record is dismal and it lacks any theoretical justification. The…

How now, Dow Jones 40,000? The doughty blue-chip index is knocking on another big, millennial number, but it’s just one of the records being set throughout world equity markets. Megacap tech stocks have powered the benchmark…

Much of last year’s 26% gain in the SPDR S&P 500 exchange-traded fund was due to the stellar performance of the Magnificent Seven—the mostly tech-stock behemoths that are the index’s biggest holdings.If…

Investors should prepare for Donald Trump to be elected president in November. The anger of the electorate that propelled his 2016 victory has increased since he narrowly lost to Joe Biden in 2020. Trump’s acute legal troubles since he…

The market continues to rise despite some obvious risks in the week ahead. The Federal Open Market Committee will announce its monetary policy decision on Wednesday, but there’s only a de minimis chance of a rate cut, while…

The typical stock market pattern in presidential election years is for first-half weakness and second-half strength.The chart below plots the path that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has taken during the…

Dreams die hard—and traders are still holding on to their rose-colored reverie of a soft-landing economy and a dovish Federal Reserve. What they couldn’t do was push the S&P 500 to a record closing high,…

It was a great year, one full of missed predictions, superlative market moves, contradictory currents—and one final disappointment. No matter how hard it tried, the S&P 500 index just couldn’t close at a…