OBBBA Planning Considerations
Signed into law on July 4, 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) contains a variety of provisions that will impact individual investors, families, consumers, and businesses. Our financial planners have analyzed the language of the law in order to better understand such effects. Our aim here is to summarize several pertinent categories of […]
Democratizing Alternative Investments
By Ellen Hazen, CFA®, Chief Market Strategist June Takeaways: The Federal Reserve (“Fed”) increased its estimates of inflation, unemployment, and the longer-term Federal Funds rate, while keeping short-term rates at 5.25%-5.50%. The Fed’s quarterly Statement of Economic Projections showed an increase in participants’ expectations for 2025 Personal Consumption Expenditure Index (PCE) from 2.2% to 2.3%, […]
Artificial Intelligence – Expect Volatility Along with Growth
By Ellen Hazen, CFA®, Chief Market Strategist May Takeaways: The Federal Reserve kept short-term interest rates at 5.25%-5.50%, while announcing a slowing of the pace of shrinking its balance sheet holdings. This was widely anticipated with recent economic releases showing continuing inflation Equity markets rebounded. After a decline in April, most equity markets appreciated in […]
Checking in with Your 401(k)
Amidst the hustle and bustle of everyday life, many of us don’t have the time or energy to monitor our 401(k) account (or other retirement plan). While too much tinkering can be problematic, the temptation to “set and forget” 401(k) funds should also be resisted. We recommend that clients perform periodic check-ins with their retirement […]
Checking in on the US Consumer
By Ellen Hazen, CFA®, Chief Market Strategist April Takeaways: Decent corporate earnings but muted stock price response. Based on the market’s disappointing response to strong first-quarter earnings reports, we conclude that investors were expecting even stronger results. Revenue growth and earnings growth for the first quarter of 2024 averaged between 4% and 5%, a pace […]
Will Market Breadth Spread Beyond Large Cap Stocks?
By Ellen Hazen, CFA®, Chief Market Strategist March Takeaways: Jobs are still strong. The US unemployment rate has remained steady at 3.9% for two months, while the US economy added 275,000 new nonfarm payroll jobs in the month of February, ahead of expectations. The labor force participation rate has been 62.5% for three months, and […]
Small Is Beautiful. Big Is Beautiful. Which Is It?
By Ellen Hazen, CFA®, Chief Market Strategist February Takeaways: Strong US labor market. January new nonfarm job creation was very strong at 353,000, nearly double the 185,000 estimate Inflation declines moderating. Inflation (as measured by the Consumer Price Index, or CPI) was a little higher than expected, at 3.1% vs. expectations of 2.9% Rate cut […]
Bitcoin – the ETF Era
By Ellen Hazen, CFA®, Chief Market Strategist January Takeaways: Q4 GDP was very strong at +3.3%. This follows +4.9% in Q3 2023, also a strong result. Current estimates are for 2024 GDP to slow fairly sharply, to between 1-2%. This anticipated deceleration in economic growth is the result of the cumulative impact of two years […]
Resolutions for 2024: Best Practices
By FLPutnam
Opportunities Abound
By Ellen Hazen, CFA®, Chief Market Strategist December Takeaways: The labor market continues to glide to a soft landing. New jobs created in November (reported in December) were 199,000, better than the 185,000 expected. This continues a string of strong but decelerating jobs reports and has underpinned our rationale for economic strength all year. Inflation […]