Friday Thoughts
The stock market hadn't seen a correction in two years and we went the longest ever stretch without a 3 or 5 percent correction. What we have seen over the last two years is the anomaly, not the last two weeks.
The stock market hadn't seen a correction in two years and we went the longest ever stretch without a 3 or 5 percent correction. What we have seen over the last two years is the anomaly, not the last two weeks.
The fear is that as interest rates rise, the cost of borrowing goes up, and businesses who have relied on cheap loans will be adversely affected. And now less home buyers will be able to buy the home they had hoped. And credit card rates will go up, hurting the consumers. And on, and on.
We've now closed the books on January and it was a good month for the US stock markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and the S&P 500 both had their best month since March of 2016, up 5.6% and 5.8%, respectively. This was the best January for the S&P 500 since 1997.
I realize that many people consider the bond market the boring side of investments. And in a lot of ways it can be. It can also be an important indicator of what may be coming.
I'm getting a lot of people asking about investing recently due to the stock market returns they're seeing or hearing about. There seems to be a renewed interest by people who have shied away over the last decade or so. Maybe they lost money in 2008 and swore they would never invest in "the stock market" again. Or maybe they heard stories from friends or families about losing big when the tech bubble burst.
The election of 2016 turned out to be one of the most unique, unexpected elections in recent memory. All of the pundits were left scratching their heads starting from the point that candidates began announcing their candidacy all the way through the night of the election.