MARKET INSIGHTS

November 2024

11/7/2024
I hope President Trump endeavors to pull the country together because the level of divisiveness is significant. Our differences on key items such as abortion, border politics, and economic priorities will remain.
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October 2024

10/4/2024
As inflation continued to slow, there was extensive speculation that the Fed would finally start reducing interest rates.
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September 2024

9/9/2024
The bond market has been watching the Fed to see when and how much they will reduce the Federal Funds rate.
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August 2024

8/5/2024
For July, the Bloomberg 1000 Total Return Index returned 1.41%. The Bloomberg 1000 Growth Index returned -0.11% and the Bloomberg 1000 Value Index returned 5.12%.
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July 2024

7/10/2024
Well, half of the year is in the bag! The Bloomberg 500 Total Return Index returned 15.1% for the first six months of the year.
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June 2024

6/3/2024
This year, KoCAA has switched our mutual fund benchmarks to Bloomberg’s suite of market indices. Going forward, we will quote the Bloomberg index returns in Market Insights and CIO Corner.
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May 2024

5/3/2024
April was a busy month in the capital markets, the economy, and the political world.
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April 2024

4/2/2024
Every month, John Hoag of our client service team, harangues me until I complete Market Insights. Mercifully, I remembered and told John I would write it today, April 2^nd, and hopefully it will not only be fast, but useful and interesting as well.
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March 2024

3/1/2024
For the month of February, the stock market, as measured by the S&P 500, returned 5.4%¹. The market continued to enjoy strong flows while trying to gauge the next move by the Fed.
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February 2024

2/1/2024
For the month of January, the stock market, as measured by the S&P 500, returned 1.7%¹. The equity market has been watching the Fed very closely for clues on when the Federal Reserve might want to start cutting the Federal Funds rate.
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January 2024

1/1/2024
Well, 2023 is over and 2024 has just begun. We want to wish everyone a healthy and prosperous New Year. As we reflect on the markets, my first course of action this morning after logging in to Bloomberg was to calculate the annualized return for the S&P 500 for the period of 12/31/21 to 12/31/23; with dividends reinvested, the index had an annualized return of 1.7%¹.
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December 2023

12/1/2023
The stock market saw very strong gains in November with the S&P 500 returning 9.1%, with dividends reinvested¹.
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November 2023

11/1/2023
This Market Insights is a few days late because I am just getting back into the swing of things after a trip to Rome last week in which I was asked to participate in a conference on Mensuram Bonam.
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October 2023

10/1/2023
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco expects excess savings to be entirely depleted by the end of the third quarter.
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September 2023

9/1/2023
Every summer, we have two or three interns in the KOCAA offices to help with a number of tasks. I always tell them that I am not sure they will love the job, but by the end of their internship, they will certainly know what it means to be a securities analyst.
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August 2023

8/1/2023
The Knights of Columbus annual convention occurs the first Tuesday of August and as this was August 1, the convention was as early as it can possibly be.
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July 2023

7/1/2023
We are at a very interesting crossroads in the U.S. economy. On the one hand we are still awaiting the most predicted recession in our history.
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June 2023

6/1/2023
The dance is almost over. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden seemed to have come to an agreement to increase the debt ceiling and it has passed the House with bipartisan support as the vote tally was 314-117.
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May 2023

5/1/2023
This month has continued the economic challenges as the most predicted recession in history has not yet arrived, but we believe compelling evidence is building for an impending slowed down.
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April 2023

4/1/2023
Every month as I sit to write this essay, I try to focus on a current theme (I will come to Silicon Valley Bank, I promise!).
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March 2023

3/1/2023
The world and the markets remain quite complicated. Domestically, we are still dealing with the environmental mess from the train derailment in Ohio.
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February 2023

2/1/2023
The capital markets provided a reprieve for wary investors after the stock market slump in 2022. For January, the S&P 500 returned 6.3%¹ and that allowed investors to feel at least some relief.
Continue Reading - Market Insights February 2023