Bob's Journal
Found 464 Articles.
Get access to our full article archive by subscribing to Retirement Watch and Retirement Watch Spotlight Series.
The Year of Positive Economic Surprises
We’re about to be inundated with economic and market forecasts for 2018. Before you spend much time with those forecasts, consider how accurately the forecasts for 2017 were. Market forecasts are notoriously inaccurate, but most of the forecasts for 2017 were farther off the mark than usual. I like to follow the Citi Economic Surprise […]
Happy Thanksgiving 2017
Happy Thanksgiving 2017 I prepared this week’s Bob’s Journal early and in a different format because of the Thanksgiving holiday. Next week, I’ll be back to our regular journal entry. Once again, this has been a year of surprises, but none of them derailed the economy or the stock markets. One year ago, many analysts […]
The Markets Since the Election
Last week marked the first year since the presidential election, so let’s look at what markets have done since Election Day. Of course, you know that U.S. stock indexes are sharply higher than a year ago. The major indexes each returned more than 20%, but the increase isn’t across the board for all indices. The […]
Inside the Confidence Numbers
Consumer confidence and sentiment are extremely positive. Let’s take a look behind the headline numbers. If you’ve been following these reports regularly, you’ve seen the steady increases in Consumer Sentiment, as reported by the University of Michigan and Consumer Confidence as reported by The Conference Board. While both numbers have increased, the Consumer Confidence numbers […]
The Dow vs. the Rest of the Market
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) quietly shot past all the other benchmarks in October, and no one expected that. The DJIA is the benchmark most quoted by the media, but it takes a lot of abuse from academics and financial professionals. The DJIA reflects the limits of technology at the time it was created […]
International Markets Still Set the Pace
U.S. stocks beat most international markets recently, but non-U.S. stocks are likely to resume the outperformance they delivered for most of the last 18 months. U.S. stock indexes have been setting record highs all year and are on pace to establish a record for most new highs recorded in a calendar year. The S&P 500 […]
The Dollar Bounces Back
The reversal in the U.S. dollar is the big news in the markets. The dollar soared after the election but began a steady decline in January that didn’t stop until recently. At one point, the dollar was down almost 10% for the year against a basket of major currencies. That was its longest and steepest […]
Whipsawed by Economic Surprises
This year has been a case study in the dangers of adjusting one’s outlook and portfolio based on the latest economic data. Most economic data are what the statisticians call “noisy.” It is based on estimates and incomplete information. Also, short-term factors can influence a month’s data. The data often are subject to later revisions, […]
