Rising Yields Fail to Derail Stocks This year, the stock market has risen significantly. Lingering worries about oil prices, inflation, the war with Iran, and the possibility of an AI bubble haven’t subsided. But the economy is expanding, corporate profits have been...
All Gas, No Brakes: Profits Soar in Q2 In a solid earnings season, we’d generally expect S&P 500 companies to deliver double-digit profit growth, meaning earnings growth of at least 10% versus a year ago (20% tops). That’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but...
A Murky Fed Message “All hat and no cattle” is a traditional cowboy phrase—especially popular in Texas—describing someone who is basically a poser: plenty of talk, lots of sparkle, but little to back it up. It’s all talk and no action, and that’s the...
Social Security and You The 2026 OASDI Trustees Report presents a sobering assessment of the financial outlook for Social Security. The trust fund that supports Social Security retirement benefits is projected to be depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032. At that...
Chips in Flux Since the most recent market low at the end of March, semiconductors (microchips, commonly called chip stocks) have been a very popular trade. In less than three months, the PHLX Semiconductor Index has more than doubled—see Figure 1. Investors are...
Oil Has Given Back Gains, but Gasoline—Not So Much Just before the start of the war, WTI crude oil traded at about $67 per barrel, according to MarketWatch. By last week, the price of oil had fallen to within about $1 of its pre-war price. However, the same can’t be...
