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The war in Ukraine is closing on its third year. The Middle East is witnessing worrisome escalation between Israel and Iran and its terror proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis from Yemen). Hurricane Helene just delivered catastrophic destruction across the Southeast. Dockworkers at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports have started a strike that could…

“Let the good times roll” should be playing in the background as equity markets registered another week of gains and reached fresh new highs on the back of the Federal Reserve’s unexpectedly large reduction in interest rates. Even the beleaguered Chinese stock market managed to have its best weekly performance since the great financial crisis…

The Federal Reserve surprised many market participants — us included – by reducing interest rates by 50 basis points during the Federal Open Markets Committee meeting on Sept. 18. The decision was not unanimous: Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman became the first to dissent since 2005. She was in favor of a rate cut but…

What a difference a week makes! We closed the first trading week of the month with the worst performance for equity markets since the regional bank crisis in early 2023, when Silicon Valley Bank, with over $200 billion in assets, went bankrupt in a matter of days. Financial pundits were bracing for further decline amid…

U.S. equity investors can be thankful that last week was an abbreviated trading week as the stock markets were simply ugly across the board. The U.S. stock market closed out a negative week as economic worries are growing. The S&P 500 Index, a measure of broad market performance, declined 4.3% last week. It was the…

The trading week prior to the long Labor Day weekend was uneventful, as is often the case in the last days of the traditional summer vacation season. In fixed income markets, yields were little changed. The focus has turned squarely to the next Federal Reserve open markets committee meeting, scheduled for September 17-18, where the…

It’s hard to write an exciting recap of the previous week in the financial markets when almost virtually nothing significant happened until Friday morning. Financial market participants were squarely focused on the speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell at the Jackson Hole Symposium in Wyoming, where central bankers from all over the world congregate…

Once again, “dip buyers” in U.S. equity markets were vindicated last week. The S&P 500 Index, a measure of broad market performance, had its best week of the year, continuing an impressive market comeback from the sharp sell-off experienced at the beginning of August. Two key U.S. inflation reports, the Producer Price Index (PPI) and…

Global markets had a wild ride last week as volatility spiked. What we at Elevage Partners observed is a validation of one of our long-held beliefs for investing successfully: You want to choose when to buy or when to sell an investment; you do not want to be forced to look for liquidity at the…

In the span of just over two weeks the narrative in the global financial markets changed abruptly. It went from ebullience in equity markets to the fear of an imminent recession. The “great rotation” that started in mid-July promised to finally include “value” and small cap equities in the bull market. Instead it turned into…