Insights

Wag The Dog is a 1997 political satire film starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. The film centers on a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer who fabricate a war in Albania to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal.

Last week, the major indexes ended mixed as investors weighed inflation data against dovish signals from Federal Reserve officials.

After taking a week off, we have too many data points to cover. So, we are just giving you data this week instead of a cute title and weaving a story into this update.

Last week, higher oil prices contributed to concerns that inflation could prove more difficult for central banks to tame, spurring a sell-off in bonds.

As you can see over the last few weeks, we are getting creative with our content titles (sarcasm). Actually, this week, we wanted to give you some fun facts about October (no Earth, Wind, and Fire didn’t write a song about the 21st day) that you may not know about.

The major U.S. equity benchmarks declined for the week as investors reacted to hawkish forecasts from the Federal Reserve’s meeting last week and rising U.S. Treasury yields.

After the Fed’s hawkish tone and some of the data we have seen this week, one has to wonder if “data was changin’ the minds of pretenders” who think the Fed will land this economy on a soft, fluffy pillow. Hey, hey, hey!

Last week, the major equity indexes finished mixed, with value stocks outperforming growth stocks.

“House of cards” noun; phrase: a structure, situation, or institution that is insubstantial, shaky, or in constant danger of collapse.

Last week, stocks closed lower over the holiday-shortened week as some positive economic signals drove an increase in interest rates.

Even though we celebrated a birthday last week, it doesn’t mean I am old enough to have seen all of the episodes of Dragnet.

Hopeful signs on the inflation front helped the major benchmarks end last week with solid gains, although stocks closed out their first negative month since February.

Most of you already know the hammer analogy.  It’s the law of the instrument or, in this case, the hammer.  This analogy was highlighted in a paper by Abraham Maslow, who described this law as a cognitive bias involving over-reliance on a familiar tool. 

Benchmark returns varied last week as investors reacted to mixed economic and monetary policy signals. Growth stocks handily outperformed value shares, helped by another substantial earnings and revenue beat by artificial intelligence chipmaker NVIDIA.

This week, NFL teams must cut their 90-man rosters down to its regular season 53-man squad.  The official deadline is Tuesday at 4 p.m.   Although this represents the beginning of the regular season (football is back), it also presents a lot of players with the reality that their dreams of playing in the NFL come to an end.

Stocks were broadly lower as sentiment appeared to take a blow from a sharp increase in longer-term bond yields and fears of a sharp slowdown in China.

Because of our travel schedule, we are bringing our best “One-Hit-Wonders” from Playtone Records this week. It’s that thing we do (Tom Hanks movie reference, BTW).

The major benchmarks ended mixed for the week as investors weighed inflation data against worries over the recent rise in long-term interest rates.

Unless you lived under a rock, you know the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty.  The rhyme initially came from a British riddle that typically portrayed the character as an anthropomorphic egg.

They say that recognition is the first sign of recovery.  We recognize that we tend to be contrarian; however, like an addictive drug, the data keeps us from meeting with other contrarians at a church in a circle and talking about our 12 steps to recovery (“This is my third week of being positive”).