The S&P 500 Index has closed higher five consecutive weeks, making six new all-time highs along the way. There now have been 19 new highs in 2019, tying the number we saw last year.

There’s no doubt that this bull market has been incredibly impressive, especially lately. But, it may also be quite misunderstood.

For instance, this bull market has been helped by two large pullbacks along the way. There have been two separate 19% plus corrections for the S&P 500 over the past 10 years, in October 2011 and in December 2018. While the selloffs were swift and deep, the S&P 500 didn’t fall more than

Consumer spending has powered the U.S. economy this year as businesses curb investments, waiting for trade and geopolitical uncertainty to fade. We expect that growth will likely slow next year as companies continue to sit out this part of the cycle; however, we expect a strong U.S. labor market and solid consumer spending to fend off a recessionary environment. 

Two Economies

It’s been a tale of two economies in 2019. U.S. consumers are spending at a solid rate, which we expect to continue through the important holiday shopping season that is rapidly approaching. U.S. businesses, on the other hand, are not openin

Investors cheering the S&P 500 Index’s fifth record high in the past two weeks may be missing a more impressive breakout in global equities.

The MSCI ACWI Index—a benchmark that captures stocks in the United States, developed international, and emerging markets—has returned 22% year to date, bringing it to within 1.5% of its first record high since January 2018.

It’s encouraging to see non-U.S. stocks carrying more weight recently, even though the global benchmark has trailed the S&P 500 by about 3 percentage points this year.

The MSCI All-Cap World Ex.-U.S. Index has retu

Stalled business spending is having ripple effects on U.S. company efficiency.

Nonfarm productivity (output per worker) unexpectedly slid 0.3% in the third quarter, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report released November 6. As shown in the LPL Chart of the Day, that was productivity’s first quarterly decline since the fourth quarter of 2015.

Third-quarter productivity floundered as employee hours rose 2.4%, while total output climbed 2.1%. The BLS noted that self-employed workers made an “unusually large contribution” to hours worked in last quarter’s productivit