We finally made it to the end of 2022! Today marks the last day of trading for a very challenging year for equity and fixed income markets. Surging inflation, unprecedented global monetary policy tightening, China’s battle with COVID-19, rising recession fears, and the Russia-Ukraine war have been a few of the major headwinds. The arduous backdrop has underpinned a 19.2% loss for the S&P 500 as of December 29, likely making it the seventh-worst year for the index since 1928.

There have been very few winners as all but one S&P 500 sector is trading lower this year—energy stands out as the clear exception. The s

Index Performance

U.S. and International Equities               

Markets Mostly Lower

The major markets finished mostly lower this week as market participants remain concerned about the economic and profits landscape.  Investors have been thwarted by the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) pushback to a potential pivot, given easing e

Many financial markets are on pace for their worst year in quite some time, or in the case of core bonds, the worst year since inception of the Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index, which is the main core bond index. With inflationary pressures running much hotter than central bank targets, many central banks were forced to respond by raising policy rates at a speed and magnitude unlike any other year, which was a decided headwind to many financial assets this year.

As mentioned in this week’s Weekly Market Commentary (found here), the Fed’s 0.50% rate hike last week capped a year in which the Federal Reserve (Fed) raised s

The Federal Reserve (Fed) wrapped up its last Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting of the year last week, where it hiked short-term interest rates for the seventh time in as many meetings, taking the fed funds rate to 4.5% (upper bound). A day later, both the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE) also hiked interest rates, taking their respective policy rates to the highest levels since 2008. Over 90% of central banks have hiked interest rates this year, making the (mostly) global coordinated effort unprecedented. The good news? We think we’re close to the end of these rate hiking cycles, which could lessen t