The difficult 2022 for stocks may not get much easier because as we now wait for better news on the inflation front, we have to contend with a seasonally weak month of September. While we got some welcome news in Friday’s jobs report, more evidence of falling inflation will take time to materialize. The good news is a seasonally strong fourth quarter is right around the corner. If history is a guide, midterm elections may provide an added late-year boost.

September to Remember?

September is often a month to remember for investors—but for the wrong reasons. September has historically been one of the weakest month

Investors cheered the two better-than-expected inflation reports last week, pushing the S&P 500 to 16% above its June 16 low and only 11% below its all-time high. After this rebound, the key question investors are asking is whether this is a bear market rally that will soon fizzle or the start of a new bull market. There’s too much uncertainty to have a high conviction view right now, but we do believe the odds have risen that a new bull market has begun.

Encouraging Signs

The news on the economy and corporate profits hasn’t been great lately, but thanks to low expectations, it’s been good enough to pu

Like most other fixed income markets, the emerging market debt (EMD) indexes are off to one of their worst starts to a year with the Bloomberg EM USD Aggregate index down close to 15% (through Aug 8). While interest rate policy in the U.S. has negatively impacted EMD, a series of idiosyncratic challenges have also contributed to the negative returns this year. From the Ukraine/Russian war to the Chinese property development defaults (mostly impacting corporate debt markets) and the zero COVID policy, to the more than 60 rate hikes from emerging market central banks, a lot of bad news is seemingly baked into current yield levels. As shown in th

Index Performance

U.S. Equities Higher

The major market indexes finished the month well into the green. A sharp rebound for stocks in July came as expectations concerning slowing growth has some investors believing the Federal Reserve (Fed) will have to scale back interest rate increases later this year. In addition, with the majority of the S&P having reported Q2 earnings so far, well over half of companies have beaten their consensus estimates. This is better than many investors anticipated amid the present inflationary landscape. All sectors had a strong showing, with consumer discretionary lea