According to LPL Research’s analysis of the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) recently released Beige Book, business sentiment on Main Street has declined in recent months as the economy navigates the latest wave of COVID-19, but nevertheless remains elevated as business leaders look past current obstacles. Still, COVID-19 related business challenges persist. While price increases are starting to level off, the global impact of the Delta variant has unwound some progress on supply chain bottlenecks, and a near-term shortage of qualified workers continues to weigh on businesses’ ability to expand.

“Despite on-going c

This week in the latest LPL Market Signals podcast, Ryan Detrick and Lawrence Gillum discussed global central bank policy, recently weakening economic data, and where stocks and bonds could go the remainder of this year.

In today’s blog we will focus on their discussion on stocks and bonds.

The S&P 500 Index was up more than 20% by the end of August for the first time since 1997 and it has made a new high every single month this year so far (9 for 9). Incredibly, it made 53 new highs before August was over, the most ever. Any way you slice it, this year is historic for the bulls.

The catch (and

The Covid-19 pandemic was an unprecedented shock to a large majority of global economies. But the economic damage was met with an extraordinary global monetary response with the Federal Reserve (Fed), European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of Japan (BOJ) and the Bank of England (BOE) all providing emergency levels of monetary accommodation. As seen in the LPL Research Chart of the Day, central bank balance sheets have grown by $10 trillion since the start of the pandemic and are currently at $25 trillion for the Fed, BOJ, ECB and the BOE, combined.

While we are hopefully past the peak of the pandemic, monetary accomm

Index Performance (as of 12:50 PM ET)

U.S. and International Equities

Emerging Markets Rebound

The major markets finished mostly higher building on last week’s gains. Emerging markets, as represented by the MSCI EM Index, outperformed the major market indexes for the second week in a row, as traders took advantage of marked-down names as the Chinese government continues its regulatory crackdown on its companies.

Real Estate Constructs Itself Ahead of the Pack

Real estate was one of the worst performers last year given the effects of COVID-19 on the demand for commercial real