Overview

- As we expected, the Federal Reserve (Fed) raised the fed funds rate by 0.25%, pushing the upper bound to 5.00%.
- Financial conditions were stable enough for the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to release updated projections, unli...

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The Federal Reserve (Fed) has a history of raising short-term interest rates until something “breaks.” Considering the Fed has raised rates from a near-zero level to 4.75% (upper bound) over the course of only one year, it was almost a ne

Just as the market was starting to make some progress digesting the news of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failure, another source of potential financial stress popped up in the form of Credit Suisse (CS). Here’s what we know about this situatio

Those of us who lived through the Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual (to sadly only name a few) financial collapses are shuddering at the thought history may be about to repeat itself. Thankfully, as we wrote about in Monday’s

Overview

The monthly consumer inflation rate slowed slightly to 0.4% in February from 0.5% the previous month, enough to push the annual rate of inflation down to the lowest since mid-2021.

- Housing costs accounted for over 70% of the increase

While concerns about the debt ceiling have been increasing, markets, businesses, and the economy are likely to see only minimal impact until we are days, or maybe a few weeks, from the “x date,” the date on which the federal government wi

The sharp rally in U.S. equity markets has created many skeptics, given the size and scope of the advance. As of February 2, the S&P 500 is up 8.9% year to date, marking its best start to a year since 1987. The big question now is if ‘this

The first month of 2023 is now behind us and it felt very different than 2022. In 2022, the S&P 500 and the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index (“Agg”) both fell and there was much talk of the demise of the “60/40” portfoli

The script has been flipped in 2023. Last year’s underperformers have turned into outperformers this year, driving the S&P 500 Index up over 5% this month. The pace and composition of the rally have left many investors skeptical over its su

Investors often talk about how earnings drive stock prices. But that begs the question how so many strategists and pundits expect earnings to fall in 2023 and stocks to rise? That’s our view in LPL Research.

Let’s look at the