Last week, the U.S. Federal Reserve increased their upper target for the Federal Fund Rate (think short-term interest rates) from 0.75% to 1.00%. The increase was the second rate hike in the last three months, but only the third hike since the global financial crisis. We share with you some of our thoughts on the response to the Fed rate hike from different areas of the financial markets.

During the first three weeks of the year, the financial markets have been relatively calm.  If there is any “trend” we have observed, it is the simple fact that some areas of the market which rallied the most after the Presidential election in 2016 are now relative laggards in 2017, and areas of the market which performed the worst are now the market leaders.  The numbers are not huge – most asset class returns are between -1% and 3% so far in 2017, but today we are sharing three examples of what we are seeing.

The Small Cap rally is no turkey. In the two weeks since the U.S. presidential election we have seen wide swings in different areas of the financial markets, but one of the clear winners has been U.S. Small Cap stocks.  Why have they “trumped” the performance of other asset classes?

On Monday we wrote Wall Street wanted Hillary to be President…and that was clearly true at the beginning of the week through about 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning.  As election results came in and states were being “called,” the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down as much as -850 points in the overnight session as it became clear Donald Trump would become President of the United States. Two days do not make a market trend, but we share some of our key observations from actions in various areas of the market the last two days since Trump was named as President-elect.

Earlier this week an article from Bloomberg.com titled “The Next 10 Years Will Be Ugly for Your 401(k)” circulated on Apple news. The article is based on research from California-based Research Affiliates and concludes that in an environment of low interest rates for U.S. bonds and high valuations for U.S. stocks, the outlook for future returns from those asset classes is low. Specifically, the article goes on to state that an investor has a 0% chance of earning a real (after inflation) annualized return of 5% over the next 10 years. Our team shares three main thoughts in regard to this article.

Yesterday a client asked, “Why was the market down today?”  Our response was “Because it’s October.” The response was not mean to be flippant – October is a month notorious for market volatility. We share with you today a graph reflecting the S&P 500 historical seasonal pattern along with an interesting chart displaying the S&P 500 average performance in presidential election years. 

Tonight marks the opening ceremony for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games and for the next two weeks, the world’s focus will be on the games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  While people are flipping around their TVs trying to see if Michael Phelps or the U.S. men’s basketball team will win a gold medal, they are likely to see more “green” as they flip past the financial news.  That’s because history shows the stock market tends to go up during the summer Olympics.

Yesterday we held our monthly “Portfolios at Panera” event – a time for clients and friends to have a casual discussion about what is happening in markets.  Our focus yesterday was going through different strategies and looking at the performance leaders and laggards to identify common themes.  If there was one major theme which might summarize the whole discussion it was “the search for income.”