Market Review

In the year 2023, volatility has been far from absent. Following the market’s rally in July, the equity market experienced a downturn, primarily attributed by a substantial drop in major [...]

  In July, equities experienced a significant upswing, building on the momentum from the previous month’s success. Notably, Dimensional equity funds performed exceptionally well, [...]

June proved to be a favourable month for the stock market as equities demonstrated resilience and rallied, defying the Fed’s signal to raise interest rates by another 50 basis points during [...]

Volatility in the market continues to be high in May as the debt ceiling impasse between US political parties generated headlines over the month while sticky inflation data from US and Europe [...]

The stock market in April displayed high levels of volatility due to multiple factors such as another bank failure, inflation woes, and a decelerating US economy. Despite these issues, the stock [...]

Given the headlines in early and mid-March, one might be forgiven for thinking that it would be a terrible month for markets as banks seemed to be collapsing and some Credit Suisse bondholders [...]

Like January, February continues to show a positive correlation between equities and bonds albeit in an unfavourable direction. As shown in Exhibit 1, the S&P 500, tracking US large [...]

The January effect is a phenomenon where stocks tend to rise at the beginning of the year. The January effect was in full play this year as the stock market rallied following the news of [...]

2022 ended on a far more sombre note, and the 4th quarter rally in stocks fizzled out in December. Equity and bond indexes fell in December after central banks continued to remain committed to [...]

Last week, 4 major central banks (US, UK, Europe and Swiss) raised their main interest rates by 0.5% (Exhibit 1). While all the major banks have slowed down the pace of their rate hikes, their [...]

Stocks and bonds soared in November after lower-than-expected US inflation data in October and the Fed signalling a slowdown in rate hike. Released on November 10th, the US CPI, which measures [...]

October and the start of November have been great months to be invested, as markets have made up ground on the losses for the year. Undoubtedly, the recovery is not complete, and the outlook [...]

After 2 months of consecutive losses, the stock market rebounded amidst a possibility of a slowdown of rate hike by the Fed as well as positive sentiments toward US earnings results. 71% of [...]

We thought that it would be a good time to take the chance to share with you some of the common questions we have been receiving in the past months and use this opportunity to share our responses [...]

September was a brutal month for stocks as markets fell to the lowest since March 2020. After 4 rate hikes this year, the Federal Reserve raised an additional 0.75% in September after the [...]

Stock markets experienced their worst 1-day drop since the Covid pandemic in June 2020 on the news that inflation in the US rose in August. Against most expectations looking for a fall in oil [...]

Markets spent the last 2 months second-guessing the Fed with hopes of rate cuts in 2023 as recessionary fears loomed. Unfortunately, the old adage of don’t fight the Fed came back to give [...]

The past week saw the NASDAQ index rally 20% from its recent low in mid-June, leading to new headlines discussing the emergence of a new bull market for the NASDAQ stocks. New bull market? First, [...]

After a terrible June, stock markets rebounded strongly in July as investors found some relief from earnings that were not as bad as expected and a Fed that did not pull any surprises with a [...]

After a month of reprieve in May, selloff in the market resumes in June as the Fed raises rate by 0.75% to curb stubborn inflation. Our reference for stocks, the MSCI All Country World IMI Index [...]

Erratic trading sessions dominated the month of May as major indices fluctuated between gains and losses. The S&P 500 fell for the 7th straight week on 20th May briefly entering a bear market [...]

April was an extremely difficult month for stocks and bonds. The S&P 500 fell 8.8% in April, its worst month since March 2020, while our reference index, the MSCI AC World IMI did better, [...]

For the first quarter of 2022, investors have been plagued with news of high inflation, war, and rate hikes. Global market reacted to the news and had the worst performance since the global [...]

The start of 2022 has not been kind to the stock market as it continues to show negative returns in February. Temperamental market swings caused by rising inflation and upcoming rate hikes were [...]

January turned out to be one of the more volatile periods in the stock and bond markets in recent history. We saw 1000 point intraday swings in the Dow, 10-year treasury yields shooting sharply [...]

December capped a fantastic run for stocks in 2021, with some major gains for developed world stocks and a recovery for emerging markets. Bonds unfortunately fell again as fixed income markets [...]

November turned out to be a month of 2 halves, as stocks rose to records in mid-November as optimism over the economic recovery continued, but as news of the new Omicron variant started to emerge [...]

We do our best to emphasise to clients that returns are unpredictable and that one should not react to short-term news, but instead focus on the wealth plan and stay invested to capture the [...]

Not all stocks behave the same way September has provided some different headlines other than “stock markets set a new record high”, as stocks and bonds fell for the month, and US stocks in [...]

Developed world stocks continued to rise in August, and Emerging Market stocks rebounded after a tumble in July. Bonds fell as yields ticked up after Fed chairman Jerome Powell comments at the [...]