The Fed has engineered a massive hawkish pivot, contributing to an increase in volatility recently. But a look back at history provides some reassurance, as stocks have historically performed well leading up to and after the first rate hike of a cycle.
Two things swirling that some investors think could hurt them down the road: The idea that higher yields and rate hikes are bad. However, it might not be so simple.
Corporate America has been on quite a run. Coming into 2021, S&P 500 Index companies were expected to generate less than $170 in earnings per share. As 2022 begins, it looks like that number may end up higher than our latest estimate of $205, one of the biggest earnings upside surprises ever and a big reason why stocks did so well last year.
As we head into the New Year, we’re taking a look back at 2021 and drawing out three lessons that we think will matter for 2022.
There are so many charts and tables that sum up how special 2021 was. Today, we take a look at some of those shared this past year.
December is widely known as one of the best months of the year for stocks, but most don’t realize that the majority of the gains happen in the second half of the month.
It looks like interest rate hikes are almost surely coming next year, but how high and how fast the Fed will hike remains a question.
The Federal Reserve ended its two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting yesterday and there were some notable shifts to monetary policy, although these shifts were largely expected by markets.
Fiscal and monetary policy played big roles in the economic recovery in 2021, but we see 2022 playing out as a handoff—from stimulus bridging a pandemic recovery to an economy growing firmly on its own.
Financial markets tend to be relatively quiet the day after Thanksgiving but this year was a notable exception. With the news that a new COVID-19 variant—Omicron—had been discovered and is spreading quickly, prices of risk assets fell and safe-haven assets rallied on Friday.
