May 14, 2019
If you’ve invested in the stock and bond market for any amount of time, you’ve likely experienced one or two of your investment holdings losing value over some time period. Occasionally these holdings bounce back quickly, but not always. If some of your holdings seem to be lagging behind others or underperforming the market in… Read more »
May 14, 2019
Since hitting all-time highs at the end of April, U.S. stocks have quickly retreated in May, losing 4.5% from their record peak. Meanwhile, global stocks are down in lockstep from their April highs. How fast narratives change! Last fall, investors were becoming more optimistic that a favorable trade deal might get done and fretted about… Read more »
February 21, 2019
Most psychologists will tell you that people who tell lies generally leave out details, admit to faulty memory, make quick corrections, and keep things short and vague. When markets are trying to tell a fib, often asset class movements don’t work to corroborate the same story. Since the December lows, this seems to be what… Read more »
February 7, 2019
If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times: 2018 was an incredibly volatile year. But what you may not have heard is that because of that volatility, we at JNBA doubled down on one of our key approaches – active portfolio review and rebalancing – to do everything in our power to… Read more »
January 22, 2019
After a volatile end to 2018, how are the markets looking for 2019? Join John Foster, Senior Advisor-Investment Strategist, as he offers a recap of the markets in 2018, as well as the JNBA Investment Committee’s view of the current investment climate, and the outlook for 2019. Topics covered include: 2018 Recap Reversal of Central Bank Policies… Read more »
January 16, 2019
What a Difference a Year Makes Our 2017 year-end review was highlighted by low volatility and above-average returns for most all asset classes. In sharp contrast, 2018 was a year in which essentially zero asset classes advanced. No major asset class gained more than 5 percent for the first time since at least 1972. Stocks… Read more »
December 14, 2018
Martha and the Vandellas’ hit song from 1965 lamented “Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide.” In many ways that sentiment sums up the investment climate in 2018 whereby no single asset class has provided a 5% return. The root cause of the malaise is difficult to pin down as global trade seems to… Read more »
November 13, 2018
Throughout the second half of summer, JNBA’s Investment Committee warned that divergences between U.S. and foreign markets had elevated risks for the possibility of a broad-based market pullback. While U.S. equities ignored these signals through September, they caught up in a hurry in October with the large cap S&P 500 dropping 7% while the small… Read more »
October 23, 2018
October can be a scary month for all types of reasons: Halloween, dark evenings, ominous clouds, your favorite football team’s hopes crushed, political changes on the horizon, and as has happened many times in the past, market volatility that escalates. On several occasions the JNBA Investment Committee had written and discussed the idea that the… Read more »
September 19, 2018
We’re experiencing a large global market divergence, in which the U.S. market has continued higher, while much of the rest of the world has struggled. In the past, we’ve talked about the importance of markets moving up together. Today, the markets are certainly not moving up together, and historically, that has posed risks for equities.… Read more »