Notes

Currently, the bogeyman most feared by investors is inflation.  In our daily lives, we have all seen evidence of rising prices.  Energy, food, housing, automobiles all seem to be more expensive than they were just a year ago.  The official data show this is not a figment of our imaginations.

As we all know, the coronavirus remains a threat to the wellbeing of our citizenry despite the successful rollout of mass-immunization programs.  New cases are still cropping up all over the globe, though at a slower pace than a few months ago.  The virus is certainly still with us.

By any measure, 2020 proved to be a year that we all would like to forget.  To say the least, everything seemed a bit off-kilter last year.

Alfred E. Neuman, the mascot for humor magazine Mad, is famous for his tag line: “What, me worry?”  Well, that seems to be the current attitude of many stock investors these days as the market indices have clawed back most of the humongous losses triggered by the coronavirus lockdowns.  It is hard to see how the bounce-back makes sense.

For the equity markets, 2020 began with a continuation of the rousing gains that were posted in 2019.  The economy was chugging along.  Unemployment was low; wages and GDP were rising.  By mid-February, the S&P 500 Index had reached an all-time high of 3386.  The future looked bright.  Ahh, the good old days.

Over the ten years since the global financial meltdown of 2008/2009, U.S. equity markets have been on a tear to the upside with just a few temporary setbacks here and there.

Well, we’ve had another quarter of steady gains in the U.S. equity markets.  The S&P 500 Index increased 1.2% during the quarter and is up 18.7% so far this year – the best three-quarter performance since 1997.

Is this a good time to be a buyer of U.S. stocks?  Corporate boards certainly think so.  According to Standard & Poor’s, U.S.

The fourth quarter of 2018 proved to be one of the roughest on record for stock market investors with the S&P 500 Index falling 14%.  Market participants are expressing worry about the current economic outlook by selling shares indiscriminately.  Here is a brief list of the sources of investor angst:

Some commentators, including the one currently residing in the White House, complain that the U.S. Federal Reserve Board has gone too far in its quest to normalize our country’s interest rate regime.