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The ABCs of GDP

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s just released first estimate for gross domestic product (GDP) for Q1-13 which shows continued declines in federal spending, including defense spending and state and local spending. There were few, if any signs, in the GDP report for the first quarter of 2013 that the U.S. economy will re-accelerate anytime soon. We continue to expect GDP growth to average around 2.0% over the course of 2013. We examine the various components and drivers of GDP in this...

Soft Spot Arrives on Schedule

There are certain things we have gotten used to counting on each spring: the season changes and the weather warms, baseball games bring fans to the stadiums, the economy weakens, and investors “sell in May and go away.” The old Wall Street adage “sell in May and go away” refers to the seasonal tendency of stocks’ performance to weaken in the spring until the fall. In recent years, this spring slide in the stock market was driven by the arrival of a spring soft spot in the economy...

Mixed Bag

The first quarter of 2013 presented a mixed bag for income-seeking investors but did little to ease the difficult task of income-generation in today’s low-yield environment. High-quality bond prices declined over the first quarter, but weakness was modest and yields increased only slightly, limiting opportunity for income-seeking investors. Lower-rated bonds...

Current Conditions Index 4/24/13

Over the past week, the LPL Financial Current Conditions Index (CCI) slid slightly to 231. The path of the CCI remains consistent with continued, though modest, economic growth in the United States. Over the past few months, momentum in the CCI has improved slightly but moderated in the past several weeks.

Assessing Interest Rate Risk

It seems there is no shortage of investors willing to forecast the impending doom for the bond market stemming from a reversal of the long decline in interest rates. Last week, the commissioner of the SEC Daniel Gallagher stated that “financial armageddon” awaits municipal bond investors due to rising interest rates. Commissioner Gallagher tried to retract comments late in the week, saying...

 
Results: 198 Articles found.