On July 31, stocks suffered one of their worst single day losses of the year. All three major indexes fell, led by the NASDAQ: Dow: 16,563.30, -317.1, (-1.9%) S&P 500: 1,930.67, -39.4, (-2%) NASDAQ: 4,369.77, -93.2, (-2.1%) The weak performance meant that stocks declined overall in July, the first monthly decline since January. The market suffered further on Friday, […]
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Healthcare Spending Growth Slows
One of the biggest drivers of projections for future Federal Government budget deficits is healthcare spending. Baby boomers have already started to retire. The group is expected to add considerably to the number of people on the Medicare and Medicaid rolls over the next 10-20 years. While healthcare spending is expected to increase, recent trends […]
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News or Noise?
If you watch financial television, or read the latest financial news, you’ve likely been inundated with stories about the potential market implications of recent geopolitical events. On Thursday, a Malaysian jetliner went down in the Ukraine. This was just the latest news related to the region’s turmoil. The event likely drove Thursday’s decline in the […]
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Thoughts on Share Repurchase Activity Levels
The ongoing low interest rate environment continues to encourage companies to repurchase their own shares. In fact, in 2014’s first three months (1Q14) companies included in the S&P 500 bought $159 billion of stock. This was the second highest total on record, trailing only 3Q07’s $172 billion. Some companies are thought to base their repurchase […]
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Confirmation Bias
We all would like to believe that we carefully gather and evaluate facts and data (both positive and negative) before making an important decision. This can be much harder to do in practice than we think. We all have a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms our preconceptions, which […]