On October 31, 2003, an aspiring professional surfer named Bethany Hamilton went onto the ocean near her home in Hawaii. As she had done many times before, she lay down on her board and trailed her left arm through the warm water, watching nearby sea turtles. . .
Escalating trade tensions have made for a difficult investing environment. This is not news to anyone at this point. But investors’ angst was ratcheted higher last week after the Trump administration played its next card—announcing tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese goods—sooner than many expected. Certainly the stock market expressed displeasure, though the 0.9% drop in the S&P 500 for the week still leaves the index with a respectable 4% total return this year. Here we provide our playbook for trade tensions.
Everyone knows that July 4th is “America’s birthday.” It’s the commemoration of our national independence. A day for fireworks and fun, patriotism and pie. A celebration of America itself.
Increased business capital expenditures, or “capex,” remain one of the most important pieces for improving the long-term growth trajectory of the U.S. economy. Capital expenditures help increase productivity, and improved productivity is the foundation for sustainable higher growth for developed economies. Both survey and hard data continue to confirm that we might be seeing a rebound in capex, but how can we know it’s sustainable? The answer may be in our beach reading. Like the veteran detective in a favorite page-turner, we look for means, motive, and opportunity. For capex spending, means translates to additional sources of funding for projects, motive comes from increased business confidence and tight labor markets, and opportunity from fiscal incentives and global growth.
The Federal Reserve (Fed) is widely expected to hike rates for the second time in 2018 at the conclusion of its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday, June 13. Given that the hike is all but priced in, the hike itself would mean little to markets. Instead, Fed watchers will be looking at any meaningful changes in the policy statement, a new set of economic projections, and Chair Jay Powell’s post-meeting press conference to gauge any changes to the future path of interest rates. There’s a reasonable chance that the median expectation for the number of rate hikes in 2018 in the new projections may shift from three to four, but we believe it’s more important to monitor any changes in the Fed’s inflation views to determine the likelihood that the Fed may shift to a more aggressive path of rate hikes. Unless we see a shift in the Fed’s view of inflation, we will continue to maintain a base case of three total rate hikes in 2018.
For centuries, people have studied Shakespeare for his wit and his wisdom. Shakespeare never actually wrote about finance, of course. But I’ve found many of his lines contain important financial lessons. Let’s look at one such line from one his most famous plays:
