Please open your economic textbooks to page forty-seven, class, because it's time to talk about something you probably haven't thought of since college: tariffs. On Thursday, March 1, President Trump announced a new plan to institute a 25% tariff on steel imports and a 10% tariff on aluminum. (1) Like so many things these days, the response was radically different depending on who you talk to. More on that in a moment.
The bull market will celebrate its ninth birthday on March 9, 2018. During that nine-year period, the S&P 500 Index nearly increased fourfold in value including dividends, producing a total return of 385% (19.2% annualized) while rising almost 300% in price. The recent market volatility, driven by fears of tariffs, inflation, and monetary policy, has many wondering if this is the end of the road for the bull market. So how much might the current bull have left in the tank?
The month of March is generally eventful and provides us with multiple potential market-moving events to monitor. It has been a roller coaster of a year so far, with one of the strongest January returns ever for the S&P 500 Index, only to be followed by the fastest descent ever from record highs to a correction (nine days) in early February. As we turn the calendar to March, the days will get longer and a little warmer, and basketball brackets will be released. (Villanova and Xavier are fighting to finish first in the Big East; those two schools happen to be the alma maters of the two authors of this piece.)
Mahatma Gandhi once said, "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. We need not wait to see what others do."
Are we out of the woods yet? After the fastest correction from a record high in the history of the S&P 500 Index, stocks staged an impressive comeback last week. The S&P 500 put together its best week since 2013, rallying more than 5% off the lows to bring its session win streak to six. This week we consider what this means moving forward, including what higher interest rates and rising inflation might mean for stocks.
After an extraordinary two-year period of market calm, the major U.S. equity markets slipped into correction territory last week. A perfect storm of investor worries collided over the past six trading days, including inflation, monetary policy, and the unwinding of crowded, complex trades. The result was an unprecedented bout of market volatility, highlighted by 1,000-point swings in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the fastest retreat ever (nine days) from a record level in the S&P 500 Index to a correction
