April was another challenging month for investors as the S&P 500 was down almost 9%, while bonds also struggled as the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index fell about 3.5% (YCharts).

March was another volatile month for stocks as the S&P 500 pulled back at the beginning of the month before rallying nicely to finish the month up 3.58%. 

We believe that this back-and-forth volatility has been driven by three main factors: 

February was a challenging month for stocks as the volatility that arrived in January continued with the S&P 500 finishing the month down 3.14%.  Investors were focused on the potential impact of uncertainty in the markets; primarily, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Federal Reserve policy, and inflation. 

The recent invasion of Ukraine has led to a lot of questions about what investors should do right now.  This invasion is clearly a major geo-political event and a humanitarian crisis for the people of Ukraine.  Moving forward our job is to think about how this event may impact the economy and markets and position portfolios accordingly.  With that in mind we’re going to review a few key things to consider:

We hope that your year is off to a great start!  The stock market has certainly kept us on our toes to start the year.  January brought with it some volatility as stocks pulled back to begin the year, with the S&P 500 ending the month down about 5%. (YCharts)

In our annual outlook that we published late last year we highlighted a few key themes to watch including inflation and monetary policy. We didn’t have to wait long for these factors to impact markets as we saw the following developments:

TLWM Financial – 2022 Outlook

At TLWM, we believe that both stocks and bonds play an important role within portfolios. In this post, we’re going to focus on the role that bonds play.

We hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and were able to relax, recharge, and spend time with family and friends.  We are thankful for the stock market returns we’ve seen this year as the S&P 500 is up almost 22% for the year, despite a volatile end to the month.  (YCharts)

November was a busy month for economic data and market-moving headlines.  We’ll highlight a few of these market movers and what they could mean as we look toward the rest of the year and into 2022.

The fourth quarter got off to a great start for stocks with the S&P 500 rallying almost 7% in October after a down month in September.  The recent move brings the index return to about 23% year to date.  (YCharts)

Last month we reviewed the status of our economic dashboard – in short, it looks strong.  We believe that the strength seen in the dashboard combined with accommodative fiscal and monetary policy, and strong corporate earnings means that the chance of a recession in the near-term remains low. 

September’s normal seasonal weakness was on display again this year as stocks pulled back during the month.  The S&P 500 closed the 3^rd quarter roughly where we started, but is still up almost 15% this year. (YCharts)

While most investors enjoy seeing this type of strength in stocks, it can raise questions about what the future may hold, specifically: whether stocks can continue to move higher.  This was a concern we heard frequently in the beginning of this year.  Performance has been strong since then, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see some market volatility as we’ve had very little this year and volatility is a normal and healthy part of a growing market.