Category: Weekly Investment Update

Investment decisions require more than gut feeling responses to current news. Typically, after a long decline in stock prices, a good deal of risk has been removed from the market, yet investors perceive the risk has increased. Conversely, when stock prices are high and rising, investors perceive the risks of investing to be much lower […]

Financial planning is one half of the process. Estate planning, often neglected by the majority of financial service providers, is the other half of the process. The Trust Company of Kansas (TCK) has always stressed a holistic approach to wealth management.  Good investment results can be squandered if accounts are not appropriately titled and beneficiaries […]

As of May 10th, only ten companies of the five hundred which make up the S&P 500 Index are responsible for 46% of the gain in the index so far in 2017. The S&P 500 is a market capitalization weighted index and those same ten companies make up just 12% of the market cap of […]

Not this year, according to Stephen Auth, who oversees asset allocation at Federated Investors. Any corrections should be viewed as buying opportunities. He provides observations to support his view. News of the various political risks is mostly noise and both tax and healthcare reforms will begin to take shape in coming weeks. First quarter earnings […]

With 83% of the companies in the S&P 500 reporting, 65% have exceeded the average revenue estimate and 75% have beaten the average earnings per share estimate, according to FactSet Research. Earnings growth for the S&P 500 for Q1 is 13.5% as of current reporting. The market has moved higher since the end of the […]

The president released the core goals of his tax plan last week. The outline was for the most part what had been expected. One pleasant surprise was the absence of the border adjustment tax which would have punished U.S. consumers. Many details remain to be fleshed out by Congress. At present, there are not enough […]

While the press has featured warnings of current stock market overvaluation, Stephen Auth of Federated Investors, makes the case for buying any dips in this secular bull market. Three of the points he makes are noted below while his full Market Memo can be found here. … the market continues to look relatively inexpensive if […]

The rally in stocks has taken a breather ahead of the release of first quarter earnings which will be in full swing beginning this week. FactSet’s latest expectations are for the S&P calendar year to have a revenue growth of 5.3% and the calendar year to have an earnings growth of 9.8%. At some point, […]

Diversification has been viewed as a necessary process for reducing risk. A recent study provides proof which shows diversification is also responsible for increasing returns. Morningstar’s John Rekenthaler, vice president of research, explored a recently published study by Arizona State University’s Hendrik Bessembinder titled “Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?” The finding:  “Most common stocks do […]

The Federal Reserve raised the target rate for Federal Funds from a range of 0.50-0.75% to 0.75-1.00% at its March 15 FOMC meeting. Market interest rates as measured by U.S. Treasuries were mixed. During the quarter, the yield on the 13-Week T-Bill rose from 0.48% to 0.74% but the yields on the 10-Year Treasury and […]