The Weekly Insight
Andrew Dorr
The Weekly Insight Podcast brings you weekly information about what you need to know about what is going on in the market every week.
Episodes
The Chart You’re About to See Everywhere
Every financial commentator is about to show you the same chart.Midterm years are historically the market's worst. The year after? The best.Since 1954, the S&P 500 has climbed in the 12 months after every single midterm election. 18 for 18.So 2027 should be great, right?Not so fast.When the market was down through September of a midterm year, the next 12 months averaged +20.4%.When it was up, like this year? +12.9%.The post-midterm rally is mostly a rebound. And 2026 never gave the market anything to rebound from.Elections don't cause the bounce. The bruise does.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-chart-youre-about-to-see-everywhere/
Something Always Breaks... Eventually
"Something always breaks."That was the warning in a CNBC story last week, citing 16 times since 1970 that a rapid rise in rates came with a financial crisis.With the 10-year Treasury at 5.18%, up 121 basis points since February, it's a fair question.So, we ran the numbers.What we found:→ There weren't 16 rapid rises in the 10-year since 1970. We count 32.→ 69% of the 16 on the list were followed by a 10%+ drop in the S&P 500.→ 69% of ALL 15-month stretches since 1970 contained a 10%+ drop.Same odds. A rate spike alone doesn't change them.What does matter: the size of the move and how hard the Fed is pushing. Rises of 200+ basis points, or 100+ basis points of Fed hikes, are where the real damage has shown up.Today: +121 on the 10-year. +25 at the Fed.Not there yet. But the stress is already building beneath the surface of the index, and we're watching three specific signals from here.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-something-always-breaks-eventually/
The Fed Didn’t Hike Rates. The Market Did.
The Fed didn't hike rates last week. The market did.By the close of business the day before Kevin Warsh's decision, traders had priced in a 90%+ chance of a rate hike. Bank of America's own strategist put it plainly: at that point, NOT hiking would have been "nearly unprecedented."So, Warsh delivered exactly what was priced in. He then held the shortest press conference of any Fed Chair on record, gave zero forward guidance, and allowed no follow-up questions. All in the name of a new communication philosophy he laid out back in June.The result was the same outcome markets would have gotten under the old regime. Which raises the question we dig into this week: who's really setting policy here?We also look at something more important than the theatrics: the Fed choosing to fight oil-driven inflation with a demand tool. What happened the last three times a Fed Chair tried that during an energy shock?Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-fed-didnt-hike-rates-the-market-did/
A Trillion Dollar Game of Musical Chairs
Not a single recession indicator is flashing red right now.That should be reassuring. It isn't. And the reason why traces back to an economist who's been dead for almost 30 years.This week, we dig into Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis, a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure debt, and why one AI company just got an "investment grade" rating on debt secured by a single customer's contract.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-a-trillion-dollar-game-of-musical-chairs/
What’s the Bond Market Telling Us?
The bond market doesn't make headlines like stocks do.No breakouts. No "to the moon." Just yields, spreads, and math.But right now, it might be telling us more than the stock market is.Here's what's happening: the 50-year-old recession indicator everyone trusts hasn't fired. High-yield bond traders are acting like this is one of the calmest environments in 20 years. And Treasury traders are doing the exact opposite – pricing in real risk and pushing yields higher.Two markets. Same economy. Completely different conclusions.We've seen this disagreement before — in 2013, 2016, 2020, and 2023. Every time, it turned out to be nothing.But the time before that? It started on a single day in June 2007. And the result was the Great Financial Crisis.Is this that? No. But it's worth understanding why the bond market is the one you should be watching right now – not the one you're ignoring.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/insight-wealth-group-whats-the-bond-market-telling-us/
A Discipline, Not a Decision
Four years ago, Jerome Powell used Jackson Hole to warn markets that rate hikes were going to be painful and longer than expected. It became one of the most consequential speeches of his tenure.Last Friday, new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh stood at the same podium. The market reacted like it got the same kind of signal. Odds of a September hike jumped from 35% to 60% by the time he finished talking.We think the market missed the point. Again.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-a-discipline-not-a-decision/
The Cure Won't Pay the Bills
Moderna's melanoma trial results moved the stock this week — and a lot of the healthcare sector with it.The excitement is real. Personalized, tumor-built cancer treatment is a genuine medical leap.But here's the number that should temper the "this fixes healthcare spending" take: cancer treatment is only 6.7% of U.S. healthcare spend. Cure it completely, and the number that actually matters — the 20% of GDP we're on pace to hit by 2030 — barely moves.This edition of The Weekly Insight covers:→ What this "vaccine" actually is (hint: it's not what you think) → Why curing disease categories doesn't solve America's spending problem → Whether drug companies are even incentivized to find cures → What longer lifespans mean for an economy that needs workers, not just survivorsRead more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-cure-wont-pay-the-bills/
Time to Pick a Side?
Wall Street just posted one of its greediest readings in over 20 years.The American consumer just posted one of the most pessimistic readings we've ever measured — in 74 years of data.Both can't be right. But here's the thing: neither is a forecast.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-time-to-pick-a-side/
Raising Investors
A client of ours spent $80,000 to teach his family how money works.He'd built something over 30+ years. What kept him up wasn't whether his kids would inherit it. It was whether they'd know what to do with it when they did.So, three years ago he opened eight accounts — two kids, their spouses, four nephews — and put $10,000 in each.The rules were simple. Three years. Whatever you make is yours. I'll pay the taxes. Top three get prizes.They met regularly. They argued about strategy. They asked us hard questions about the economy and had to defend their answers to each other.Saturday the clock ran out. The top two finished less than $100 apart.Every one of them made money. That wasn't the point.The point was sitting in that final meeting listening to eight people in their late 20s and 30s discuss markets like people who'd been paying attention for three years — because they had.Here's the thing most families get backwards. They spend enormous energy choosing the right account and almost none on the conversation the account is supposed to start. The vehicle is downstream of the conversation. Always.That said, the vehicles matter, and one of them is brand new.We ran the numbers on 530A accounts — the "Trump Accounts" that launched last month. Same $50,000 in contributions. Same 7% return. Started ten years earlier than a typical Roth, because these don't require the child to have earned income.$903,545 versus $1,777,410.Nothing changed except when the clock started.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-raising-investors/
Patience Is Wearing Thin
Alphabet had a tremendous quarter on Wednesday.The market took $299 billion from them anyway.By Thursday's close, the Magnificent Seven had lost $895 billion in a single day. Not the market — those seven companies.Two weeks ago we wrote that raised expectations made this earnings season dangerous. We were right about the asymmetry. We were wrong about the mechanism, and the mechanism is the story:→ The market has stopped grading what these companies earn→ It has started grading when investors get paid back→ Alphabet says 2027. Amazon says 2027–2028. Tesla says two or three more years. OpenAI isn't expected to turn a profit until 2030→ Meanwhile the 2-year Treasury is up 78 basis points in nine monthsEvery one of those bets got more expensive to wait for.This week decides whether it holds. Wednesday: the Fed at 1:00 CDT, Warsh at 1:30, then Microsoft and Meta after the close. Thursday: Apple and Amazon. These four are 53.6% of the Magnificent Seven by market cap.And Apple is the interesting one. It’s the only member of the Seven that didn't make the infrastructure bet, and the only one the market has rewarded.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-patience-is-wearing-thin/
The Lie We All Agreed To
Six politicians. Two parties. Twenty years. The exact same promise: "I will not touch your Social Security."Every one of them was making a promise the math couldn't keep.In 2005, the last president who tried to actually fix Social Security got crucified for it. Washington learned the lesson: never touch the third rail. So, for two decades, both parties competed to promise they'd protect it while the problem quietly compounded.This June's Trustees report: the retirement trust fund is empty by 2032, triggering an automatic 22% benefit cut. Here's the part no one is talking about: Social Security isn't the disease. It's the first symptom you can put a date on. The same math driving the 2032 cliff is pushing federal debt past its World War II record and turning interest payments into the single largest line item in the entire federal budget by 2047."Washington will fix it in time" isn't a plan. It's hope. And hope isn't a strategy for your retirement.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-lie-we-all-agreed-to/
When Optimism Becomes a Risk
Nearly every quarter, Wall Street lowers the bar right before earnings season.It's not a conspiracy — it's self-preservation. An analyst who calls 2% growth and sees 3% looks smart. Call 3% and get 2%, and you were wrong. So estimates drift down, companies "beat," and everyone celebrates.This quarter, the opposite happened. Analysts raised earnings expectations by 3.4%, just the 10th time in the last 34 quarters they've moved the bar up instead of down.Here's why that matters: when the bar goes up, the good news is already priced in. The reward for clearing it shrinks, and the cost of missing it climbs. Last quarter, companies that missed got punished nearly twice as hard as the five-year norm.Optimism, it turns out, can be its own kind of risk.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-when-optimism-becomes-a-risk/
The Great Rebalancing: Part II
The Magnificent 7 are down over 10% since October 29th. The other 493 stocks in the S&P 500 are up nearly 15%. That's a 25-point gap. And almost no one is talking about it.This week's Weekly Insight breaks down the eight-month rotation that's reshaping portfolios:→ Why "Technology" leading the sector charts isn't the Mag 7 comeback it looks like → The Q1 earnings number that looked like 52% growth, but wasn't → What a 33x vs. 20x P/E comparison tells you about where the value actually isWe called this in February. The data says there's runway left.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-great-rebalancing-part-ii/
The Warsh Standard
The Fed spent the better part of a decade talking too much.On Wednesday, Kevin Warsh signaled that era is over.His first press conference as Fed Chairman didn't just announce a rate hold. It announced a philosophy — one that's fundamentally different from anything we've seen in the Powell era:Forward guidance: goneWarsh's own dot plot projection: withheld entirelyFive task forces launched to rebuild the Fed from first principlesThe market sold off. That's not surprising — markets have been conditioned to feed off Fed language. Warsh just said the feeding stops.Four years ago we wrote a memo called "The Circular Sentiment Firing Squad." The argument: the Fed was watching the market, the market was watching the Fed, and nobody was actually leading.Warsh said almost exactly the same thing from the podium Wednesday:"Financial market prices are probably the most important source of information to guide central bankers. But when all the financial markets are doing is reflecting back what we've said, then we're taking the most important source of information and being blind to it."That's the whole problem. In one sentence.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-warsh-standard/
$235 Billion Has to Come from Somewhere
Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-235-billion-has-to-come-from-somewhere/
The Chokepoint (Revisited)
Three months ago we published a memo called "The Chokepoint" — written the morning the U.S. started bombing Iran. We laid out exactly what a prolonged Strait of Hormuz closure would do to oil prices, inflation, and global GDP.This week we went back and checked our work.The market has hit all-time highs. Brent crude pulled back from $138. The ceasefire has been enough — for now.But the Strait is still effectively closed. The economic impacts we projected are materializing. And the buffers keeping the worst-case scenario at bay are getting thinner.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-chokepoint-revisited/
SpaceX IPO: Go/No-Go?
Everyone wants SpaceX shares. The phones haven't stopped.So, we did what we always do: we looked at the data first.What is SpaceX actually selling? Three businesses. One is wildly profitable. One is losing money. One is a $6.4 billion annual cash furnace that every major AI company is running right now. The $1.75 trillion price tag wraps all three together and asks you to believe in a future that doesn't fully exist (yet).We also dug into what IPO history actually tells us. Dr. Jay Ritter at the University of Florida has tracked IPO performance for decades. The pattern is remarkably consistent: big pop on Day 1, meaningful underperformance for the next three years. Cerebras went public two weeks ago at $185, opened at $350, and is already trading at $233. The largest IPO in history will not be immune to that dynamic.And then there's the macro question nobody's fully answering: three IPOs — SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic — targeting nearly $200 billion in combined raises over the next five months. The entire U.S. IPO market raised $45 billion in all of 2025. That money has to come from somewhere.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-spacex-ipo-go-no-go/
The Space in the Middle
Consumer sentiment just hit its lowest reading since 1952. The lowest in history.At the same time, Redbook same-store sales just spiked to 9.6% — one of the strongest retail readings in years.Both of those things are true simultaneously. And that gap is exactly where the most important question in the market lives right now.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-space-in-the-middle/
Avoiding the Hidden Inheritance Tax
Most families spend years worrying about the estate tax.Here's the reality: fewer than 2,000 deaths will trigger a federal estate tax payment this year. That’s 0.07% of all estates. The tax your heirs will actually pay isn't in the estate code. It's sitting inside your IRA. And there's a limited window — retirement to age 73 — to do something about it.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-avoiding-the-hidden-inheritance-tax/
The Math Problem: What Do Rising Gas Prices Really Mean?
Two politicians. Same day. Completely opposite claims about what gas prices are doing to American households.Rep. Ro Khanna: $5,000 per household.Treasury Secretary Bessent: "All cylinders are firing. Gas prices are coming down."Both are wrong.So, this week we did the actual math.The real number is approximately $1,400 per year — or $117 a month — for the average household. That's the direct pump cost plus the hidden pass-through costs most people never connect to gas: freight, packaging, petrochemicals, home energy. Costs that show up weeks later as a 3-cent increase on a box of cereal or a slightly higher utility bill. And — critically — costs that don't reverse as quickly as the pump price when gas eventually falls.But the more important number is what $1,400 means when you put it next to what wages have actually done.Nominal wages are up 3.5%. Inflation is running at 3.3%. That leaves the median household with roughly a $245 real raise this year. When the energy burden gets added, real purchasing power turns negative for the first time since 2022 — across every income quartile, just at very different magnitudes.And that's before we get to what falling real wages have historically meant for the economy. Or why the market's current position near all-time highs is worth thinking about carefully.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-math-problem-what-do-rising-gas-prices-really-mean/
Being Right Isn't Enough
John Maynard Keynes may be the most influential economist who ever lived.He was right about Versailles. Right about the Depression. He redesigned the global financial system at Bretton Woods.He also lost his entire fortune in the market.His lesson: it doesn't matter how right you are. If the market stays irrational longer than you can stay solvent, you lose.LTCM had two Nobel laureates. Lost 90% of investor capital in four months — being right.Julian Robertson closed his fund on the exact day the Nasdaq peaked — being right.George Soros — greatest macro trader of the 20th century — bought at the top — after being right for too long.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-being-right-isnt-enough/
The Market Moved On. The Strait Didn’t.
Nine trading days.That's how long it took the S&P 500 to recover every point it lost since the Iran war began.The COVID crash — which was considered one of the fastest recoveries in market history — took 104 trading days. Twelve times longer.The market's message is clear: this conflict is a disruption, not a recession. Recession odds in prediction markets never came close to what we saw during last year's trade war or the government shutdown.We agree — mostly.Here's what the market isn't pricing: the Strait of Hormuz can reopen Wednesday and 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity still takes five years to repair. Half of Iraq's oil production could restart within days. Kuwait's refineries could take months. Those are very different timelines — and only one of them is in the price.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-market-moved-on-the-strait-didnt/
The Next Big Thing(s)
A significant amount of Qatar's LNG just went offline for 3-5 years.Canadian LNG just came online.The market hasn't connected those dots yet — but it will.That's one of three opportunities we're building toward in this week's memo. The others: Emerging Markets, where a war-driven selloff has created a 6.6 percentage point gap vs. the S&P 500. And small caps — but not the index everyone uses. The war dominates the headlines. The next big things are hiding just underneath them.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-next-big-things/
We've Been Here Before
Five Trump announcements about the Iran war. Five market rallies. Every single one fully reversed within a week.By Friday, the market didn't even bother with a rally.That's the story of the last month. The market’s been trading the rhetoric, not the facts on the ground. But Friday, the market has stopped buying it.But here's what matters more: we've seen this movie before.Almost exactly six years ago, we were holding an energy MLP fund that was down more than 70% while the S&P was down 34%. Everyone told us we were wrong. We held. We bought more. Our clients stayed the course.From that COVID low through today, that position has outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 85%.The Iran war is not COVID. But the behavioral finance lesson is identical. Fear is loudest exactly when patience pays the most.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-weve-been-here-before/
Nobody Knows – But Somebody Blinked
Part of the problem with drafting these memos is the news can change quickly. When we wrote this on Sunday night, we noted: “If the deadline passes without significant escalation, it may end proving Trump’s Friday missive. It may be the biggest offramp yet.”Monday morning — somebody blinked.Trump announced "very good and productive conversations" with Iran and postponed all strikes on Iranian power plants for five days.Iran denied the negotiations. Then their state TV declared victory.The market read right through it. Equities: up sharply. Oil: down sharply.Three weeks ago, Goldman said buy the dip. Last week, Goldman said oil above $100 through 2027. This morning, the market is pricing something different.We don't know how this ends. But we knew what to watch — and one of those signals fired today.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-nobody-knows-but-somebody-blinked/
Can't Hide From Earnings Season
The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo removed 7% of the world's oil supply. It gave us gas lines, 11% inflation, and interest rates that eventually hit 20%. It defined a decade.The Strait of Hormuz closure is removing 20%.And yet — Wall Street's earnings estimates for 2026 have not moved one inch since the war began. The S&P is down 3.6%.That gap is about to close. Q1 earnings season starts in three weeks. That's when CFOs stop speculating and start putting real numbers on a world that changed February 28.Airlines that modeled $88/barrel oil. Trucking companies eating a 36% diesel spike. Retailers watching consumer confidence collapse as gas prices jump 69 cents in two weeks.The market is betting on a swift resolution. Maybe it's right. But hope isn't a forecast — and earnings season doesn't care about hope.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-cant-hide-from-earnings-season/
The Old Playbook Doesn’t Apply
Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-old-playbook-doesnt-apply/
The Chokepoint
The Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide.20% of the world's oil flows through it every day. As of Saturday, it's effectively closed.We've been warning about this exact scenario since April 2024. Now it's here.In this week's memo, we break down:→ Why the U.S. Navy can control the Strait but can't make shippers transit it → Why pipeline alternatives only solve 13% of the problem → The natural gas crisis no one is talking about (Qatar's LNG has NO alternative route) → What $125/bbl oil means for GDP and inflation → How we've positioned portfolios for exactly this kind of disruptionThe situation is developing fast. What comes next matters more than what happened Saturday.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-chokepoint/
From Luddites to Language Models: Why the World Isn’t Ending
Is AI going to end the world? Destroy every software company? Bankrupt the biggest tech companies on earth?If you've watched the news lately, you'd think the answer to all three is yes.Here's the problem: the math doesn't work. You can't be right about all of them at once.This week we go all the way back to the Luddites — 19th century textile workers who literally smashed machines trying to stop the future — to explain why this moment feels scarier than it is, and what history actually tells us about how technological revolutions end.Spoiler: it's not the way the headlines suggest.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-from-luddites-to-language-models-why-the-world-isnt-ending/
The Dollar Trilemma (And Why Precious Metals Just Tanked)
Markets have been pricing in a weaker dollar for months. Gold, silver, and Bitcoin all jumped in value. And traders were expecting a Fed chair announcement that would continue that theme. Instead, they got Kevin Warsh – a hawk whose resume screams “strong dollar”.The result? More than $8 trillion in paper wealth vaporized as gold, silver and Bitcoin all retreated. But the issues that caused the price spike haven’t gone away. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-dollar-trilemma-and-why-precious-metals-just-tanked/
The Great Rebalancing
Great earnings aren’t enough anymore. The market is telling us something – and it’s been saying it for 90 days.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-great-rebalancing/
Financial Stoicism
We had a wild start to the market last week. Markets fell. Headlines screamed. Fear spiked. But by week’s end, nothing had actually changed. It seems like that same cycle is happening more frequently. And it turns out, there is some ancient wisdom that can help us manage it.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-financial-stoicism/
The Biggest Thing Nobody Is Talking About
The market is obsessed with AI. But nobody is asking the right question: why is AI worth trillions of dollars? What problem is it solving? This week, we dive into the biggest structural shift in the global economy that no one is discussing – and the investment opportunities it will create. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-biggest-thing-nobody-is-talking-about/
Oil Still Matters
As we dive into the new year, markets have continued their solid pace. But there is plenty of international intrigue that has reminded investors of the importance – and drama! – in fossil fuels. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-oil-still-matters/
2025: Lessons Learned
As we wrap up the year, it would be easy to just say, “It was a great year in the markets! See you in 2026!” But as we prepared the year-end Weekly Insight Memo and Weekly Insight Podcast, we thought it would be a good time to focus on the lessons we learned this year. And, more importantly, how they might apply to future years that might not be so wonderful. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-2025-lessons-learned/
Can 2026 Continue the Trend?
Barring a complete collapse in the next nine days, 2025 will mark just the sixth time in history that we’ve seen double digit returns in the S&P 500 for three consecutive years. Four years in a row is even more rare (it’s happened three times). And yet, as we told you last week, market prognosticators are expecting another double digit year in the market in 2026.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-can-2026-continue-the-trend/
Wind Chill
It was a frigid weekend in Iowa. Which may be why an article we read about the “Windchill Economy” caught our attention. But the facts of the article – that how people feel about the economy today is much different than how it’s actually working – got us thinking. How predictive is the consumer's feelings about the economy? And how does it differ from what Wall Street is saying?Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-wind-chill/
Eyes on the Bond Market
We spend a lot of time talking about equities in this business. But not nearly enough time is devoted to the bond market. Interestingly, it’s the larger of the two markets. And it is a great “canary in the coal mine” about where the market thinks the economy is heading. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-eyes-on-the-bond-market/
Feeling Charitable?
The holidays are upon us! And with that comes a race to the end of the year. In this edition of the Weekly Insight Memo and Weekly Insight Podcast, we’re taking a break from the market commentary and instead looking at some good year-end planning tools that you may find beneficial.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-feeling-charitable/
Age-Old Investment Advice
Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-age-old-investment-advice/
The Two Economies
We spend a lot of time talking about how companies are doing in this economy. And as Q3 earnings reports are wrapping up, the answer is “quite well!”. But there is a whole other side to the economy that matters even more: the consumer.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-two-economies/
What's Going On?
Most people in the world are “headline readers”. There’s simply not enough time in a reader’s day to get past the headline and do the research. Which is why the headline we saw on Friday (“Stocks Worst November Since ‘08”) was enough to raise some hackles. Anytime someone draws a direct correlation between the current environment and 2008 it causes a visceral reaction amongst investors (and in our office!). But a little homework goes a long way. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-whats-going-on/
Fed Signals & Tech Turbulence
The market news last week was enough to give you whiplash. The Fed cut rates (Yay!). Powell intimated no more cuts in December (Boo!). Tech earnings were solid (Yay!). Some tech companies were punished for their AI spend (Boo!). But what does this all mean for the market in the weeks and months to come? Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-fed-signals-tech-turbulence/
Fed Certainty
It’s Fed Week again. And by every measure, it seems certain we’re going to get another rate cut. But what should we make about the market’s certainty (100%!) that rate cuts will continue in December and into 2026? Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-fed-certainty/
The Investment Risk in AI
Over the last several weeks, there has been a proliferation of articles and commentators questioning the extremely large capital expenditures of AI firms as they ramp up their capacity. It’s a saying as old as time: you have to spend money to make money. But how much patience will investors have as the large AI firms spend hundreds of billions to build out their AI capacity. Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-investment-risk-in-ai/
Shut It Down?
It’s shutdown time in Washington, D.C. again. It’s always a dramatic time in the news. But is it something that should concern us as it relates to portfolios?Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-shut-it-down/
This Time It's Different
The four most dangerous words in the world of finance are, “This time it’s different.” We’ve heard it time and again. And time and again it’s not true. So when we start hearing that higher P/E ratios for the market are the “new normal”, we’re understandably skeptical. But we can’t just ignore the data behind it.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-this-time-its-different/
Don't Get Too Excited (About Rate Cuts)
We know we’re not breaking any news when we tell you Chairman Powell and the Fed cut rates last week. The long-anticipated cut was received very well by markets which closed the week at all-time highs on Friday. It’s the next logical leap the market has taken – that this is the start of a prolonged period of rate cuts – which may be a bit farfetched.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-dont-get-too-excited/
The Two Types of Corrections
The Fed is meeting this week and expected to cut rates. In the media’s calculus this should be good for markets. But it wasn’t particularly good the last time they cut rates. So what happens if the market pulls back?Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-the-two-types-of-corrections/
A Court Battle Over Tariffs
The markets brought us a little bit of everything last week, but ended on a positive note. As fast as the news cycle moves, it seems most had forgotten by Tuesday that there was a very big court decision on tariffs the previous Friday. This week, we take a dive into that ruling to see what we can learn about the future of trade policy and how it may impact markets.Read more here: https://insightwealthgroup.com/the-weekly-insight-a-court-battle-over-tariffs/