"Why would anyone buy a 5-year bond at 3.5% when you could get a 1-year bond at 4%?"
"Why don't I put all my money in a 4-month T-bill and make 4.9%?"
It's natural to sit down at the end of the year and reflect on what happened. Here is a short recap of what happened in the markets and the world in 2022.
The past fifteen years have been phenomenal for U.S. stocks. They've outperformed international stocks by close to 200%. Unfortunately, no one can predict when international stocks will outperform U.S. stocks, or vice-versa.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, gas prices spiked to a nationwide peak of $5.02/gallon on June 13, 2022. Since then, the price of gas has been coming down, but the discussions about it have not slowed at all.
Sooner or later, we're likely going to see demand cool off. The big question is how quickly inflation alters consumer spending and how quickly that pulls back inflation.
There are nearly two job openings for every unemployed worker with labor statistics showing 11.4 million job openings compared to 5.9 unemployed workers as of April 30, 2022. This mismatch between jobs and workers means that workers have options, including leverage to ask for more pay.
Investors are always on the lookout, it seems, for new and profitable ways to help make their dollars work for them. One that has come up quite often on our clients’ radars recently is Series I Bonds (or just I Bonds).
Housing affordability is trending in the wrong direction. Take a look at our chart of the month showing housing affordability over the last 50 years.
Market declines are never enjoyable in the moment. But these kinds of intra-year pull backs are normal when looking at market history.
