Take a look at last week’s market recap from Joe Gallemore, CIMA® Partner & Director of Investment Management for Argent Bridge Advisors. Watch the video now!

Joe’s Notes:

Stock indexes were mixed last week, with small US companies trading sharply negative while the S&P 500 was up almost half a percent.

One phenomena we’re noticing is that large tech stocks seem to be driving performance of the S&P 500 once again, while in the mid and small size universes, Value stocks are still outperforming tech & Growth style stocks by a wide margin. Value stocks are those that typically have more steady, forecastable cash flows and more emphasis is placed on the stock price in relation to those cash flows.  Sectors including lots of value stocks are Financials and Consumer staples. Again we’re seeing Value outperforming Growth in the small & midcap segments, but not in the Large cap segments, where it seems tech growth & momentum are leading the say.

Finally, as we enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday this week and then turn in to the home stretch of 2021, we at Argent Bridge want to help frame reasonable expectations for the stock market and your portfolios.  So far this year the S&P 500 is up almost 27%!  But with market performance so positive and the US economy well above the levels where it was in early 2020, pre-pandemic, we should not be surprised if the market experiences some volatility in the coming weeks or months.  Over the past 40 years, the S&P 500 has experienced a top to bottom decline of -14% on average in any given calendar year… and this year we’ve fortunately only seen a -5% decline.  Seasonally, December tends to be one of the best months for market performance, so we hope the growth continues. But we should all remain tempered and ready to not react if the markets hit some skids.