July – 2018 Newsletter

The last month of the second quarter played out very much like the preceding four months: with record volatility in the overvalued stock market, long-term interest rates holding at their resistance level, inflation still below 2 percent, and the Fed pretending not to notice any of it. The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened June at 24,635 and finished nearly 400 points down from that, but in between, it climbed nearly 700 points higher and fell more than 500 points lower.1 The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were equally volatile, thanks mainly to escalating concerns over Donald Trump’s trade policies and the threat of a full-blown trade war.