The second quarter of 2026 (Q2) was eventful, as they all seem to be lately. The stock market rallied off first-quarter lows enough that major indexes had their best quarter in recent years. This impressive performance came from mixed market conditions, more inflation and a new Fed Chair, the on-again-off-again peace process with Iran, and shifts within the expanding AI investment story.   Here's a summary of how major market indexes have performed during Q2…

Before I begin this morning, here’s an interesting chart I received yesterday from JPMorgan looking at inflation since the last time the World Cup was held here in 1994. Not much commentary but look at the red bars compared to the blue… wages averaged higher than the CPI, but both were exceeded by at least a few items. How we spend our money absolutely impacts how we experience inflation. Okay, on to this week’s post… You’re familiar with the “4% Rule”, right…

The last handful of days has seen a new Fed Chair, the death of a former Chair, and the demise of yet another UK Prime Minister. That’s a few out of many recent headlines that also include the on-again-off-again peace process with Iran, but let’s review the first three this morning. At the Fed, Kevin Warsh had his first Fed rate-setting meeting and press conference last week. He was comparatively brief and direct in his delivery style. Among other things, Warsh to…

The SpaceX IPO caused a lot of excitement and consternation last week, and neither is expected to die down anytime soon. The excitement part is pretty easy to explain; it’s about money or perhaps opportunity. The consternation part is more complicated. While I try to keep my opinions about any company founder or CEO as professional as possible, I understand how Elon Musk drives a lot of people crazy. There are various reasons why, so I’ll let you recall your own…

We’re almost halfway through the year already so let’s take a few minutes to review how markets have been doing thus far. We’re not investing for only six months, and short-term performance isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still informative (and fun!) to keep track. The typical benchmark for the US stock market is the S&P 500. This index “weights” its holdings by the total value of the shares that are publicly available of each comp…

As I mentioned in my post last week, we have a new Chair of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh. At age 55, he’s the youngest to serve as Fed Chair. Mr. Warsh graduated from Stanford and Harvard Law School and has been in government service for around 20 years and is married to the heiress of the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune. While Mr. Warsh is highly regarded for his work in government and the private sector, his views on monetary policy and the Fed have naturally…