7 Market Movers

7 Market Movers | January 23, 2026

Anne Harris — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 16:04:19 +0000

7 Market Movers | January 23, 2026 Anne Harris Mon, 01/26/2026 - 10:04

This week Aya Yoshioka covers how gold has been “on a tear” and up almost 14% so far in 2026. Threats of new tariffs on Europe and proposed tax cuts in Japan rattled the markets, but, despite the volatility, the S&P 500 rallied Thursday afternoon to within 1% of all-time highs. Hear Aya’s perspective on these events and more in the video below!

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the 7 Market Mover series from Wealth Enhancement. My name is Aya Yoshioka, and I'm a Portfolio Consulting Director and Senior Investment Strategist.

So in these videos, we love to talk about what impacted markets. And this week, we saw some volatility return to markets as a lot of geopolitical headlines grabbed investor attention. First and foremost, we had president Trump talking about US control over Greenland, and threatening additional tariffs on Europe. That caused a lot of investor fear having the Sell America trade reemerge.

Then we had Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi from Japan announce some tax cuts and that sparked investor concern over Japan's already substantial public debt. They had their 40-year bond yield surge to over 4%. It's the first time it hit 4% since its debut in 2007.

And its 30-year bond actually hit 3.88% and that was a 27 basis point surge in one day. That trickled into US treasury markets. And we saw yields on the 10-year US treasury yield go up about 8 basis points on the day, really causing some concern across bond markets.

Well, a lot of this was put to rest when dip buyers returned. So despite the S&P 500 selling off over 2% on the day on Tuesday, the NASDAQ was down over 2%, small caps were down, a lot of equity markets were down quite a bit and bond yields were up, meaning bond prices were down. The one safe haven that we saw was gold. Gold surged 2% on the day and gold has been on a tear in 2026 and has returned over 14% on a year to date basis.

However, dip buyers really returned to the market on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. And as of the close on Thursday, we are within one percent of the all time highs in the S&P 500 again.

So what else has been going on when it comes to economic data?

Well, this week we got some retail sales data and that showed that retail sales grew 0.6% percent during the month of November. A lot of this data has been delayed because of the government shutdown, but that was a positive and really indicated that the US consumer remains very resilient.

We also saw initial jobless claims of about 200,000, essentially unchanged from last week. And it really reflects a labor market that just continues to normalize. We know it's cooling.

The cooling has been gradual and markets can handle all of that, at least at the pace that it's cooling.

And GDP growth, we got a nice estimate from GDP growth for the third quarter of 2025.

GDP grew 4.4% year over year, up from the 4.3% initial estimate, and a lot of this came from stronger exports, alongside a smaller drag from inventories.

Finally, we are in the second week of earning season, and we've had 61 companies within the S&P 500 Index report, mostly banks, but we've seen some other names like some industrials like 3M or consumer names like Netflix report so far. And most of them have had better than expected numbers, but the stock reactions have been mixed.

We get a lot of the big tech names report next week, and that I'm sure will move markets when they report and we'll see what the reaction is. I'm sure everybody's going to be digging into those capital expenditure numbers and where we are in terms of the state of artificial intelligence.

So make sure to tune in to next week's 7 Market Movers, and we'll see you then. Thanks so much for listening.

This information is not intended as a recommendation. The opinions are subject to change at any time and no forecasts can be guaranteed. Investment decisions should always be made based on an investor's specific circumstances. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal.

2025-10777

Image

Topic

Tags

Duration

5 minutes

Ayako Yoshioka

7 Market Movers | January 16, 2026

Anne Harris — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:40:58 +0000

7 Market Movers | January 16, 2026 Anne Harris Fri, 01/16/2026 - 10:40

In this week’s episode of 7 Market Movers, Doug Huber covers:

Labor market updates and the latest unemployment reports
Emerging markets performance
Geopolitical updates from Iran and Greenland and the impact on commodities

Watch the full episode for these updates and the latest news from the Q4 earnings season!

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week's Wealth Enhancement 7 Market Movers video series. My name is Doug Huber, and I'm the Deputy Chief Investment officer here at Wealth Enhancement. Before we get into our market moves, we usually like to start with what's making headlines this week. A few big ticket items to to check off.

We have seen some, rise in kind of geopolitical tensions. We have continued protests and an uprising in Iran. The administration did threaten potential intervention in that and has since walked that back and that's had a moderate effect on commodity prices, which we'll touch on a little bit. We've seen rising tensions with our partners in Europe and NATO based on kind of comments the administration has made about Greenland.

Fortunately, we haven't seen too much in the way of of any of that impacting the financial markets thus far. And then finally, there's been some rhetoric around our current Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The administration has potentially brought charges against him for his deposition in front of congress and did he lie? Less on that, but what more is important is is there there's this concept of Fed independence and and what impact is that having in the market? And so we'll touch on that when we get to the fixed income markets.

From an economic news standpoint, not much this week, but this morning, we did get the most recent jobless claims numbers. They did come in better than expected, about 9,000. We saw a decrease of 9,000 to a 198,000 for the week ending last week. This is only, maybe 1 in 4, 1 in 5 times over the last several years that we've actually seen jobless claims come in under 200,000.

So that is a positive sign for the labor markets. You know, you've heard us talk a lot about the Fed's dual mandate of inflation and and full employment. And so this is a positive sign that the labor markets are are continuing to remain resilient. There's been a couple headlines around layoffs at PepsiCo and a couple others, but they're not really kind of snowballing into broader layoffs, and we're not seeing it in the jobless numbers thus far.

Continuing claims actually dropped, as well. I think they were down to 1.88 million, a decline from the prior week. So on the whole, news, out of the the labor markets. The flip side to that is is that does have an impact on the market's interpretation of what the Fed might do as it relates to cutting rates.

And and so with that, we've seen bond yields tick up a little bit higher expectations now thinking that the labor market might be better than expected and as such, potentially starting to decrease the likelihood of of additional fed cuts this year. Coming into the year, the market was pricing in roughly 2 cuts, but there's a lot of unknown there, whether we continue to see strength in the in the labor markets, what's going on with inflation, is it sticky, is it here to last, or are we gonna kind of see some moderation, from here? And so those will both have impacts on on the Fed's decision as well as, in June, Fed Chair Powell's term is up.

We know there will be a replacement. And will that replacement be more dovish, or more likely to cut rates, than chair Powell and and the other participants have been? And so all of that will have an impact, and we will have to continue to evaluate the data to see, you know, do we expect more than two, less than two? But as of right now, the market and ourselves are pricing in roughly two cuts, going forward this year.

On the equity side, markets have continued to be strong to start the year. Much of the of what we saw last year in terms of leadership continues to be the same, at least on a geographic basis. Right? We are continuing to see emerging markets in international markets outperform domestic markets.

That being said, the S&P 500, which is kind of the bellwether index we all look at, continues to hover near all time highs, break through them gradually. I think the S&P 500 through today is up roughly 1.5% to 1.7% year to date. The more tech heavy Nasdaq slightly under that, about 1.5%, maybe a little shy of that year to date. And what's important about that is we're actually seeing a little bit of rotation in terms of what's leading the markets, especially here in the US.

And so what had been a pretty tech heavy leadership throughout 2025 has broadened a little bit into other sectors, into other styles. So we're seeing cyclical names take some leadership here to start the year. We're seeing small caps outperform. They're up roughly 6% year to date.

And so you're kind of seeing more of that value in cyclical trade outpacing the tech trade. Everything continues to move up a little bit here, which is great, but broadening is good for our diversified portfolios as it's not dependent on just one sector or a handful of names.

This week in the equity space, you know, we are kicking off earnings season that typically is led with financials. We have seen a lot of the big banks report, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America. And on the whole, we've seen really good earnings come out of the financial services space. That has been driven a lot by trading revenue and in the asset management side of the business, which does make sense. Q4 typically is an elevated period of higher turnover. And so the more you turn or the more you trade, the more revenue you generate.

So typically Q4 would be a higher trading revenue quarter for the banks. There's a lot of tax loss harvesting and other things that go on towards the end of the year. Asset management continues to look good in the financial services sector as well. And you know, what is to be determined here is this a harbinger for more good news across other sectors or will we see some kind of bifurcation of earnings here from Q4?

And so we'll be paying particular attention to consumer oriented names, to tech oriented names where there has been a lot of pressure behind the AI trade. We've seen good macroeconomic data starting to pull through on productivity gains. And so that has been kind of the promise of AI. Are we starting to see that matriculate to other industries?

You know, I think there's there could be some green shoots forming here, but, you know, we are going to wait to to see more hard data before we, we wave the victory flag on that. Outside of that, the only thing moving this week, we have seen oil bounce around really on the back of the kind of Iranian protests and the potential for the administration to enter into to the fray. Early in the week, Donald Trump said, you know, he might enter in. If the killings continued, you know, we were gonna come in.

I think that kind of spooked the market. Iran is the third largest oil reserve in the world. And despite embargoes and other things, they still do put a lot of oil into the system. And so if there's any conflict there, as you'd suspect, the market is pricing in a decrease in supply, drove up oil.

Actually, now fast forward to today, the administration seems to indicate that, you know, the the Iranians heard the message, the killing stopped, and and they've they've kind of softened their stance. And as such, actually, oil declined, I think, 4% today. So, that will bounce around. Commodities tend to be the most exposed to these geopolitical headlines and volatility.

But over long periods of time, we've done a lot of research that suggests geopolitics don't really drive market outcomes and the underlying fundamentals of the businesses and the economy is really what drives that. And so besides some noise, we don't see too much in the way of long term impacts there. But looking forward here, we're going to be paying a lot of attention to the inflation numbers that will be coming out this month. We'll be paying a lot of attention to earnings as we're really kind of getting into the the meat of earnings season here. And so when we follow-up with you next week, I'm sure we'll have more to to talk about as we digest some of the macroeconomic data and we digest some of the the earnings data. So thank you for tuning in. We'll talk with you next week.

2026-10711

Image

Topic

Tags

Duration

7 minutes

Doug Huber

7 Market Movers | January 9, 2026

Anne Harris — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 16:18:28 +0000

7 Market Movers | January 9, 2026 Anne Harris Fri, 01/09/2026 - 10:18

This week on 7 Market Movers, Gary Quinzel recaps the extraordinary market events of 2025, including the 3rd straight year of double-digit gains for US equities. He also takes stock of the first full week of 2026, including the recent rotation away from technology stocks into health care and the defense sector, and the small rally in oil stocks and gold after the news of the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2026, Gary covers the optimism around monetary policy and the potential impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on both businesses and consumers.

Watch the full video below!

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the first 7Market Movers of 2026. My name is Gary Quinzel, Vice President of Portfolio Consulting here at Wealth Enhancement. Before we dive into today's Market Movers, I want to do a quick recap of 2025 because it really was an extraordinary year any way you look at it.

Starting first with US equities, it's hard to believe after the start that we had that US equities, as demonstrated by the S&P 500, would gain 18% for the year, which was its 3rd straight year of double digit returns. This past year, most of the return was actually driven by earnings expansion, so not multiple expansion as it had been in previous years. The same cannot be said if we look overseas at international stocks, which, notably outperformed the US. So if we look at the the IFA, the MSCI developed international index gained around 31%.

The emerging markets index gained around 33.5%. A lot of that, was driven by multiple expansions. So investors are feeling better, about investing overseas, and of course, the softer dollar to start the year also played a contributing factor. We're starting to notice investors feeling more optimistic about investing overseas, and a big part of that is probably because of the concentration that we are experiencing here in the US with the mega cap tech leaders.

If we look around the investment universe, it wasn't just stocks that did very, very well. Bonds did very well too as we saw interest rates generally come in. We saw the Bloomberg Aggregate Index gain around 7.5%. We saw, even Munis had a good year after a rough start gaining around 4.5%.

High yield did well. And most notably, gold, if you think about, safe haven assets, gained around 65%.

A lot of that driven by geopolitical uncertainties, and, of course, there's also a lot of central bank purchases of of gold. And so we continue to see that, ride a wave of popularity. Does feel like it's getting a little overbought, but it's a very hard thing to gauge from a time perspective. So if we take a look at what's happening right now, today's news is really focused on the Supreme Court ruling that's going to rule on whether or not the president Trump's liberation day tariffs were legal or not.

So all eyes are on that. We could see a rule ruling as soon as Friday, January 5th. Regardless of the outcome, I think just knowing where we stand is going to be beneficial, removing that layer of uncertainty. But I think more importantly, if we do see some of those tariffs ruled ruled against if if the ruling is against the tariffs, that could definitely benefit certain companies, especially those companies that do a lot of reporting. They could certainly improve margins, lower cost to consumers.

So if you're looking at sectors like staples, discretionary, industrial, certainly could see a larger impact. And we've noted that almost 1,000 companies have already lined up to potentially sue to recoup some of those losses over billions of dollars that have been levied so far in duties so far. So we'll certainly be paying attention to that. As we look at the markets in the early days of 2026, we've seen a little bit of a rotation.

I touched upon this. We're seeing more broader enthusiasm for for stocks and for the economy, but we're seeing a little bit of a rotation early on away from technology towards things like health care, towards defense stocks. We're seeing Russell 2000 small caps perform really well, and so value is outperforming growth. And notably, EM is still continuing to outperform all geographic sectors on the hopes of higher, underlying growth and, again, valuation expansion because overall valuations continue to be more attractive as a lower starting point.

So we're seeing some of that rotation, a lot of optimism around things like monetary policy. Here in the US, it is still slightly accommodative. Now we did, of course, have 3 rate cuts last year. We're not expecting that again this year, but one to two cuts is certainly possible.

If you look at the Fed futures market right now, nothing is expected in the first meeting in January. But, following that in March up to June, we could see 1 to 2 cuts. Of course, it is isn't always will be data dependent. Depends on what happens with the labor market.

Will it continue to soften? Will we have softer GDP prints, softer overall, growth numbers? That'll certainly support the case, for more cuts so that the Fed as always will remain data dependent. And if you look at the dot plot, which actually shows where the FOMC participants anticipate rates going, they're pricing in one more rate cut next or this year, I should say.

So we'll certainly pay attention to that as it helps the markets out.

Maybe more importantly, right now, as we're getting closer to as we've turned the page onto 2026 fiscal policy, because we expect that to be very accommodating here in this year, and that's because of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which could boost growth by some estimates up to half a percentage point. The reason for that is is because it is overall going to lock in a pro growth tax policy for the foreseeable future, which again removes a level of uncertainty that was there before. It also is going to continue to incentivize businesses to invest in their do capital spend invest in their business, do capital expenditures, and that tends to lead to productivity enhancement.

And on the other side, the flip side, the lower effective tax rates for for for taxpayers means more money in your pockets, more money for households to pay on consumer goods. So all of that lends itself to a a happier consumer and and more positive investor sentiment, which if you look at many measures, it is modestly positive. If look at AAII investor sentiment, it's still above its long term average. It has softened a little bit recently, which is kind of a good thing.

Right? You don't necessarily want to be at extreme levels that can tend to be a little bit contrarian as oftentimes that precludes a sell off. But, right now, it's kind of in that Goldilocks territory. And so, we're looking at that.

We're also looking at volatility, which is actually very, very low right now, which can suggest some level of complacency. We've seen this before, as, you know, volatility goes away, and it can often foreshadow unexpected bouts of volatility. So we will certainly, pay attention to that as well.

Last thing before we wrap up here, I just wanna touch upon the US military action that captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro recently. As we often talk about geopolitical events, even the ones that are very, very significant as this one, this is probably the most significant one in Latin America in several decades, tend not to move the markets that much, at least out of the gate. And so this is this year's or this instance is no different. We've seen some reaction most notably in certain oil stocks.

They are they rallied a little bit. We've seen gold rally a little bit, and some defense stocks have done well in addition, but we're not seeing a major impact to the overall market. I think what's gonna be more interesting on the longer run is what happens. Are we gonna see political stability return to the region?

Are we going to see the new leadership come in and boost the output of Venezuela? Because right now, productivity is actually extremely low even though they have the world's largest reserves, so certainly, Hawaii's will be on that. So like anything else, we will continue to monitor this and all the other factors that move the markets.

We hope you found this insight, today's updates insightful as always.

And if you have any questions about this and what's moving the markets today, tomorrow, or into the future, please reach out to us or your financial adviser. And we hope you have a great day and a great week. Take care.

2026-10634

Image

Topic

Tags

Duration

7 minutes

Gary Quinzel

7 Market Movers | December 19, 2025

Anne Harris — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 21:21:17 +0000

7 Market Movers | December 19, 2025 Anne Harris Fri, 12/19/2025 - 15:21

This week’s 7 Market Movers brings long-delayed economic data and a meaningful shift in market tone as we head toward year-end. Gary Quinzel walks through how markets initially rallied after the rate cut (but that enthusiasm quickly faded), why concerns over growth and AI valuations weighed on stocks, and what sparked Thursday’s rebound.

With equities, bonds, and even commodities showing strong gains in 2025, Gary also highlights the 3 big themes investors will be watching as we enter 2026.

Watch the full video here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to 7 Market Movers. My name is Gary Quinzel with Wealth Enhancement. It's been another busy week for markets.

Following up on last week's rate cut by the Fed, this week we saw some delayed economic data finally coming through, and today we saw a rebound in stocks driven by a surprisingly soft inflation print. Let's walk through what's moving markets as we head into year end. So as mentioned, last week we saw the Fed cut interest rates for the third time this year. The initial reaction by the stock market was positive, but that enthusiasm faded pretty quickly.

Stocks drifted lower into early this week as investors reassessed growth, valuations, and of course concerns surrounding a possible bubble in AI stocks, something we've talked about quite a bit.

On Tuesday, we finally received the November payrolls report, which had been delayed because of the government shutdown.

According to the BLS, the economy added sixty four thousand jobs in November. The unemployment rate rose to around 4.6, which is the highest number in nearly four years. This happened while the labor force participation rate held steady at 62.7. We saw job gains concentrated in healthcare and government, while manufacturing, retail, and transportation showed little change.

We also saw that average hourly earnings rose 0.2% in November and are up around 3.4% year over year. But more notably, we saw that job losses in October amounted to around 105,000, which were mostly driven by a drop in federal workers. I think that might have been what contributed to some of the earlier weakness we saw in the market earlier this week around some concerns about a slowing economy.

We saw four straight down days for the S&P 500. Markets then staged a comeback on Thursday, which was driven by that meaningful cooling and inflation. So according to the BLS CPI data, headline CPI rose just zero point one percent November and is up 2.7% over the past year. Now if we look at core CPI, which pulls out food and energy, that also rose 0.1% in November and is up just 2.6% year over year, which is the lowest core inflation reading since early 2021.

This helped spark a little bit of a reality across equities and bonds, as we saw yields come down in line with anticipation for rate cuts. As we noted, today's CPI somewhat armed the Fed doves with stronger ammunition for easier monetary policy. The S&P 500 did jump around 0.8%, ending its four day slide, and the Nasdaq did even better, rising around 1.5%, which was helped by strong guidance from Micron, which Bloomberg noted helped underscore the ongoing appetite for AI related infrastructure, which we don't see slowing down anytime soon.

Treasury yields continue to move lower as investors build expectations with an easier policy next year. If you take a look at the Fed futures right now, traders are pricing in around two rate cuts in 2026, even with some of the skepticism around the November CPI data because of the fact that the economic data is somewhat distorted because of the shutdown and the limited sampling period.

Shifting gears now to valuations, which remains a major theme as we close out the year.

Something we talk a lot about, price to earnings ratio, very, very poor indicator of short term market movements, but it does tell a meaningful story around how richly equities or risky assets are valued relative to other asset classes. The S&P 500 forward price earnings ratios, it's around 22 right now, which is close to its peak back in 2022, but it's well above its long term average of around 16 times earnings. If we look at the same ratio for the Magnificent Seven stocks, they're trading around 28 times earnings, which is down from its high back in 2020 of around38, but still very rich by historical standards. So we have higher valuations, but if we look at the peg ratio, which is the price to earnings to growth ratio, this does tell a more balanced story.

If we use 5-year forward consensus growth estimates, the peg ratio is roughly 1.2 times, which is about in line with its 30-year average. So in other words, while absolute valuations continue to look elevated, they're more aligned with long term norms once expected earnings growth, especially tied to AI and productivity gains, is factored in. So the takeaway here is that valuations remain rich and leadership is narrow, and a lot is riding on those AI winners continuing to justify their premium pricing.

All in all, 2025 has been a remarkable year. We've seen a year of strong market gains really across the board, everything from US equities to international equities, which have done even better, to certain commodities, and even bonds overall have had, positive years. So pretty much across the board, if you were invested, whether concentrated or diversified, you probably saw some notable gains.

We saw big shifts in monetary policy. We saw major steps forward in artificial intelligence, but we know it has not always been smooth, and markets proved resilient even in the face of shutdowns, missing data, and questions about ongoing growth.

As we move into 2026, investors will be watching three big themes: the path of Fed policy, the durability of the consumer, and whether AI leaders can continue to deliver on the promise of higher productivity. We'll be here each week helping you make sense of it and to remind you of the importance, of diversification, a proper asset allocation, and working with your financial advisor to help construct a sensible financial plan. So from everyone here at Wealth Enhancement, we wish you all a very happy holiday season and good health and prosperity in the New Year. Thanks for watching and see you on the next 7 Market Movers.

There is no guarantee that asset allocation or diversification will enhance overall returns, outperform a non-diversified portfolio, nor ensure a profit or protect against a loss.

2025-10426

Image

Topic

Tags

Duration

7 minutes

Gary Quinzel

7 Market Movers | December 12, 2025

Anne Harris — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 18:17:00 +0000

7 Market Movers | December 12, 2025 Anne Harris Fri, 12/12/2025 - 12:17

This week’s 7 Market Movers brings us updates from the Federal Reserve as they wrapped up their final meeting of 2025. Aya Yoshioka breaks down the latest rate cut and why both policymakers and markets are still navigating a “data fog” after months of delayed economic reports. Aya also covers fresh signals from the labor market, shifting Treasury yields, and the slow resurgence of a dot-com era heavyweight.

Watch the full video here:

TRANSCRIPT:

My name is Aya Yoshioka, Portfolio Consulting Director and Senior Investment Strategist here at Wealth Enhancement. Welcome to another edition of 7 Market Movers, where we cover a variety of topics that impact markets. So let's get started. Well, this week was Fed Week, and it's always a big market mover when we hear from our central bank. And it was the last meeting of 2025. The FOMC delivered its third 25-basis point rate cut of the year, but the vote was not unanimous, and we had three dissenters on this vote.

The Fed also guided to one additional rate cut for 2026, at least that's what was communicated through their dot plot. But the market's still pricing in about 2 rate cuts, just given the overall macro backdrop. During the press conference, Chairman Powell noted that the economy had made good progress on non tariff related inflation, but that it wouldn't hurt to wait and see if there might still be some lingering impacts in the early months of 2026. He noted that he felt that the labor market had cooled a bit faster than they had expected.

But remember, everybody's been in a bit of a data fog just given the government shutdown that lasted a lot longer than everybody had anticipated. So everybody's flying a bit blind when it comes to economic data. However, on point today, we received data on unemployment claims or initial jobless claims. And that showed that 236,000 people filed for jobless claims or claiming unemployment. And that was a bit higher than the 220,000 that economists had expected. There are job openings and those have actually risen. We saw this week on Tuesday that the JOLTS report or the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed that job openings were around 7.7 million, steady from last year's level and up slightly from the 7.2 million that we saw back in March.

The Fed wasn't done just with the cut. They also announced that they will be buying treasury bills. And this is not a restart of quantitative easing, but they said that they would be buying treasury bills in order to maintain ample reserves, aiming to support liquidity in the bond market. So the bond market reacted to all of this with bond yields drifting lower.

Overall, we've seen a slight steepening in the yield curve as the two year treasury yield was at 3.62% prior to the meeting, and it drifted down about 10 basis points to 3.52% percent. The 10-year on the other hand was at 4.2% before the Fed meeting and drifted down about 6-basis points to 4.14%. US equity markets on the other hand are still hovering near all time highs that were set back in October. We've had some strong returns in equity markets with the S&P 500 up nearly 17% on a year to date basis.

This week, we had a few earnings reports, a little few stragglers. Earnings season has been concluded for quite some time, but there are a few that are on different fiscal, years. And those were Oracle, Costco, and Broadcom. Oracle results missed expectations, and the stock has really pulled back pretty significantly from its September highs as investors remain concerned about their spending trajectory and the duration of negative free cash flow. Meanwhile, Broadcom and Costco beat street estimates and were trending higher, at least in the aftermarket this afternoon.

Lastly, an interesting fact crossed my desk. We know that AI has been in hot debate and there's a lot of bubble talk relating back to the dot com era and the bubble bursting from the internet in 2000. Well, a little factoid, Cisco, poster child of the dot com era, actually closed at a record high on Wednesday, December 10th, finally closing above its March 2000. Wow.

In another tale of two narratives, commodities have seen areas of strength in precious metals such as gold. We all have seen the strong rise in gold up over 60% this year. But crude oil has languished, as oversupply concerns remain an issue. Lower crude prices have helped consumers battle inflation, and the higher price of gold really reflects that inflation remains a concern for many consumers.

As we close out 2025, markets have really been resilient. And despite tariff issues, a government shutdown, AI bubble debates, and more, we have witnessed really strong returns in equity markets, not just here in the US, but across the globe, with international markets and emerging markets up substantially as well.

We encourage investors to stay disciplined with their financial plan, favoring diversification over precision timing as we all think about how we should be positioned going into 2026. If you would like to discuss your portfolio, please reach out to your financial advisor here at Wealth Enhancement, and we'd be happy to discuss markets with you.

Until next time, I wish you all the very happiest of holidays and the best in 2026. Thanks so much.

There is no guarantee that asset allocation or diversification will enhance overall returns, outperform a non-diversified portfolio, nor ensure a profit or protect against a loss.

2025-10350

Image

Topic

Tags

Duration

7 minutes

Ayako Yoshioka

7 Market Movers | December 5, 2025

Anne Harris — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 22:22:16 +0000

7 Market Movers | December 5, 2025 Anne Harris Fri, 12/05/2025 - 16:22

Our latest episode of 7 Market Movers is live, with Doug Huber walking us through several surprising shifts as we kick off December. Despite delayed government data, markets are reacting to a sharp drop in jobless claims, strong corporate earnings, and growing confidence around a potential Fed rate cut. Doug also highlights what small caps and tech are signaling—and why the next few weeks of long-awaited economic reports could be especially important.

Watch the full video here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, and thanks for joining me for this, the first week of December's 7 Market Movers video series. My name is Doug Huber, and I'm the Deputy Chief Investment Officer here at Wealth Enhancement. I'm happy to be back with you after a week's long hiatus for the holiday where I hope you all had a wonderful thanks giving with your family and friends.

Let's get into what's driving markets this week. This week continues to be a little bit of an unusual situation where we still are dealing with the fact that several major economic releases, including inflation data, the monthly jobs reports remain delayed following the earlier government shutdown of October into November. As a result, markets are still operating with less fresh data than their usual. So they're really relying on alternative data streams or making assumptions.

But we did get one meaningful update this week. We did see weekly jobless claims come in, dropping sharply to a 191,000, which is the lowest level in 3 years. So that number certainly reinforces the picture that the labor market remains resilient even as the broader economy is showing some signs of gradually cooling, and and that is evidenced by the fact that we also saw data that for the year of 2025, we've seen 1.1 million layoffs in in the corporate sector. So it's this really interesting juxtaposition of of trying to evaluate what are markets supposed to look at, and and we're seeing lower initial jobless claims.

We know there's been a lot of layoffs, and and will those continue, or or corporations gonna hang on to the employees they have? On the corporate side, earnings certainly played a bigger role this week given that limited, government data. We did see a few widely followed companies post strong results. For example, Snowflake, definitely delivered better than expected earnings and they had upbeat guidance driven by that continued demand for data infrastructure services.

Additionally, we saw Dollar General report results that exceeded expectations, which is positive as it shows the lower end consumer is still out there spending and in general kind of boosted sentiment around that consumer discretionary space.

In total, these earnings certainly help support the equity markets at a time when investors are otherwise kind of sitting on their hands waiting for some of that delayed economic data.

Big one that everyone's watching is what is the Federal Reserve doing? And so even without that new inflation data, markets are certainly increasing their expectations for a Fed rate cut in December, including several major institutions, Bank of America and others have now projected an easing move in this upcoming meeting. I think the market today is is projecting a 91% chance, of a of a cut in December. That being said, Boston Fed president Susan Collins warned that a more fragmented global economy could put upward pressure on inflation over time.

And with that, I think the markets started to say, well, hold on a second. So they're saying, hey, we we do expect in December, but with all this uncertainty, we now are actually going to push off or change our expectations for what might occur in 2026. So it'll certainly be important to continue to watch what the Fed does, I think that is going to follow suit to some of the economic data that actually comes out hopefully over this month and next.

In the equity markets, as I alluded to, we did see a constructive tone this week. Small cap stocks have certainly led the way. Russell 2000, which is a benchmark of those rallied as as traders have priced in a lower borrowing cost. Typically, small cap stocks benefit because they are more rate sensitive.

They tend to have more debt on their balance sheets. And so as rates go down, it gives them the ability to refinance that debt and or pay cheaper amounts for that leverage. And so you will see these these kind of trading spikes that if if investors believe rates are going to drop precipitously or or even just even a little bit, they tend to benefit small cap stocks. I think on the whole, we remain somewhat cautious of the of the small cap arena, especially at the very small end because that is an area that traditionally saw a lot of IPO activity.

Today, companies are staying private longer, and if and when the the IPO market warms a little bit, which we're seeing some signs of, they tend to come public a little bit larger. So we grow a little weary of some of the lower quality, lower market cap stocks, and so, it's something to watch, but you will see kind of trading activity occur in those as broad kind of indices swing in and out. Large cap tech contributed to gains still, really supported though by earning surprises, and improving risk sentiment on the whole. And so with a combination of that resilient labor data, some strong earnings, like I mentioned from Snowplay Snowflake, Dollar General, and others, you know, that that increase in confidence has certainly helped to to have a pretty positive tone in equities this week.

Fixed income treasury yields are are pretty range bound and have been. We've seen them drift a little bit lower this week as investors grew more confident in the prospect of that December rate cut. Like I said, that that that had dropped as low as, like, a 40% chance. It's now back up to a 91% percent chance.

So the market really is quite confident that we will see a cut. And so you saw the 10-year yield hover around 4.09% to 4.1%.

You know, it has drifted kind of between 4% and 4.15% over the last several weeks.

Credit markets remain steady. That is one thing that has been kind of a hallmark of the last 18+ months. Investment grade spreads, the amount you need to get paid to kind of invest in credit of investment grade companies over and above the US Treasury rate has remained quite firm, very low to historical standards indicating that the market does not see huge risk to that debt. Even high yield spreads for what might some might call junk companies. I think that's a little unfair, but companies that aren't investment grade rated, they've tightened modestly and remain very tight relative to historical standards, essentially saying corporate balance sheets look pretty good today.

Some closing thoughts. You know, the fact of the matter is jobless claims fell their lowest level more than 3 years. That looks to be a good sign. However, that is, in juxtaposition to a pretty hefty year for layoffs over 1.1 million and some uncertainty around what are we going to see from the fed released, data, the BLS data on on labor market. And so that will be watched very closely.

Obviously, the market is pricing in that December Fed rate cut. And if there is a surprise that they don't cut rates, that could have an impact in the short term to markets.

But I think longer term, the the directionality, everybody is very data dependent because we know the Fed is data dependent. Small caps and tech continue to lead this week, and it's good to hear have a have a positive backdrop to equities based on fundamentals of the fact that, you know, we are seeing pretty good earnings and good guidance for the future. So that's important. It's it's a sign that the economy is doing okay, and those that are kind of building projections for these corporations feel that the future looks relatively positive.

Again, treasury yields stayed pretty pretty tight for the week, but we will see them likely, especially on the front end the curve, continue to drop down as those rate cut expectations continue.

I think the biggest thing is that we do expect several important economic reports that have been delayed to come out in the month of December and early January. And so the next few weeks are going to be very important as we get some of these data numbers that have been delayed for almost two to three months. So it's those are important clues as to what's going on underlying the economy. We've all been kind of flying a little bit blind.

And so I think, you know, it'll be important to see what those tell us and how the market reacts s to that. So we'll continue to monitor that. You'll hear from us again next week. Hopefully, we'll have some more information available.

But, again, it's great to see everybody again. It's great to be back after the holiday week. We hope everybody had a nice break. And please tune in next week for our next, 7 Market Movers.

Thanks so much for joining us.

2025-10242

Image

Topic

Tags

Duration

7 minutes

Doug Huber

7 Market Movers | November 21, 2025

Anne Harris — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 21:35:51 +0000

7 Market Movers | November 21, 2025 Anne Harris Fri, 11/21/2025 - 15:35

After hitting record highs, markets have pulled back as volatility returns and investors question whether the AI rally can keep up its pace. In this week’s episode, Gary breaks down what’s driving the recent swings, NVIDIA’s headline-grabbing earnings, and why expectations for another Fed rate cut are fading.

Watch the full video below.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to this week's 7 Market Movers. My name is Gary Quinzel, Vice President of Portfolio Consulting at Wealth Enhancement. Equity markets have been anything but quiet these past few days.

After reaching yet another new all time high late last month, we've seen major indices reverse lower as volatility has spiked, and investors have begun to question both the strength as well as sustainability of the AI trade. Today, we're gonna cover what's driving those sharp swings, talk about NVIDIA's earnings, and also why expectations for another rate cut have been quickly fading. Now for perspective, November is usually a strong month for markets. Historically, it's averaged around 2% returns and has been positive around 74% of the time.

As mentioned, though, this year, volatility has dominated. The VIX index, which measures volatility, has surged from around 12 to roughly 27 in just over a week, which tells us that traders are getting a little uneasy about what's been an exceptionally strong year for the markets.

Even after this pullback, the S&P 500 still trades at a valuation of around 22x forward earnings, which is well above its 10-year average of about 18x. So valuations remain elevated. And as mentioned, investors are beginning to ask, has the market already priced in too much optimism around AI? Those concerns have come to a head these past few days.

The Bloomberg Magnificent Seven Index, which tracks those seven mega cap names that we all know, That that index has fallen around 8% from the end of October through mid November as investors have taken profits and, as mentioned, questioned whether or not the AI growth can keep up with expectations. We've also talked a lot about circularity, what analysts refer to as when companies buy from each other, invest in one another, particularly within the AI supply supply chain, which is a phenomenon that we also observe in the dot com period. So NVIDIA's latest results have captured the overall tensions perfectly.

Once again, the company easily beat expectations. Q3 revenues were up sixty two percent to around $57 billion, and they also put out guidance for Q4 revenue of $65 billion in Q4, which initially sent shares up around 5%. But by midday on Thursday, those gains evaporated.

Investors shifted gears and started focusing on the rising accounts receivables of NVIDIA, which are now up to $33 billion, up from $23 billion earlier this year. Also, noted growing concentration of of those hyper-scaler companies that are amongst those accounts in accounts receivable. So we all know that NVIDIA remains a powerhouse, but this report just reminded markets that even great stories need a flawless execution, especially when valuations are this high. We're also seeing some little itty bitty stress signals elsewhere.

We've observed that demand for credit default swaps, in particular on Oracle, which has been a major spender within the of the big AI players, has surged in recent weeks. It's just another sign that some traders are beginning to hedge some of their exposure to the broader AI trade.

Switching gears to the macro front, the overall picture is somewhat mixed. Now labor data, the September payrolls came in at 119,000 new payrolls, which beat expectations, But that's really old data. Because of the government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics just now released September's data and already announced that they won't even publish October data. So it's created a major blind spot for policymakers and those investors that rely on that data to predict what's gonna hap what the next move for the Fed is going to be. The lack of current data is one of those reasons why the odds of the December rate cut have dropped to roughly 40%, down from almost a 100% roughly a month ago.

Another major reason that, odds of a rate cut have gone down is simply because inflation is still too high at 3%, and it's something that's being brought up by current Fed governors questioning whether or not we need another rate cut right now.

All of this does raise a really important question. If the Fed is on pause for the remainder of the year and AI enthusiasm is somewhat cooling, what is going to be the catalyst or what is going to drive a year end rally? I think that's why the markets are taking a little bit of a breather right now. But let's keep perspective.

Overall, markets are still having a terrific year. The S&P 500 is up 13% year to date. Nasdaq, even better at 16%. Overseas, even better.

Emerging markets are up roughly 30%, and even bonds are doing quite well at almost 7%. So it could be that just as this pullback could be nothing more than a healthy correction rather than something more structural in nature. Our advice for advisers and investors is to stay diversified and disciplined. We know that the tech trade is strong and remains influential, but leadership needs to broaden.

We also advise our investors to pay attention to liquidity and credit conditions. These spikes in volatility often precede good opportunities. And also to use weakness selectively because quality companies or funds that invest in quality companies with solid fundamentals often can become more attractively priced as the market digests all of these moves.

So to recap, volatility is certainly back. The AI trade is now being tested, and rate cut expectations are fading, but the markets remain resilient overall. Just another reminder to stay in tune with your long term investment objectives. And if you have any questions, please reach out to your financial adviser.

We'd be happy to get back to you and answer those questions. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week on seven Market Movers. Take care.

2025-10125

Image

Topic

Investing

Tags

7 Market Movers

global financial markets

market update

Duration

7 minutes

Gary Quinzel

7 Market Movers | November 14, 2025

Anne Harris — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 20:44:24 +0000

7 Market Movers | November 14, 2025 Anne Harris Fri, 11/14/2025 - 14:44

High valuations and high volatility have gone hand-in-hand so far in November. Watch as Aya Yoshioka breaks down the latest market news this week, including increased investor interest in the healthcare and energy sectors. She also shares updates on expectations for the upcoming fed meeting, inflation, and more!

Watch the full video here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, my name is Aya Yoshioka. I'm a Portfolio Consulting Director and Senior Investment Strategist here at Wealth Enhancement. Welcome to another edition of 7 Market Movers, where we cover a variety of topics that have impacted markets over the last week. So let's get started.

After a record long 43-day government shutdown, lawmakers finally reached a deal to reopen federal operations. They agreed that they would have a short-term funding extension to fund most federal agencies through the end of January 2026, not too long from now. SNAP and food aid funding was restored, and there was a deferral on voting for tax credits, related to the Affordable Care Act. When news of all of this first broke, on Monday, stocks staged a relief rally as a major overhang was lifted. In the coming days and weeks, though, we will get several economic data releases related to jobs, inflation, GDP, and much, much more, and we'll get a sense of where the US economy currently stands.

On that note, we aren't expecting too much of a change, in terms of the trends that were persistent prior to the government shutdown. And that includes inflation that was already staying very sticky in this 3% level and cooling or weakening, labor market. So we don't think we're going to see too many changes there, but markets will parse through all this economic data for both the delayed data as well as the current data as government agencies catch up to all of the information. We will then, as market participants, crystallize around what the probability of that December Fed cut will be. Right now, it currently stands at about 65% in terms of the probability that the Fed will cut again and do another 25 basis point cut. But again, that will crystallize and become more clear as we approach that next Fed meeting in December.

We are on track for a 3rd consecutive year of double digit gains in the S&P 500. And yesterday, we saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average break through the 48,000 milestone. While the Dow is up 0.4% for the month of November so far, the S&P is actually down 1% and the tech heavy NASDAQ is down a little over 3% as stocks related to AI really do take a little bit of a breather.

Equity markets are a little expensive here. The S&P 500 index is trading at a forward price to earnings ratio of 25x compared to a 5-year median of about 22x. And that's still expensive relative to the long term average of around 16x to 17x. And when valuations are high, volatility can get a bit more elevated, and we've seen that in November so far. The VIX index, an indicator of market volatility, is currently showing a reading of around 20. This is up from the low of 15 that was seen in August, but this compares to the heightened periods of volatility that we saw from the tariff tantrum in April where the VIX spiked to over 50 or the early days of the pandemic when the VIX spiked to 80.

So this current bout of volatility, is it a sign that the AI bubble is deflating? We don't necessarily think so. Perhaps, right? There's been a lot of talk about the AI bubble, but this can be viewed positively overall as we see a little bit of a breather in markets. So we think that the AI build out is going to continue for quite some time, but it also happened with the internet as well. Sometimes investors get a little ahead of themselves. And we think that having a little bit of a pause in some of these names can be very healthy.

And we're seeing a good rotation across markets into other areas that are seeing some valuation support. So areas such as healthcare and energy were unloved all throughout 2025. And they're starting to see some investor interest as people take some profits off the table in tech. They're not running away from the market overall. They're just leaning into some of that diversification, which we really think is crucial for investors to embrace when markets are elevated from a valuation perspective.

With that, if you would like to discuss your portfolio, please reach out to a financial advisor here at Wealth Enhancement, and we'd be happy to discuss your portfolio or our market outlooks with you. Thanks so much for listening and have a great one.

2025-10056

Image

Topic

Tags

Duration

6 minutes

Ayako Yoshioka

7 Market Movers | November 7, 2025

Anne Harris — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 18:18:28 +0000

7 Market Movers | November 7, 2025 Anne Harris Fri, 11/07/2025 - 12:18

This week Doug discusses the recent election outcomes, the ongoing government shutdown, and what we know (and don’t know) about the labor markets. He also takes a deep dive into current market valuations and what those could mean for portfolios.

Watch the full video below:

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Wealth Enhancement's seven Market Movers video series. My name is Doug Huber. I'm the Deputy Chief Investment Officer and excited to be here today to talk about what's going on this first week of November 2025.

Still a lot of headlines in the news this week. We had an election docket on Tuesday, mostly state specific. And, you know, we saw a pretty big sweep from the the Democratic Party in those elections. Generally, the market did not really respond to those. These are elections that that likely have very little in the way of impact to to the the economic picture. But interesting nonetheless, and I think there will be a lot more discourse on kind of what the future for midterms might look like on the heels of the results of this election.

The government shutdown continues to roll on. We're seeing real disruptions now coming to the airline sector as secretary Duffy has indicated that they will curtail flights by 10% to 40 large airports. And so I think this is could be an impetus for pushing the congressional leaders to maybe get a deal done here. This will have real impact and the constituency will not be happy by this.

And then finally, we had some labor data this month. Government data is still on hold and so we're relying on private sector data, but we did see the ADP numbers come in slightly better than expected, which I think the market did take positively. Interestingly, still soft in the greater scale of things, but certainly better than anticipated. But that was quickly trumped by the layoff numbers that came through that certainly were very weak. I think the statistic I saw was that it was the weakest October for layoffs in 22 years. I think 2003 was the last October that was worse than this. And I think on a quarterly basis, also one of the worst in several years. And so that is something certainly we will be paying attention to.

I think the markets have retreated a little bit. We've had a mix of up and down days, but on the week through Thursday, the S&P 500 is down roughly 1.25%. The more tech heavy Nasdaq down closer to 2%. And the 10-year US Treasury benchmark rate has remained roughly flat for the week. I think what the market is trying to digest here is just truly what is the strength of that labor market is that's really what I think the Fed is going to make their decisions based on.

We've talked about the fact they have a dual mandate of inflation and labor. I think inflation for the most part is probably relatively range bound and a surprise to the upside is being priced in is somewhat unlikely at this point. But I think the real question mark is what is going on in the labor markets, especially because we are lacking the data coming out of the government bureaus since the shutdown. And so it'll be interesting to see if there is a surprise when the government does eventually open up. Do we see a real softening in the labor market?

And so with that, we've also heard a lot of talk about valuations. And so I thought this week it would be interesting to take a quick dive into kind of what's going on, what does that mean and what does that mean for portfolios? I think, yes, if you look at it on a blanket basis, most markets are not cheap, right? Valuations are quite high across both equities and fixed income markets regardless of kind of how you slice that pie.

The fact of the matter, though, is that also is a signal that the market is willing to take risk. It is willing to pay for high quality businesses. It is willing to pay for growth. And I think that is what the market is telling us. Now where that gets a little bit nervous for some market participants is when does the valuation get too high, right? When does risk start to come off the table? And if everybody's in the same kind of risk assets when they do de risk, right, that's when we see markets go down. So is there quote unquote a bubble? That's a clickbait term that is I think used a lot. We don't believe we are in a bubble, but it is certainly worthwhile pointing out that the valuations are quite high.

Now the flip side to that, a counterargument to that could be that the quality of of these businesses, the quality of the debt they issue is really good today. Right? Earnings are growing. Balance sheets are strong. And so as you'd imagine, people are willing to pay for that. Right? They're willing to pay for that that quality asset that's going to grow faster than the economy. And so as such, you've seen valuations climb up and market structure has also helped in that where a lot of money is in passive indices. And so obviously, when dollars flow to those ETFs that track the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ, more dollars inevitably go to those larger positions because they're what we call market cap weighted and the largest names are at the top. And so they get more, so they get bigger. And so we have seen a bit of that.

What does that all mean? Are we calling the top? Absolutely not, right? We do not have a crystal ball but we certainly pay a lot of attention to where are there risks and where are there opportunities. I think there are pockets of the market that are more attractive on a valuation basis. A lot of those that look cheap might be cheap for a reason. But other areas, whether that's internationally or pockets of fixed income, you get paid a little bit more for still relatively good assets, etcetera, are areas where we are looking for opportunity. And if you think about it, portfolios aren't typically just in one index like the S&P 500, right?

We typically recommend diversified portfolios. I think this is an environment more so than we've experienced in the past where that diversification is going to continue to shine, we believe. And so we will continue to monitor what the markets are doing. We will continue to monitor the macroeconomic data that is going to kind of dictate the pace of our economic growth or contraction. We will continue to monitor the Fed's decision as that has a lot of impact into how risk assets are priced. But I think today, you know, our risk posture is relatively neutral in the fact that we believe that there's still a lot of good opportunity, although that opportunity might be a little more expensive than it has in the past. And likewise, there's still some risk in the markets. And so we we want to make sure that we are not too conservative nor too risky at this stage. And I think you'll see that in kind of how we've positioned portfolios.

So we look forward to coming back next week with hopefully some good news as it relates to maybe the end of this government shutdown, maybe some good news around if we get some labor statistics back, perhaps they are better than the market might anticipate. And so we will keep a close eye on that. But between now and then, we hope you have a great week and we look forward to talking with you next week. Thank you so much.

There is no guarantee that asset allocation or diversification will enhance overall returns, outperform a non-diversified portfolio, nor ensure a profit or protect against a loss.

2025-9961

Image

Topic

Tags

Duration

7 minutes

Doug Huber

7 Market Movers | October 31, 2025

Tom Bidinger — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:54:09 +0000

7 Market Movers | October 31, 2025 Tom Bidinger Fri, 10/31/2025 - 07:54

This week on 7 Market Movers, Wealth Enhancement Deputy Chief Investment Officer Doug Huber discusses the latest economic and market headlines. Topics include the Fed surprising us all with a second interest rate cut despite ambiguous signals and the ongoing government shutdown, strong corporate earnings, and equity markets remaining broadly positive.

Please contact our office if you have any questions you’d like to discuss.

There is no guarantee that asset allocation or diversification will enhance overall returns, outperform a non-diversified portfolio, nor ensure a profit or protect against a loss. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal.

2025-9873

Image

Topic

Tags