News & Insights
Visual Capitalist: U.S. Industries Where Companies Are Least Profitable
Ranked: U.S. Industries With the Lowest Profit Margins Trade wars, AI battles, and real-world conflicts—it’s only February, but 2025 is shaping up to favor the bears over the bulls. But even before these new disruptions, some sectors were already struggling. This chart ranks U.S. industries by the lowest average net profit margins in […]
John Hancock: Weekly Market Recap Week Ended February 14
Fed’s rate wait U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said in congressional testimony that Fed policymakers need to see more progress in curbing inflation before considering further interest-rate cuts. Powell declined to specify the inflation rate that might trigger the Fed to approve a further cut in its benchmark rate, which has remained in a […]
Federated Hermes: Sailing The Straits While Strapped To The Mast
Staying long-term positive through choppy waters. Somewhat fortunately, or perhaps presciently, our first market memo of the year (A baker’s dozen of risks) highlighted that, unlike 2024, the investment waters of 2025 looked to be choppier. For sure, the balance of risks, in our view, remains positive given President Trump’s pro-growth agenda and the rise […]
Visual Capitalist: U.S. Industries Where Companies Make The Most Profit
Ranked: U.S. Industries With the Highest Profit Margins The investment playbook for 2025 will be very different from 2024, with disruptions expected in trade, AI-spending, and energy markets.But for an overall look into U.S. markets, here’s some data on which sectors can be generally expected to turn a profit and deliver returns. In this chart, […]
John Hancock: Weekly Market Recap Week Ended February 7
Rising earnings More than halfway through earnings season, fourth-quarter results continued to exceed analysts’ expectations. As of Friday, earnings were expected to rise 16.4% compared with the year-ago quarter, based on S&P 500 companies that have already reported plus projections for those that hadn’t yet released results. Prior to earnings season, analysts had forecast an […]
First Trust: Inflation, Tariffs, and the Fed
The Federal Reserve made it clear on Wednesday that it’s not about to cut short-term interest rates again anytime soon, which is good news if you’d like to see the Fed live up to its goal of bringing inflation down to 2.0%. After all, progress toward that 2.0% goal has stalled. PCE prices, the Fed’s […]
Visual Capitalist: Average S&P 500 Return By Zodiac Year
The Chinese zodiac calendar is a 12-year cycle, where each year is represented by an animal symbolizing different traits and characteristics. To see if this ancient calendar has any bearing on investment results, we’ve visualized the average S&P 500 return by zodiac year. This analysis spans 1928 to 2024, and is based on calendar […]
John Hancock: Weekly Market Recap Week Ended January 31
2025’s solid start The major U.S. stock indexes recorded positive results in January, regaining upward momentum after the S&P 500 and the Dow posted negative results in the final month of 2024. In January, the Dow climbed more than 4%, the S&P 500 added nearly 3%, and the NASDAQ finished almost 2% higher. Earnings […]
First Trust: Growth Continued in Q4
We still believe the odds of a recession are higher than most investors think. Monetary policy tightening started back in 2022 and inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2.0% target, which means the Fed will be reluctant to get loose anytime soon. Meanwhile, the federal budget deficits in the past two years have averaged about […]
Visual Capitalist: How Key Commodities Have Performed Since 2019
Commodities have experienced significant volatility over the past several years, driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and geopolitical tensions. In this graphic, we rank 11 key commodities by their annual performance since 2019. Data and Key Takeaways The numbers we used to create this graphic are listed in the table below. Commodity […]