Ingredients for a Potential Stock Market Bottom

LPL Research discusses the worst week for stocks since September, the latest bond market moves, and differences between strategic and tactical investing.

Last Edited by: LPL Research

Last Updated: March 11, 2025

market signals podcast image

Subscribe to the Market Signals podcast series on iTunes, or Spotify and find us on the LPL Research YouTube channel.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (00:00):

Hello everyone and welcome to LPL Market Signals. Jeff Buchbinder here with my friend and colleague, Lawrence Gillum. Lawrence, we got a little bit of a market sell off here, but you bond guys are probably in a decent mood because the bond market's rallying. How are you?

Lawrence Gillum (00:17):

I'm doing well. First of all, happy daylight savings time to all those that celebrate. I do not personally

Jeffrey Buchbinder (00:24):

Not happy. Yeah.

Lawrence Gillum (00:25):

But no, I am happy-ish that the bond market is doing what it's supposed to do and provide that ballast to equity market weakness. So in that regard, I am doing pretty well.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (00:36):

Yeah, it's Monday afternoon, March 10th, 2025 as we're recording this. And I think one message for investors maybe who are getting a little bit nervous is diversification's working 'cause bonds are working, and this year international's been working, right? So you've gotten some, hopefully you've gotten some offset to your U.S. market declines. So here is our agenda. We're not going to talk a ton about last week because I mean, frankly the story is the same as it's beenm markets worried about tariffs. We'll try to keep it more timely. Talk about maybe what we're looking for to help stocks find a low. Of course, with Lawrence here, we're going to talk about the bond market, and specifically a little bit about international bonds, which certainly made news last week with that haywire German bond market, the German boon.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (01:32):

I think it was the biggest surge in yields ever recorded middle of last week. So, Lawrence, we'll get your thoughts on that. And then next, we'll highlight the Weekly Market Commentary for this week, which is essentially describing the difference between tactical and strategic investing. We've gotten a lot of questions about our different approaches to the model portfolios that we manage. Some tactical, some strategic. So we thought it'd be helpful to write about that last week. So our colleague George Smith did a really nice job of spelling that out. And then finally, we'll, of course, preview the week ahead as we always do. All right, so recap the week. It was the worst week since September for the S&P, down over 3%. And, you know, this doesn't include today's declines.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (02:28):

Year to date we were down a little under two when we ran this. Well, now we're down closer to four. So tough start to the year certainly. I mean, the volatility like this never feels good, right? And we certainly understand that it's a, you know, it's a tough time. It's a tough market for investors to deal with, but really a lot of what's happening is kind of according to plan, right? We knew we were going to get some tariffs. We knew it was going to be bumpy as the market figured out where those tariffs would land. And frankly, we and most other investors and analysts thought that we would have a growth slowdown, and we've gotten that. So it's hard to say that what's happened is really a big surprise. But it's just the selloff has come pretty swiftly. And maybe it did catch people off guard because of how strong the market was last year.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (03:27):

And frankly, the initial reaction to the election was quite positive as well. So we've given back those gains unfortunately. I mean, that was really the story. It's just trade uncertainty and a little bit of growth scare mixed in that, that drove stocks down and tech led the way down. The big tech names, actually, I think Nvidia was down 10% last week. Tesla, another one that was down quite a bit. So you see here the discretionary sector, which is where Amazon and Tesla are, down five. The Nasdaq down three and a half, tech down three and a half. Actually financial is a little bit worse, very economically sensitive, but really it was mostly about the growth stocks pulling back. International again, as I mentioned, gave you some diversification benefit with the dollar. You'll see that on the next slide. The dollar was down 3% almost last week, and that supports international returns. So that's really why you got some nice gains outside the U.S. with Lawrence. A little bit of help, I think, from German spending. So you'll get into that, I guess when we talk about that move in the German bond market. But it wasn't a good week for U.S. bonds either. Certainly nothing like we saw in Germany, though.

Lawrence Gillum (04:47):

Yeah. And it was directly related to what took place in Germany. Remember the bond market is a global bond market. So what happens in one locale tends to cross over, overflow into other markets as well. So we did see a pretty big move up in yields for a lot of these Eurozone countries. And that had a negative impact on treasury yields last week as well. I remember that foreign investors tend to be big buyers of treasury securities. So when their home country yields go up, that makes our yields less attractive. So maybe they buy their own debt opposed to buying ours. So that's what happened last week. There was some international selling within the fixed income markets. The ag, the core bond index down about 60 basis points for the week, still up positive for the year, up 2% for the year mortgages, which is kind of our preferred core space core sector up 2.4% for the year down 60 basis points or so for the week.

Lawrence Gillum (05:50):

So it was a challenging week last week, but yields have fallen. We're going to talk about what's going on in the treasury market, but yields have fallen seven out of the last eight weeks. So that has helped bond prices and these bond sectors generate positive returns. But last week was a challenging week, but just today we're getting a pretty big rally out of the rates market. 10-year treasury yields down about eight basis points, 5-year down about 10 basis points to your point earlier, Jeff, that we are seeing that ballast for these safer fixed income markets on a day like today, where we're seeing equity sell off pretty broadly.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (06:29):

Yeah, it's what you want to see, you know, it's a benefit of having higher yields, 'cause then they can fall and there you get the appreciation from bonds as your stocks pull back. So here's the S&P 500 chart. This is a different look this week, 'cause I really wanted to highlight the pullback now. I just pulled this chart, you know, within the last half hour or so. And the pullback was 8.3% from previous high close to today's interim market level. And you know, it's really hard to say technically where this goes next, because we broke the 200-day. Now we like to focus on closing prices. So we could rally back this afternoon and close above the 200-day. We'll have to see. That would be a massive rally. And we'd need quite a headline.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (07:21):

So most likely we're going to close below the 200-day which is 5,733. And and look for new support. So, you know, some of the levels that our technician, Adam Turnquist has thrown out there are sort of 5,550 and then 5,400. So I guess 5,550 next level. We'll have to watch that. And then, you know, if you are still in the camp like we are, that we're not going to have a recession, and eventually these tariffs will maybe bite a little less than the market fears right now. And generally we're in that camp too, then you're probably looking at a 10 to 15% correction, not something much larger, right? It typically takes a recession or something that really looks like a recession for stocks to be down 20. So that's not our view. Maybe a little more downside, you know, whether it's 3, 4% more downside or a little more than that. It's really hard to say. But certainly we do not expect recession, and that probably mitigates some of the downside. So Lawrence, let's, let's turn over to bonds. You know, we titled this section developed markets rates are diverging. The you know, certainly we all care where the 10-year goes, but, you know, for those who own international bonds care what those do too.

Lawrence Gillum (08:44):

Yeah. So we have seen relative divergences between U.S. rates and kind of non-U.S. developed rates, ex Japan. Well, Japan actually has been doing its own thing for a while now. But here lately we've seen a divergence in that the 10-year treasury yield has fallen where a lot of these other developed market yields have risen. We'll talk about that in just a second. You know, our view is that we're probably not going to get a lot further down, potentially lower than around 4% absent a recession. So to your point earlier, Jeff you know, there is some solid momentum in terms of yields falling prices going higher in the bond market. But if you look at what's priced into kind of the Fed funds rate expectations, markets have priced in three rate cuts this year.

Lawrence Gillum (09:34):

It's probably appropriate given the uncertainty in markets. But to get four or five rate cuts this year, it's going to have to look like a recession. So if markets start to calm down, some certainty gets back into markets you could see yields move up a little bit higher. But I think we're kind of towards the end of this rally, unless the economic data starts to disappoint even more than kind of what a temporary gross scare would suggest. So it's been a good rally. And to our point earlier, it's provided that ballast but absent a recession, we're probably towards the, the bottom of that range for the time being.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (10:14):

Yeah. And we're showing the economic surprise index here in light blue in the bottom panel, that may be nearing a low 'cause expectations are coming down, and historically that's shown some correlation to yield. So maybe we'll get better data and therefore higher yields along with it. Certainly the job report on Friday wasn't bad. It wasn't really a big rate mover but it really wasn't that bad. So, next up Lawrence. German boons.

Lawrence Gillum (10:49):

Yeah. So one of the biggest moves in bond yields in, well since the 1990s, on Thursday last week, I believe it was or Wednesday last week, the 10-year bond was up 30 basis points on the back of some comments that were made by the incoming chancellor, Frederick Merz, suggesting that Germany will spend whatever it takes to defend the country and build out its infrastructure. And that's really a 180 from what Germany has said in the past. They've been very strict in terms of deficits. There is the so-called debt break that's been in place since 2009 that really restricts how much deficit spending that can take place in some of these Eurozone countries. They're discussing ways to override that now.

Lawrence Gillum (11:40):

So, it looks like Germany and these other Eurozone countries are going to start spending more on defense and infrastructure. And that means potentially better economic growth, as we've seen here in the U.S., the government spending tends to be stimulative. So that's one of the reasons why we saw the move higher in yields. But then also when you're out there saying that you'll spend whatever it takes to defend the country and you know, build out your infrastructure, that means more debt issuance as well. And as we just talked about, these bond markets are global. So, if there's a lot more debt to be issued in Germany at higher yields you know, that's going to attract some other buyers and that had that negative influence in the U.S. markets last week as well.

Lawrence Gillum (12:24):

But it's a big kind of reversal of what took place in the Eurozone leading up to last week. It's particularly challenging though because if you think about from an economic perspective, the Eurozone, particularly the Southern Europe part of the continent, they tend to have a lot of variable rate mortgages. So this increase in interest rates recently is going to have a pretty biting effect on homeowners in Italy and Spain and Portugal and these places. So, it's kind of like a double-edged sword. I mean, you see these interest rates moving higher because of better economic growth potentially but then you also have the potential for higher mortgage rates for a lot of these other countries. So it's an interesting area to watch, to pay attention to.

Lawrence Gillum (13:13):

We're not changing our view on this non-U.S. developed ex-Japan market yet. But with higher yields, it does make this area a bit more attractive. I would say that if this continues and we start to see long end yields move higher over the course of the next couple quarters. We could see a pretty attractive area within the non-U.S. developed space. One other comment before we move on is that we've talked about this diverging central bank policies, but because of now this you know, 'whatever it takes approach' in Germany, we could see fewer rate cuts out of the ECB now too. So it looks like we're potentially in this higher for longer rate environment globally. Which again, it's good for fixed income investors because you have income and you have yield associated with it. But in the interim to get to those higher yields, it's pretty painful.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (14:09):

Yeah, that's a good point. That's certainly part of why the dollar was down so much last week, right? Because you have maybe more money chasing bonds in Europe. You know, at the higher rates. You have the market pricing in more cuts here, fewer cuts there, right? That's dollar bearish. So that's a good point. That's a good point that I hadn't considered Lawrence. So let's go back to the U.S. here. And I think this is a big question for folks, right? Is, you know, when rates move, you can, I guess, disaggregate it and determine how much of that rate move is driven by growth, and how much is driven by inflation.

Lawrence Gillum (14:54):

That's right. So when you look at nominal treasury yields, there's individual components, there's an inflation expectation component, and there's a growth expectation component. So that's what we have highlighted here. The copper color there is the growth expectations. And you know, president Trump on Tuesday during the State of the Union address talked about the big, beautiful drop in interest rates. And there has been since his swearing in on January 20th. But it's because of a falling growth expectation story and not an improving inflation expectation story. Inflation expectations have improved and they've come down a little bit, but frankly, it's really just concerns about tariffs and slowing growth, which has brought these treasury yields down over the past few months. That recent backup in rates that we saw last week and kind of narrowed that gap between growth and expectations and inflation expectations. So effectively of the 33 basis point decline in the 10-year treasury yield since January 20th, about 24 basis points of that is slowing growth expectations versus about nine basis points for inflation expectations. So we are getting interest rates lower but perhaps not for the best reasons right now.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (16:11):

Yeah, we wrote about it in our 2025 Outlook. We expect economic growth to slow. And I mean, it seems like a lot of Wall Street's coming around to that view, 'cause I've seen a number of folks take down their GDP forecast for this year. We've been at around 2% for several months, and, you know, we're not having any discussions about potentially lowering that. So it's still a, you know, we're still on track for kind of a 2% growth year, we think. Certainly we'll have to wait and see exactly where tariffs land and could consider changing that view. But for now that feels good to us. And then, by the way Wall Street's still too high on earnings estimates as well, so those are going to have to come down quite a bit. Maybe 10 bucks on S&P 500 earnings. We're at 260, the street is still at like 269. So a little ways to go there. And that's part of the story here for when stocks are going to bottom, I know we're showing bonds here, but stocks can bottom when we get trade clarity. And then economic and profit growth expectations adjust, right? So market kind of knows what it's dealing with, and right now it really doesn't. So thanks for letting me take that little tangent there, Lawrence, in your section I hijacked.

Lawrence Gillum (17:30):

Yeah, one other comment too. We talked about Fed rate cut expectations that are built into the market next week. There is a Fed meeting. There's probably a 4% chance that the Fed cuts rates next week. But there is the potential for perhaps a soothing voice from the Fed that would suggest that they are ready to move if things start to slow down even more than they have. So you know the Fed at four point a half percent on the Fed funds rate, they still have a lot of room to cut rates if things start to go south pretty quickly. So if the economy slows more than we think that it will, the Fed has a lot of ammunition to help support the economy. So we don't think that this is going to end up in any, if the economy does slow, we don't think it's going to end up in any sort of deep recession because of the ability for the Fed to cut rates pretty aggressively if need be.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (18:24):

Yeah. We're also seeing what looks like maybe the start of some selling capitulation. Again, I'm talking about stocks here, but if you get capitulation and you get the market pricing in a more aggressive Fed on top of an adjustment in expectations and tariff clarity, then you've got the makings of the bottom. Now whether it takes, you know, this week or takes a couple months, it's really hard to say. But you know, I guess we've probably completed the first phase, or close to completing the first phase, and then we have maybe several more phases to go before we get through the bottoming process. So you know, part of the way we assess stocks and the economy is with spreads. So Lawrence, what are spreads telling us? Are we starting in here?

Lawrence Gillum (19:13):

Yeah, so what we're showing here, high yield spreads is the blue line, high grade investment grade, corporate bond spreads, that's the copper line spread just represent the additional compensation you get for owning riskier debt versus treasuries. We have seen spreads widen out a little bit but certainly not to the extent where we would consider them wide. So we've seen maybe a backup of about 10 to 15 basis points in spreads for both high yield and high grade. If you look at where these spreads rank in history, we're still looking at top decile type valuations. So 90% of the time, for example, spreads are wider than they are currently. Now things have changed a little bit today. We're seeing a pretty big widening in high yield right now to go along with the selloff in the equity markets.

Lawrence Gillum (20:05):

But it is pretty contained or it's fairly, you know, it is not as what it's seen even last year in August of 2024, where we saw that that growth scares really start to spook markets. That's the big spike in spreads that we saw last year. We have not seen that yet. We could if this growth scare continues or deepens a little bit, but right now, the corporate credit markets really aren't showing a lot of concern about what's going on in the market, which is good, right? I mean, we want to make sure spreads are well contained and well-behaved, 'cause if we start to see spreads widen out pretty significantly, that's going to disrupt a lot of funding scenarios for corporates and could potentially cause corporates or corporations to cut back on spending, et cetera. So right now, I'll call it not a red flag or even a yellow flag, but maybe just kind of like a light green flag that's starting to wave here in terms of potential scariness out of the corporate credit markets.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (21:24):

Maybe we've gone from like stoplight green to olive green.

Lawrence Gillum (21:29):

It's definitely on the spectrum of the of the rainbow there. So not solid green, but close, not yellow or red either.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (21:39):

So, you know, I've seen some folks raise their recession probabilities from like 15% to 25%. That's probably about where we are as a team. Is this, is, is this bond market telling us that that's about right, Lawrence?

Lawrence Gillum (21:52):

Yeah, that's about right. I mean, remember each year on average, there's about a 15% probability of a recession. So going from 15% to call it 25% is just an indication that risks have increased, but not to the point where that would suggest that a recession is imminent. And that's really being backed up by what we're seeing out of the credit markets right now.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (22:14):

Yeah, and that's going to give us confidence as long as spreads stay contained to potentially buy this dip, right? Because again, non-recessionary pullbacks tend to stop in the low teens. And as I showed earlier, we're already, you know, eight and a half-ish, there's not a ton more to go to get into that range where pullbacks typically stop. And that's where the one in October 2023 stopped a little over 10. I'm talking S&P there. So thanks a lot Lawrence for the strategic and tactical asset allocation discussion. And I think is really interesting because you can get totally different answers depending on your time horizon. And these first two charts really show you how dramatic the differences are. So this is a scatter plot that shows the relationship between PE.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (23:14):

So price to earnings ratio, the way we value stocks are one of the ways and future 10-year returns, right? So if stocks are really cheap, upper left hand corner here, you've got very strong future 10-year returns, right? All these dots are actuals back in history. And then the opposite here, if you have a high PE it's forecasting, this indicator is going to forecast low long-term returns, in fact, even negative. Now, we're not at a PE of 26 plus where you would potentially get negative returns, but we're kind of in that expensive range in here in the middle where you would expect modest long-term returns. Okay? This is a very close relationship. Think of this as, I mean, really five-year, a chart, if we use five-year returns would look the same or very similar. But look what happens when you do one-year returns.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (24:13):

Valuations don't tell you anything about where stocks are going to be one year from now. This is the same chart, high PEs or low PEs. All of your returns are kind of bunched up here, and you've got, I mean, it's a coin flip as to whether you're going to be kind of an average year, better, or worse, right? So what does that mean in terms of the strategic versus tactical discussion? It means if you're trying to figure out where stocks are going to go over the next six months or over the next year, you don't really need to pay attention to valuations. But if you're a strategic investor long term, then you might want to use pullbacks more aggressively because you've got a long time for that newly invested capital to work for you, 'cause obviously if stocks go down, they get cheaper as long as the earnings picture doesn't change that much.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (25:12):

So where are stocks now? Well, right now they're expensive. This is more of a tactical indicator where you would compare stock valuations to bond valuations and calculate an equity risk premium. So right now, you're really not getting compensated to take equity risk relative to where yields are now, yields are moving down, this chart was pulled five days ago. If yields move down and stocks move down, then stocks get cheaper relative to bonds. This equity risk premium could actually, it's probably positive if I calculated it right now. So stocks are becoming a little bit more attractive relative to bonds based on the equity risk premium as stocks fall, but still not great. So this really supports our neutral stance tactically and tells you that this market will be more compelling if it goes down further and yields fall.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (26:11):

So here's really where the rubber meets the road. This is our tactical and strategic asset allocation recommendation. Anyway, as of the end of February, and we put this in our Global Portfolio Strategy report every month. I want to point out two things, and then I'll go to you, Lawrence, and you can comment on this. So, the large growth, strategically, it's expensive, so we want to underweight it, but tactically we still see enough reasons to like it. And so tactically, at least, again, as of the start of March, we are overweight large growth, two totally different processes. For example, we don't really use technical analysis at all on a strategic framework, right? We would use it for tactical and what's going on now with tariffs, it really doesn't affect strategic. That'll all be resolved within a three to five-year time horizon.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (27:15):

And valuations are probably what's going to matter most, but tactically, you know, we want to kind of wait and see where that settles out before we potentially add risk, right? So we have a very different end result in terms of our asset allocation when we compare strategic to tacticals, like a year or less, and strategic three to five years or more. And then the other difference here that you see in strategic, we're investing in more diversifying asset classes. So we're recommending real assets and diversified alternatives just to get a little bit better risk return kind of profile over the long term. And stocks are expensive. So when stocks are expensive on a strategic basis, you're going to be a little bit more cautious, 'cause again, valuations are going to matter more. And then it makes sense to maybe go to some of these areas that are less appreciated, that are maybe more attractively valued. So that's what we've done. We've kind of diversified away from equities a little bit lately on a strategic basis and use some of these other asset classes. So, Lawrence your thoughts?

Lawrence Gillum (28:26):

Yep. I was going to point out the fact that in strategic portfolios, we have less fixed income, which may sound counterintuitive given the higher starting yields that we're seeing right now. But the reason really is that we're acknowledging that we could see potentially higher inflation as well. And that's the nod to real assets and diversified alternatives where if interest rates stay higher diversified alternatives should actually do pretty well because they tend to be kind of like a cash plus type strategy. So you're going to get high returns just from the cash part. Plus you're going to get some diversification out of there. But then with real assets, that's an acknowledgement that inflation could be higher over the next three to five years than it was prior to the pre-COVID period. So it's really just making sure that we remain diversified over the next three to five years as we've talked about. I mean, diversification we don't think is dead. In fact, it's showing it's working and we think it's going to work over the next three to five years as well.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (29:30):

Yeah, absolutely. Emerging markets is another place. It's cheap. So we like it strategically, tactically, we're not as excited about it, although certainly we acknowledge that the Chinese market has done very well lately. So thanks for that color Lawrence. Let's get to previewing the week ahead. We talked a little bit about inflation already. It is inflation week. There's more going on than just that. But anything on this calendar that you think is going to be important for folks to watch? Or is it just CPI and tariff headlines?

Lawrence Gillum (30:05):

Yeah, it's primarily CPI tariff headlines. The New York Fed one-year inflation expectations came out today. There's been a lot of discussion about inflation expectations becoming unanchored. And if you look at the University of Michigan expectations, the inflation expectations, you could argue that those have risen and are potentially unanchored. But when you peel back the onion there and see that there's a lot of, maybe some political bias in that University of Michigan study, you tend to get some pretty wonky answers. The New York Fed one-year inflation expectations survey that came out today, it eliminates a lot of that that noise, and it came in right on top of that number. So that was a good report that came out from the Fed this morning to suggest that despite what we're seeing out of the University of Michigan survey, the, the New York Fed inflation expectations remain well anchored.

Lawrence Gillum (31:02):

So that was a good thing for the Fed today. The other thing that's not on here, which I'm sure is going to be increasingly noisy towards the end of the week, is the potential for the government to shut down. March 15th is when the government effectively runs out of money. So we'll see if there's any last minute deals on the table. From a fixed income market perspective, it doesn't tend to move the needle when the government shuts down, 'cause it's really just kind of a pause in spending. And a lot of the, treasury's going to stay open, so you're not going to miss any payments or anything like that. So you know, when you look at just past government shutdowns, you've really seen minimal impact on treasury yields. It's a lot of noise, but even actually, if you look at credit spreads of the 10 previous government shutdowns, credit spreads have actually tightened in all but one of them. So a lot of noise, but maybe not as much impact on the fixed income markets if the government does shut down,

Jeffrey Buchbinder (32:09):

I'm not even going to bother pulling the stock market stats on shutdowns, 'cause frankly, I don't think there's going to be one. And well, I know from past episodes that the stock market barely reacts at all. And by the way, the GDP doesn't hardly react at all. I mean, GDP's not even really reacting yet to what's going on with DOGE, right? These federal layoffs are just not enough to really move the needle. I mean, eventually they might, and especially if you have private sector contractors to government starting to get affected there. But it just takes a lot to move this battleship, you know of an economy. And a government shutdown is just not going to do it. So completely ignore it. And it probably won't happen anyway. But good point there.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (33:01):

The other thing we get that maybe nobody's talking about, because it's just all about tariffs and the selloff today, is we start to get some earnings reports for the February quarter, right? Some companies report a month early, so I believe Adobe and Oracle Report. So, I mean, frankly, anything to take the market's mind off of tariffs is a win. And as markets drop expectations for corporate profits that are embedded in market prices drop as part of that adjustment period I mentioned. So hopefully that will help give the market a little bit of confidence here that it can find a low even before maybe we get clarity on tariffs. So I'll highlight that too as part of the of what folks may want to watch. And Oracle probably, well, they're both sort of AI plays, but Oracle's pretty big.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (34:01):

And so you might get some insight as to whether expectations for AI investing should be recalibrated, right? It's a big jolt to the economy spending on AI in 2025, especially the big tech names that we all know. So as we move closer to the calendar earning season, right, the march quarter end that is going to be a big question for investors and maybe something that can help support this market even if we have some tariff uncertainty still plaguing stock prices. So that's all I have. Lawrence, any anything else that you're watching or that you want to share with folks before we wrap?

Lawrence Gillum (34:49):

Only that I don't like this daylight savings time anymore.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (34:52):

Yeah, I don't like it either, although I did get to sleep in a little bit. So that was helpful. But yeah, I'm not a huge fan. Maybe we need to move to the Caribbean. There are parts of the Caribbean that don't have it. Or maybe, I think maybe Indiana. Does Indiana have it?

Lawrence Gillum (35:12):

I forget.

Jeffrey Buchbinder (35:14):

Arizona, maybe We'll have to look that up. Yeah, that'll be next week's podcast. We'll talk about daylight savings. No, on a serious note I think one of the things we'll talk about next week is just sort of putting this market volatility into perspective. So we've got a lot of charts that we roll out every time we get a sell off. They're really, really good, really helpful. I mean, I guess I kind of hinted at one though you know, returns, even when you're expensive on a 10-year basis, you're very likely to be up, right? Stocks just very rarely fall over long-term time periods. So that type of discussion I'll save for next week. We didn't have enough bandwidth to switch gears and do another segment here. So we'll go ahead and wrap it there. But thanks Lawrence. Go get some sleep so you can catch up after losing the hour over the weekend. And hopefully Twitter / X is back up so you can figure out what your Tampa Bay Bucks did here in free agency. And I'm going to go try to figure out what the Chiefs did, they need to protect Mahomes. So thanks everybody for listening. As of course, as always appreciate your support of LPL Market Signals and we'll see you next time. Take care, everybody.

 

In the latest Market Signals podcast, LPL Chief Equity Strategist Jeffrey Buchbinder and LPL Chief Fixed Income Strategist Lawrene Gillum recap the worst week for stocks since September on tariff and trade uncertainty, offer some potential ingredients needed for markets to bottom, dissect the latest bond market moves, and discuss differences between strategic and tactical investing.

Stocks fell sharply last week as markets expressed their dissatisfaction with tariffs and ongoing trade policy uncertainty. The strategists discuss some technical support levels for the S&P 500 and offer several ingredients that will likely be needed for a stock market low to form.

The strategists then dissect recent bond market activity, noting that we’re starting to see developed market yields diverge. German Bund yields have spiked higher on increased government spending, while U.S. rates have fallen on economic growth concerns. And while European yields have increased recently and interest is growing, the strategists believe it’s still too early to upgrade their opinion on non-U.S. developed (ex-Japan) debt.

Next, the strategists discuss the differences between strategic and tactical investing. Time horizon is key, as it determines how useful valuations are as part of the asset allocation process. Different processes can result in very different outcomes.

The strategists then close with a quick preview of the week ahead, which includes key inflation data. A government shutdown after Friday’s deadline is unlikely. Even in the event of a short shutdown, the economic and market impacts are likely to be negligible.

You may also be interested in:


IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES

This material is for general information only and is not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. There is no assurance that the views or strategies discussed are suitable for all investors or will yield positive outcomes. Investing involves risks including possible loss of principal. Any economic forecasts set forth in the podcast may not develop as predicted and are subject to change.

References to markets, asset classes, and sectors generally regarding the corresponding market index. All indexes are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Index performance is not indicative of the performance of any investment and do not reflect fees, expenses, or sales charges. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results.

Stock investing includes risks, including fluctuating prices and loss of principal. Bonds are subject to market and interest rate risk if sold prior to maturity. Bond values will decline as interest rates rise and bonds are subject to availability and change in price.

High yield/junk bonds (grade BB or below) are not investment grade securities, and are subject to higher interest rate, credit, and liquidity risks than those graded BBB and above. They generally should be part of a diversified portfolio for sophisticated investors.

Any company names noted herein are for educational purposes only and not an indication of trading intent or a solicitation of their products or services. LPL Financial doesn’t provide research on individual equities. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, LPL Financial makes no representation as to its completeness or accuracy.

The Standard and Poor's 500, or simply the S&P 500, is a stock market index tracking the performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.

The Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, or the Agg, is a broad base, market capitalization-weighted bond market index representing intermediate-term investment grade bonds traded in the United States.

All index data is from FactSet or Bloomberg.

All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, LPL Financial makes no representation as to its completeness or accuracy.

This Research material was prepared by LPL Financial, LLC. 

Not Insured by FDIC/NCUA or Any Other Government Agency

Not Bank/Credit Union Guaranteed

Not Bank/Credit Union Deposits or Obligations

May Lose Value

RES-0003086-0225 | For Public Use | Tracking # 707123 (Exp. 03/26)