Category: Market Commentary

It came down to the very last minute, but compromise was made and the majority of the fiscal cliff averted.  Not surprisingly the markets rallied early on news of the pending compromise.  What was surprising was the resilience of the market during weeks of tough negotiations.  Those expecting a repeat of the prior year’s debt [...]

The recent Seattle Times article summarizes the current strength of the local home construction industry.  Our Coldstream affiliate, Ascent Capital, continues to participate in this market as a niche player by financing a number of home builders and projects in the Puget Sound area. [...]

With the elections over, the media has turned its attention to negotiations between the U.S. House, Senate and Administration over tax policy and spending programs to avert what has been dubbed the “fiscal cliff” facing our country.  One of our research resources, Strategas Research Partners, provides a list below of the various tax extensions, programs and spending [...]

As we highlighted in the spring, 2012 has been a good year for the financial markets, equities in particular, and has exhibited much less overall market volatility than 2011.  Although there were no significant year-over-year gains for equity markets in calendar 2011 from the prior year, the fourth quarter strength in common stocks set the [...]

After a strong first quarter of the year, market sentiment in the second quarter eroded amid a variety of macro factors.  These factors included the impact of the fiscal cliff facing the US economy heading into 2013, the turmoil from the European financial crisis, economic headwinds of stagnant earnings growth in the US and a [...]