Posts by Samantha Masey

Written by: Martin Shields With the passing of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act at the end of 2017, there were limited changes made directly to charitable giving but there were significant changes made to the standard deductions and deductibility of state taxes that will potentially impact charitable giving. The Act changed the standard deduction…

President Trump’s announcement last night of an additional $100 billion in tariffs against the Chinese in retaliation for China levying tariffs on $50 billion of U.S. goods earlier this week drove stock market futures into negative territory overnight, with the Dow down 450 points at one point. Futures stayed in negative territory leading up to…

Given the volatility we have experienced this week, we wanted to provide a summary of events that have impacted global stock markets. With the sharp decline suffered on Thursday, U.S. stock markets are down approximately 4% for the week. In fact, since hitting an all-time high 10 days ago, the Nasdaq Index is off nearly…

A spike in wage growth in February sparked concerns over rising inflation that caused the first market correction in two years, and raised concerns that the next bear market environment for stocks was upon us.  In our last article this past December, we addressed how bear markets (i.e. decline of 20% or more) tend to…

Equity markets entered into a correction in the beginning of February for the first time since 2016, as wage growth came in better than expected and was the strongest the economy has seen since 2009. This surprise raised fear over rising inflation, which in turn, resulted in concern over the Federal Reserve raising rates faster…

Recent market volatility has been mostly due to fears over rising inflation. This morning’s CPI report, a widely used measure of inflation, came in slightly ahead of expectations and did not alleviate these fears. For the month of January, CPI rose 0.5% versus an expected rise of 0.3%. Core CPI, which excludes volatile food and…