Transcript:
Tom Vaughan:
Hello, everybody, welcome to Wednesday. The S&P 500 was up .1%, today. Really kind of interesting day, because Chairman Powell was testifying in front of Congress and again, talked about how inflation would be transitionary, it wouldn’t be permanent, as far as they’re concerned. We did see the yield on the 10 year Treasury drop, which is usually what happens when people are less afraid of inflation, so we’ll see how that plays out, as far as that goes. That’s good for mortgage rates, that’s good for real estate.
I’ll talk a little bit about kind of what I see happening, in terms of what’s working right now in the market? I feel very strongly right now that this is a great market where you want to be very, very well diversified; kind of own everything, especially here in the US. We’re still not seeing strong movement out of the International, although we saw some today. So we’ll see what happens: Does that become a trend or not? It kind of depends. Part of the reason you see international move well today, because when the 10 year Treasury comes down and yield, the dollar will usually follow that. And of course, that means that the currencies that you’re coming back out of, with these foreign investments have become worth more, so we’ll have to wait and see.
I suspect that that’s going to be just the opposite. There’s still going to be some inflationary pressure pushing on the yield on that 10 year Treasury, which creates more demand for that Treasury, which is money coming in, buying dollars, to buy those treasuries, right? And so that ends up making the value of these foreign assets actually drop, and that’s been true for for a long time here, for the last year, year and a half.
I would say that the US market is still a good place to be taking a look, in my opinion, it has been pretty dominant for a while here, I think that continues. We are seeing some movement right now into kind of the big tech stocks, that what they call the FAANG stocks: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, Netflix, etc. And those are been doing very, very well, right now. They’ve been sitting around for quite a while, so the earnings have come up, and now we’re starting to see some more motion there.
We’re seeing some good results in the real estate sector right now. When rates come down, that’s a stimulative area. But it’s more than that: It’s not just home prices that are doing well; commercial real estate is also picking up. Rents are picking up, both for homes and for commercial. I think businesses are starting to come back in, starting to look for space. We’re seeing some of the areas that were kind of abandoned, like New York and San Francisco start to do better here in this environment, so I think real estate probably starts to continue to pick up here also.
So, there’s certain things that are working and what have you, but the rotation from one area to another is just so rapid; it’s really day by day. That broad market, own the S&P 500: I really like that index, it’s been our biggest holding for a really, really long time. Own the total stock market indexes, that basically buy all of the stocks that are out there, I think those are doing well.
The other area that you should really pay attention to is ESG is this is an Environmental, Social and Governance. And really, these, what they doing is, for example, Vanguard has one they take the Total Stock Market Index, and they apply the the screen of ESG, and so there’s a companies that rate the companies based on Environmental, Social and Governance. And so they’ll only buy the companies in that overall index that meet that, at least a minimum number for ESG. Those are outperforming the Total Stock Market: Not by a lot, but on a pretty consistent basis here for a while now. There’s a lot of demand for money in that particular area. So those are things I take a look at also.
So, that’s kind of what’s going on right now, that’s what’s working. And that kind of just continue to try to get back to an area that works really well. But I think this is again, a lot like just a normal market that we had before the pandemic. Anyway, look forward to talk to you tomorrow, and again, always feel free to share these videos with anybody that you’d like and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you!