Our team looks at a lot of research throughout the day. Here are a handful that we think are good summations of investor activity, from FOMC outlooks to inflation and rates, consumer spending across income and wealth levels, market and earnings breadth, and US markets vs. foreign. Have a great weekend!
John Luke: The Fed has resumed cutting, it’s a question of how much
Data as of 09.17.2025
Beckham: though likely just a return to normal from restrictive, as both inflation and employment are pretty close to where they’d like them
Data as of 09.16.2025
Jake: and a majority of fund managers accepting that falling all the way to the 2% inflation target seems unlikely
Data as of 09.17.2025
Brett: While the period between the global financial crisis and COVID stuck pretty close to that 2% target
Data as of 09.15.2025
Brett: the services contribution by itself seems to have found a floor above the 2% level
Data as of 09.15.2025
John Luke: The input costs to owning a home have been a huge contributor to persistently higher living costs
Source: ICE as of 09.16.2025
Ten: and lately, during a time of weak employment growth
Chart via RenMac as of 09.15.2025
Brian: and a growing split in spending across differing levels of income
Chart via WSJ as of 09.17.2025
Joseph: The trend of higher proportional spending at the high end is not new, just reinforced and expanding
Source: Bespoke as of 09.08.2025
Brian: with the balance sheet of the average consumer quite healthy, and supportive of continued spending growth
Source: TS Lombard as of 09.17.2025
Brad: Speaking of two different worlds, dominance by megacap tech stocks has been supported by the dramatic edge in earnings growth
Source: NewEdge Wealth as of 09.13.2025
John Luke: with no change in that dominance through the first half of this year
Source: Apollo as of 09.16.2025
Brad: That said, small caps as measured by the Russell 2000 finally made a new high after a long period of absence
Source: Bespoke as of 09.19.2025
Beckham: but smaller stocks have years of underperformance to try and overcome
Data as of 09.15.2025
Dave: The hope for small-cap investors is that more accommodative Fed policy should help
Source: Strategas as of 09.17.2025
Dave: but despite progress of late, most stocks haven’t been able to keep up with the index over any recent period
John Luke: As far as overall earnings, not only have the results been good but the outlooks have been even better
John: with profit margins a primary contributor to equity performance both in 2025 and in recent years
John Luke: US companies have continually invested more in their businesses than their European counterparts
Data as of 09.12.2025
Mark: and while Euro companies may not see the value, foreign investors as a whole seem to appreciate the benefits of US companies investing in the future
Source: Bloomberg as of 09.18.2025
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