Beyond the Bell

What a long, strange trip it’s been. And we know we don’t need to tell you that—we’ve all been on this trip together. “Long” is the operative and ironic word, here, given that the past month has in many ways felt like years as we have ridden out the storms of each day and each week in an environment so foreign that it is hard to remember what “normal” felt like just a calendar page ago.

I enjoy writing the fourth quarter commentary; other than the highlights of the quarter, it provides an opportunity to look back at some of the prominent events of the entire year. And what a year it was.

Inter- and intraday volatility was a far too common occurrence this quarter—the market swung in both directions on an almost daily basis, but the swings were fortunately relatively range-bound. Quarter-end was an accurate portrayal of this range-bound volatility, with the S&P 500 Index settling out at +1.7%.

“In the middle of 2018, I said that the more things changed, the more they seemed to stay the same. That was not the case for July through September of this year. “