Research & News
Asset Allocation Weekly – What’s Causing the Yield Curve to Flatten? (December 17, 2021)
by the Asset Allocation Committee | PDF A note to readers: The Asset Allocation Weekly will go on holiday hiatus following today’s report and return as a bi-weekly publication, now on Mondays, beginning January 10, 2022. From all of us at Confluence Investment Management, we wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! See… Read More »
2022 Outlook: The Year of Fat Tails (December 16, 2021)
by Mark Keller, CFA, Bill O’Grady, and Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF Summary: We don’t expect a recession in 2022. Real GDP growth will range between 3.0% to 3.5%. Inflation remains elevated, though price pressures will likely subside in H2 2022. We expect the core PCE deflator, the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, to… Read More »
Weekly Energy Update (December 16, 2021)
by Bill O’Grady, Thomas Wash, and Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF (The Weekly Energy Update will go on hiatus until January 6, 2022. To all our readers, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.) After recovering last week, oil prices have started to drift lower. Worries about rising production and weakening demand due to the Omicron… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – The 2022 Geopolitical Outlook (December 13, 2021)
by Bill O’Grady & Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF (This is the last WGR of 2021; the next report will be published on January 18, 2022. Starting in 2022, we will shift to a bi-weekly publication schedule and will add a new Geopolitical Podcast with each report.) As is our custom, in mid-December, we publish… Read More »
Asset Allocation Weekly – The Omicron Problem (December 10, 2021)
by the Asset Allocation Committee | PDF Over the Thanksgiving holiday, news broke that a new variant of COVID-19 had been isolated in South Africa. This new variant has an usually high number of mutations, which increases the likelihood that current immunity will be compromised. In other words, prior infection or inoculation will probably be… Read More »
Weekly Energy Update (December 9, 2021)
by Bill O’Grady, Thomas Wash, and Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF Oil prices fell sharply on SPR sales and due to the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Crude oil inventories fell 0.9 mb compared to a 1.4 mb build forecast. The SPR declined 1.9 mb, meaning the net draw was 2.9 mb (due to rounding). In… Read More »
Weekly Geopolitical Report – Plunging U.S. Service Exports (December 6, 2021)
by Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF When people think about a country’s exports, imports, and trade balance, they often focus only on physical goods (sometimes referred to as “commodities” or “merchandise”). That makes some sense, given that physical goods account for the majority of international trade for most countries. Trade in physical goods can also… Read More »