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By Dr. George Calhoun – Hanlon Investment Management Advisory Board Member Executive Director of the Hanlon Financial Systems Center

The first half of 2023 has been marked by lopsided gains, with a handful of mega-cap tech companies accounting for nearly all of the S&P 500’s 16.9% year-to-date returns, through June 30th. In our 2023 beginning of the year Annual Outlook, we cautioned that despite near-unanimous calls for a first-half recession from major financial institutions, we saw potential for a scenario in which US GDP was able to maintain a slightly positive rate of growth thanks to record low unemployment.

The Fed paused on interest rate hikes last week.  At the post meeting press conference Chairman Powell mentioned housing services as a crucial aspect of the economy where the Fed needs to see progress on inflation.

If you are tired of reading about inflation, I don’t blame you. Since the Fed began hiking rates a little over a year ago, economists and investors have been intensely focused on each monthly data release, desperately looking for signs that the inflationary trends are reversing.

“Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained,
well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely… I have full
confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle.
We will accept nothing less than full Victory!”

Almost half-way through 2023, the stock market is outperforming most analysts’ expectations as earnings rebounded nicely and equity indices are mostly positive. The most popular domestic equity benchmark, the S&P 500, is up 9.7% for the year as of May 31st, a solid bounce back from 2022’s 18.1% decline.

In our Annual Outlook for 2023, we raised the possibility that the US economy could potentially avert recession in 2023, powered by full employment and robust consumer spending. Thus far, with roughly a month left in the 2nd quarter, the US economy has proven itself surprisingly resilient, with GDP growth of 1.3% in Q1 and unemployment at just 3.4% in April.

If you are a long-term investor, you most likely have your portfolio allocated in a diversified manner, with equity exposure that extends beyond the US borders to include foreign Developed Market (DM) and possibly Emerging Market (EM) exposure.

While the Federal Reserve has not explicitly stated it, May’s interest rate hike may well have been the final increase in the current cycle. If so, we have just witnessed one of the steepest rate hike cycles in history, with ten consecutive rate increases bringing the Fed Funds rate from its starting range of 0.0%-0.25% in March 2022 to 5.0%-5.25% as of May 2023.

We are presumably at the end stages of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike cycle, which has seen the central bank increase rates at the quickest pace in its history. The rapid rate hikes are intended to cool economic growth, and investors have been nervously speculating about where the impact of the rate hikes would first appear.