Weekly Financial Trends and Insights
Every week in our Key Wealth Institute emails, we dive into trending topics and their potential impacts to investors to deliver timely insights and advice from our in-house experts. Here, you’ll find all of our Key Questions in one place, so you always have access to the latest market information.
Key Questions: Q4 Earnings Recap “What Did We Learn From Fourth Quarter Earnings?”
Earnings reporting season for the recently ended quarter is nearly complete, and between the flood of activity from the new administration and the emergence of a potential breakthrough moment in Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), it has been an extremely eventful one. We analyzed dozens of such reports and identified three “key themes” that best summarize the quarter.
Key Questions: Do the California Wildfires Put Any Investments at Risk?
The devastating wildfires in Greater Los Angeles are likely to be the costliest natural disaster in US history, and our most heartfelt thoughts go out to all those affected by these tragic events. The human impact is immeasurable and the loss of lives, homes, businesses, and schools have placed communities in peril as they begin to recover and rebuild. The financial impact is staggering: over 10,000 structures have been destroyed in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country.
Key Questions: Does the Social Security Fairness Act Affect Me?
On Jan. 5, 2025, President Joe Biden signed the Social Security Fairness Act of 2023, H.R. 82. This legislation eliminates two provisions that previously reduced Social Security benefits for public servants and other retirees. The act repeals the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). The repeal is retroactive to Jan. 1, 2024.
Key Questions: Will AI Live Up to The Hype?
If you turned on your favorite financial news network or picked up a financial newspaper at any point in 2024, you likely read about an investment theme that has captivated Wall Street and Main Street alike. The “Artificial Intelligence (AI) Revolution” has created huge waves across financial markets as shares of chipmakers have skyrocketed higher. Companies outside of technology stocks, such as power producers and electrical component manufacturers, also recorded outsized returns last year.
Key Questions: Are Financial Stocks More Attractive Under a Second Trump Administration?
The financial sector performed strongly in 2024, gaining over 28% and surpassing the S&P 500 Index as the segment recovered from the lows experienced during the banking crisis of 2023. The market gained confidence that the crisis was isolated to a select few banks and that a broader crisis had been averted.
Key Questions: Investment Manager Outperformance: Skill vs. Luck
In our recent Key Question “What Makes a Good Investment Manager?,” we highlighted the 8Ps framework that Key’s Multi-Strategy Research team uses to identify quality managers. As part of this process, the team is faced with an additional layer of complexity: If a manager has outperformed, is the outperformance driven by skill or simply luck?