Calmer waters?
Hello everyone! Welcome to the boodle blog! If you’re new here, we thank you for joining us. If this isn’t your first visit, welcome back. At boodle, we believe that the person best able to manage your portfolio is you, and our blog will give you the confidence and assurance that will keep you on a successful track. Boodle uses our 27 years of financial knowledge and insight and we present our point of view here, for our customers so that they can make their own investment decisions.
Remember, clients can always reach out to boodle through this website on our Contact Us page with questions. We will take a look back at the month of May and after our analysis, we will turn our attention to the month of June as the first half of the year enters the record books.
The financial waters remained somewhat choppy due to several geo-political issues and tariffs remain
ground zero for the difficulty in gaining market traction for investors. President Trump continues to raise the stakes in the tariff war with various countries, most notably China. Trump added an additional 10% tariff on the Chinese, and surprisingly, he put a pause on Europe until July. These tariffs are seen as hurtful to investors because many believe that tariffs represent a tax, and we all know how investors feel about taxes- not good!
Staying with international stories, the Ukraine-Russia war continues to drag on with Russia being viewed as the aggressor. Trump had promised an end to the war, but Russia continues to deduct the war on their terms, not the U.S.
As we go to press, the Israel- Hamas war may see a temporary truce, which we would welcome. Moving on to the stock market, all three indexes closed out the month of May with gains. The DOW added 3.9% and the S&P 500% gained 6.2%, while the NASDAQ led the indices with a 9.6% gain.
The Federal Reserve released their outlook on interest rate cuts for the remainder of 2025. The Fed indicated that they have revised their rate cut expectations from 4 cuts down to 2. Depending on what happens in congress with the “Big beautiful Bill” that recently passed the House and now moves on to the Senate. As you can tell from this blog, there are many moving parts to what goes into prognosticating about the economy and the stock market. We believe that June might see smaller gains than we had in May. Our view is that boodle members should check their portfolios for asset allocation and make sure that you don’t have an oversized position in any one individual security (stock). The May jobs report will be released this Friday and forecasters are calling for an increase of 125,000 new jobs. In short, the tariffs will be with us for a while, and their effect will be felt perhaps for the remainder of 2025. If you know anyone who might benefit from learning about investing tell them about boodle. Enjoy the month of June, and we will see you back here in July.