February 2022

The Russia/Ukraine conflict that has been evolving over the last few weeks has injected a high level of volatility into both equity and fixed income markets across the globe. Given these events, we feel it’s important to proactively communicate our strategies’ exposure to the conflict to our advisor partners in anticipation of client questions.

Friends, so far the 2020's have, shall I say, left something to be desired. Personally, I prefer 2019, so can we have that back!?! Of course, I speak of the global pandemic of the past 2 years, inflation, and now conflict in Ukraine, with the latter two being more recently relevant.  

The new year got off to a rocky start, with nearly all major asset classes finding themselves in negative territory. U.S. large cap stocks declined by just over -5% during the month of January, while U.S. investment grade bonds lost -2.15%. The primary cause of the decline appeared to be a combination of seemingly related factors, which included – concerns around inflation, sharply higher interest rates, and hawkish rhetoric from the Fed.