Top 10 Questions Investors Are Asking Right Now: LPL

Why have stocks done so well recently in an extraordinarily challenging economic environment and with the coronavirus still besieging the world? Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist for LPL Financial, noted in a statement that this question came up a lot in late August during the firm's virtual annual national conference for its financial professional. There were other questions as well, so LPL pulled them together into a Q&A. The key theme to the answers, Detrick said, was that markets continue to look forward, not backward. LPL's goal, he said, is to try discern what markets are seeing, and even to be a little ahead. His analysis comes as the volatility gauge — officially known as the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX — has been rising over the past 30 days from about 22 in mid-August to near 30 on Thursday. (It was above 80 roughly five months ago.) Check out the gallery for condensed versions of LPL's answers to 10 investor questions. Related: DoubleLine's Gundlach Hedges Prediction of Trump Win, Calls Investor Behavior 'Terrifying'