Markets year to date have been a lot more interesting in the details than the headlines you get in the financial media. The narrative has focused almost exclusively on Artificial Intelligence and the stocks benefitting from it. Large cap growth stocks - especially in the IT and Communications sectors - have garnered all the attention. But beneath the surface markets [...]
Most strategic asset allocation strategies have produced negative returns over the last two years. A 60/40 allocation of Vanguard Total Stock and Vanguard Total Bond is down over 6%. John Bogle's 3-fund portfolio, a global approach that includes an allocation to Vanguard Total International is down nearly 9%. Morningstar has a diversified portfolio that includes 11 different ETFs and it's [...]
What is long term? That's a question with many answers depending on your point of view. Some people might think a year is long term. I had a client tell me once that he was so old he didn't buy green bananas because he might not be around to eat them. Some might say 3 years is long term but [...]
Note: This will be my last full commentary for 2022. I will spend the month of December on research for next year, visiting with family, and taking some much-needed time off. I will still be watching markets, as will all the other members of the Alhambra team and if something happens which requires me to communicate, I'll certainly do that. [...]
The FOMC met last week and did what everyone expected them to do - raised the Fed Funds rate by 0.75%. The bond and stock markets reacted not to this action but to the commentary provided by the committee in its statement and by Chairman Jerome Powell at his post meeting press conference. The former had a new phrase, a [...]
There were some wild, unprecedented - frankly stunning - swings in some very large, high-profile stocks last week. The press concentrated on Meta, nee Facebook, and Amazon as the yin and yang, the negative and positive, of the market. Facebook (how long before Zuckerberg abandons Meta? I give it a year) managed to lose a quarter of a trillion dollars [...]
I was told many years ago when I started in this business that it wasn't my job to predict the future. Our job as investors is to properly and accurately interpret the present. I was also told that wasn't as easy as it sounded and the current consensus about the state of the world was probably, almost certainly, almost always, [...]
It was a nasty week for investors with almost no place - or at least no logical place - to hide. Of the 16 broad market ETFs I monitor on a daily basis, only one, was higher on the week - IWM, the Russell 2000 small cap ETF. That's what I mean by no logical place to hide. When the [...]
US stocks continued their recently more volatile ways this week giving up almost all the gains of last week. In fact, the S&P 500 is now basically flat for the last four months, making no headway since late November despite a series of nominal new highs along the way. As the Fed has backed away from buying assets - assets [...]
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