We have the luxury, the honor, of speaking to a lot of individual investors here at Alhambra. Whether they are clients or future clients (optimism is my default condition), the most common view of stocks is that they are overvalued and a fall – a large fall – is inevitable. And there is no stock that embodies that view more [...]
Snapchat, a company that describes itself as a camera company yet makes no cameras, went public last week at a valuation of $24 billion. The company is growing fast, revenue up from $58 million to $405 million in just the last year. And as one publication put it, the company "earned" a loss of $514.6 million in the process. The [...]
Top News Headlines 129 Dead, Over 500 injured in Paris Attacks Retail stocks bludgeoned after earnings reports Republicans and Democrats Debate, America Appalled At Choices Stocks fall, bonds rally, oil craters Selfish brats protest adulthood, demand to be coddled in University demonstrations Economic News Neil Kashkar named head of Minneapolis Fed Eurozone growth slows, industrial output down again, exports weaken [...]
Top News Headlines October best month for stocks in four years. Valeant troubles continue. Pfizer, Allergan consider merger. Earnings, earnings, earnings. CNBC botches Republican debate. Debt deal reached between President and Republicans. Economic News Fed leaves rates unchanged; statement points to December hike. Yeah, right. BOJ leaves QE program as is. GDP disappoints at 1.5% for 3rd quarter. New and [...]
Top News Headlines Migrant crisis grips Europe. China finds a way to stop market from falling; trading suspended for parade. US stocks resume slide, down 3.4% for the week. ECB contemplates new round of QE. Markets shrug. Economic News Mixed employment report confuses rate hike calculus. Manufacturing still weak. Chicago PMI, Dallas Fed survey, ISM manufacturing all less than expected. [...]
The last year has been a tough one for investors. There are a few places one could have booked a double digit gain in the last 12 months but not many and certainly not in assets that are in the standard portfolio. Currency hedged ETFs for European and Japanese stocks produced big gains but a lot of the gain was [...]
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 [...]
So be careful what you wish for 'Cause you just might get it And if you get it then you just might not know What to do wit' it, 'cause it might just Come back on you ten-fold Eminem, Careful What You Wish For There was a collective gasp on Wall Street last week as the 3rd revision of 1st [...]
Before 1950, if you asked who owned stocks, the answer was very straightforward: wealthy individuals. Ninety percent of all equities were owned by the household sector, concentrated in the wealthiest segments. Most individuals had little savings to speak of, so stocks really were a plaything of the rich. All data below is taken from the Federal Reserve’s Financial Accounts of [...]
I'll tell you why...They're expensive! That's one reason we use a lot of ETFs and other types of index funds here at Alhambra. Here's an excellent primer on ETFs from the Wall Street Journal: Exchange-traded funds, commonly called ETFs, are index funds (mutual funds that track various stock market indexes) that trade like stocks. As such, they have all of [...]
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