Goodbye and good riddance to the third quarter of 2022. That was one of the wildest 3 months I've experienced in my 40 years of trading and investing. The quarter started off great with the S&P 500 rising 14% from July 1 to August 16 but ended with a 17% swan dive into the end of the quarter. And we [...]
Nothing happened last week. Stocks and bonds and commodities continued to trade and move around in price but there was no news to which those movements could be attributed. The economic news was a trifle and what there was told us exactly nothing new about the economy. A report that wholesale inventories rose 0.6% cannot be turned into market moving [...]
History never repeats itself. Man always does. Voltaire Mark Twain is credited with a similar saying, that history doesn't repeat but it rhymes. Of course, there is scant evidence that Clemens said anything of the sort just as Voltaire may or may not have penned the quote above. But both men were much wittier than I - than most - [...]
Over the last few months, as the outlook for the economy turned more sour, I've used these weekly commentaries to warn you not to get too negative. Long-term investors need to have a strategy they can stick with no matter what happens, a strategy that keeps them on an even keel. If you were so nervous that you sold out [...]
Note: This update is longer than usual but I felt a comprehensive review was necessary. The Federal Reserve panicked last week and spooked investors into the worst week for stocks since the onset of COVID in March 2020. The S&P 500 is now firmly in bear market territory but that is a fraction of the pain in stocks and other [...]
Stocks had a rip snorter of a rally last week and a lot of people are pondering the question in the title over this long weekend. The S&P 500 was down 20.9% from intraday high (4818.62, January 4th) to intraday low (3810.32, May 20th). From that intraday low the market has risen 9.1% in just six trading days. That still [...]
Remember, your goal in investing isn't to earn average returns; you want to do better than average. Thus your thinking has to be better than that of others - both more powerful and at a higher level. Since others may be smart, well-informed and highly computerized, you must find an edge they don't have. You must think of something they [...]
Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradually decline. - Philip Roth Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. - Warren Buffett The new year hasn't gotten off to a great start for growth stocks or [...]
Until last week you hadn't heard much about the bond market rally. I told you we were probably near a rally way back in early April when the 10-year was yielding around 1.7%. And I told you in mid-April that the 10-year yield could fall all the way back to the 1.2 to 1.3% range. The bond rally since April [...]
When I first got in this business oh-so-many years ago, my mentor told me that I shouldn't waste my time worrying about the things everyone else was worrying about. As I've related in these missives before, he called those things "well-worried". His point was that once everyone was aware of something it was priced into the market and not worth [...]
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