A 2024 That Few Expected; 2025? 2024, though ending with a bit of a thud, was a strong year overall in the market. However, the strength was very narrowly focused and most stocks did not experience the same degree of tailwind. International, small …
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The More Things Change, the More….
The Few, The Proud The U.S. Marines have a saying for recruits: ‘The few, the proud’. It is catchy and simple and fits who Marines are. The same expression applied to the stock market during the first half of 2024. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq …
Beware Investment Themes Du Jour/Annee
And Then There Was One? 2023’s strong stock market returns were primarily fueled by the Magnificent Seven – Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. If you didn’t hold a sizable amount of those seven stocks, you likely …
Human Nature & the Choices We Make
2024: Off and Running The 2024 stock market has gotten off to a strong start, keeping the momentum going from last year. However, some market indices exaggerated the story of the fortunes of the typical stock in Q1. That is because the Nasdaq …
2023: An Unexpected and Nice Surprise
Farewell Frothy 2023 2023 was an unusual year in the markets, even while recognizing that most years are at least somewhat unusual. After a tough 2022, stocks subtly, then notably, bounced back in 2023, with the ' Magnificent Seven' (Apple, …
Does Buffett Herd Goats?
Wall Street is Looking Behind Again At the end of 2022, after a tough year in both the stock and bond markets, many Wall Street observers claimed the ‘sixty-forty portfolio’ (60% stocks and 40% bonds) was dead. Yes, in 2022, that strategy didn’t …
All Isn’t What It Appears to Be!
A Very, Very Narrow Market 2023 to date has been the year of massive growth stocks such as Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia and Netflix. It shows in the various index performances: while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up …
Who Turned On/Off the Lights?!
A Light Switch Change As we moved into 2023, it was like a light switch was flipped: what struggled last year suddenly rocketed upward. Netflix was up 20%, AirBNB up 30% and Tesla up 60%...in January alone! Why is it that a flip of the …
2022 vs 2023: Where We Are vs. Where We Are Going
Bye Bye 2022 Though most ‘experts’ predicted a good year for the markets, 2022 turned out to be one of the worst overall (including stocks and bonds) in 50 years. Are experts clueless? No, but it does confirm that no one can consistently predict …
Maybe A Different Perspective Is Useful
Who Are We Hearing From? 2022 has been the worst overall investment environment (including stocks, bonds, metals, etc.) in over 50 years. Investors have found very few places to hide. These are the investment periods that simply must be endured …
Bear Market 2022
The Rough Start Continues The 2nd quarter of 2022 brought more and greater pain for investors as we hit the definition of a bear market – the stock market (S&P 500) being down 20% from its recent high, reached coincidentally right at the end …
We’re Not In 2021 Anymore
Off to a Rough Start After strong stock market returns in 2020 and 2021, it’s not terribly surprising to see the market struggling this year. That said, the reasons for the struggle are at least somewhat surprising: major inflation …
2021 Was Surprising, What about 2022
Why the Market is Unpredictable Going into 2021, there were lots of clouds on the investment horizon: Covid was raging and the vaccine was only just rolling out, many people were still out of work and yet the market did not reflect these …
Big Is Getting Bigger and Is that a Storm or Just Some Clouds?!
Storm Clouds or Will It Pass Over? For quite a while, the stock market seemed to know only one direction since the dark days of March, 2020. Then September came along and the market promptly fell over 4.5% for the month. September and …
Big Is Getting Bigger and Is that a Storm or Just Some Clouds?!Read More
Is the Market Predictable? – Not Really, but Human Behavior Is
Human Behavior: Panic The Colonial Pipeline’s hack in May seemed to create gas shortages all along the eastern seaboard. It turns out, there was never a shortage. Instead, simply the possibility of a shortage created panic buying that ended up …
Is the Market Predictable? – Not Really, but Human Behavior IsRead More
GameStop?
GameStop! ….or Stop the Game? This winter GameStop went from a long-fading, electronic games retailer to the talk of the financial world as it routinely rose or fell 50% or more on a single day. The primary reason for these giant moves had next …
The Year that Was… and Was Not
Goodbye 2020 2020 has been one of the most unusual and tumultuous years in American history. Covid-19 struck with little warning early in the year while the highly contentious national election approached with lots of forewarning late in the …
Perspective-A Very Useful Tool During Unusual Times
Back to Normal? The stock market had a strong 3rd quarter on the heels of a major recovery in quarter two. Having been broadsided by the pandemic during the first quarter, markets are now generally around level for the year (some parts up, others …
Perspective-A Very Useful Tool During Unusual TimesRead More
Recovery? Yellow Light Short Term, Green Light Long Term
Bouncing Back? What the first quarter took, the second quarter has largely given back….at least in general. Though Covid-19 is still an unknown factor in the coming months and the resulting societal changes have been putting downward pressure on the …
Recovery? Yellow Light Short Term, Green Light Long TermRead More
Well, THAT wasn’t on the Radar
The Black Swan Flyeth After an 11 year bull market, I was ready for a bear to show up sooner rather than later. However, I had no firm idea what would finally be the catalyst for a falling market as interest rates stayed low, the economy seemed …
The Precedents on Presidents
Was 2019 to be Expected? The 4th quarter of 2018 was a very tough time in the stock market and the S&P 500 fell about 12% over just 90 days. The low point for the year, surprisingly, was Christmas Eve, when the Dow Jones fell about 700 points …
Opportunity of the Century…..for our Government
Stock’s Magical Levitation The stock market has been bumping along at lofty levels in recent months – trending somewhat up at times and then down again. Overall, it’s still been a very good year in the stock market, at least to date. Though the …
The Story of Interest Rate Hopes and The Wall of Worry
Hey Bud – Can I Have a Rate Cut?! Some seem to look at the Fed as a drug dealer of sorts –whenever things get a little rough in the market or economy, they look to the Fed to cut interest rates to make everything feel better again. There is a danger …
The Story of Interest Rate Hopes and The Wall of WorryRead More
The Ship Has Been Righted…..and Fast!
The Market Bounces Back! As quickly and notably as the market fell during the 4th quarter, it did the complete opposite this quarter. What does this mean, if anything? It certainly suggests market turns of momentum are often based more on perception …