Have we entered a new bull market? Was the 35% pullback in the S&P 500 in March the fastest bear market in history? Or is this just a continuation of the bull market that started in 2009, interrupted by a rather large correction? Bull markets and bear markets are...
Most everyone has heard of the Chinese proverb – or curse – that wishes one to live in “interesting times”. You’ve probably also heard that in Chinese the word “crisis” is composed of two symbols, one that denotes “danger” and another that means “opportunity”. Well we certainly live in...
Stocks took another beating last week as the scope of the coronavirus shutdown started to sink in. The S&P 500 was down 15% last week with most of that coming on Monday after the Fed’s emergency rate cuts. Our accounts performed much better than that, but were still down...
Last week was one of the worst weeks in the history of the US stock market. Thursday’s plunge was the worst one-day loss other than the crash of 1987. Friday’s recovery was stunning as well but big rallies are typical of bear markets and that is, unfortunately, where we...
As I sit here Monday evening with the Dow having closed down 2000 points and the 10-year Treasury yield around 0.5%, the title of this update seems utterly ridiculous. With the new coronavirus still spreading and a collapse in oil prices threatening the entire shale oil industry, recession is now the expected outcome. Most...
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my kneesI went to the crossroad, fell down on my kneesasked the lord above "have mercy, now save poor bob, if you please"Yeoo, standin' at the crossroad, tried to flag a rideooo eee, i tried to flag a ridedidn't nobody seem...
A short interview with Jeremy Siegel by Robert Huebscher in Advisor Perspectives. Siegel touches on a number of interesting topics: The US stock market is fairly cheap at 16 times next year's earnings - as long as interest rates are around 3%. The volatility we've been seeing lately is...
Howard Gold had an article last week at Marketwatch: Why is the US stock market weak? Because the economy is too strong. What does it mean for the economy to be "too strong"? Isn't growth supposed to be good for stocks? Gold's reasoning is that Fed tightening is driving up the...
Tuesday's election result was about as expected as you can get in markets. The accepted wisdom going into the election was that Democrats would take control of the House of Representatives and Republicans would retain control of the Senate. Sure, there were scattered articles by Democratic partisans predicting -...