The performance of balanced funds has become especially challenging in 2022. In most recessionary equity bear markets, falling stock prices were offset by rising bond prices or falling bond yields. The fixed income component of a balanced fund portfolio has usually acted as a counterweight to equities. Not so in 2022. You would...
Mid-week market update: The stock market surged last week in reaction to the soft CPI reading. It got better news this week when PPI came in lower than expected. As well, China unveiled a 16-point package to try and stabilize its cratering property market and softened some of its Zero COVID policies. Berkshire Hathaway unveiled...
Preface: Explaining our market timing models We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade. The Trend...
Warren Buffett famously said that when the tide goes out, you find out who has been swimming naked. Now that the Fed is tightening financial conditions and the tide is going out, I undertake an analysis to find out what countries and sectors have been swimming naked, and who has been opportunistically swimming with the...
Mid-week market update: Why have the markets gone risk-off? Isn't divided government supposed to be equity bullish? While the exact results of the mid-term elections aren't known just yet, polling models and PredictIt odds, which represent consensus expectations, show a narrow Republican majority in the House and a probable Democrat control of the Senate....
Preface: Explaining our market timing models We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade. The Trend...
In the wake of the November FOMC meeting, Fed Chair Jerome Powell summarized Fed policy very clearly with two statements: "We will stay the course until the job is done". He added, "It is very premature to think about pausing (rate hikes)". It was a hawkish message, though Fed Funds expectations were largely unchanged...
Mid-week market update: It's always difficult to make tactical trading calls on FOMC meeting day. The S&P 500 approached the latest meeting with the 5-day RSI near overbought territory. The experience in 2022 of overbought or near overbought conditions on meeting days (March and July, n=2) has seen stock prices continue to advance. Can it...
Preface: Explaining our market timing models We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade. The Trend...
Ahead, of the upcoming FOMC, meeting, what is the market discounting? I conduct a factor and sector review for some answers. Starting with a multi-cap review of value and growth, value stocks have been outperforming growth stocks within large caps since early August, but this has not been confirmed by mid and small caps. The...
Mid-week market update: How far and long can this rally run? Here is one way of determining upside potential. The S&P 500 staged an upside breakout through an inverse head and shoulders pattern, with a measured objective of about 4120, which is the approximate level of the 200 dma. The inverse head and...
Preface: Explaining our market timing models We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade. The Trend...
In light of the dismal performance in the first nine months of a 60/40 portfolio in 2022, it's time to ask, "What's changed and what adjustments should investors make to their portfolios?" The answer is inflation, and it's a game changer. The correlation between stocks and bond increasingly rise as inflation rises. In...
Mid-week market update: Recent discussions with readers made me realize that many investors may have become so numb to the endless bearish stock market impulses that they don't realize how oversold the stock market is. I have highlighted in the past the chart of the NYSE McClellan Summation Index (NYSI) to demonstrate that a reading...
Preface: Explaining our market timing models We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade. The Trend...
Richard Nixon's Treasury Secretary John Connally famously said in 1971, "The dollar is our currency, but it is your problem". Nixon's actions at the time closed the gold window, imposed a number of tariffs, and drove the USD down in the aftermath of the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement of fixed exchange rates. ...
Mid-week market update: The stock market has been exhibiting a series of positive breadth and momentum divergences as the S&P 500 weakened, but the recent main driver of risk appetite has been the fixed income and currency markets. Do divergences matter anymore? External drivers The divergences matter less inasmuch as the stocks...
Preface: Explaining our market timing models We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade. The Trend...
The recent OPEC+ decision to cut oil output by 2 million barrels per day is giving me a case of PTSD from a Yom Kippur long ago. In October 1973, the stock market was just getting over a case of Nifty Fifty growth stock mania. Arab armies, led by Egypt and Syria, made a surprise...
Mid-week market update: I received a number of questions from readers who were positioned for the monster rally that began on Monday, "What's your upside target?" The answer is, "It depends." Make no mistake, the market was washed out and oversold when the rally began, but it was sparked by a rebound in bond...
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