Published November 11, 2022
For the first time in awhile the usual market suspects of inflation and the Fed’s assault on the stock and bond markets took a backseat for a couple of days. When interest rates rise sharply as they have this year, investors find out who was overly leveraged and caught without a seat in the market’s cakewalk. This week, we found out that cryptocurrency exchange FTX was the latest one without a seat. (more…)
Published November 4, 2022
Stock investors had a bit of a panic attack this week. The Fed Chair Jerome Powell continued hammering markets with his inflation-fighting warrior pose, a pose that most all market-watchers now agree he was late in adopting. Powell is making up for lost time, of course, by ratcheting up interest rates at a breakneck pace. The sudden acceleration has been a very cold shower for some business processes with private equity and venture capital investors reducing their activity by a third or more in the most recent quarter. (more…)
Published October 21, 2022
These days, there is much talk about a coming recession. By the time the recession gets here, if it does, the stock market will have already suffered much of its decline and will be near its low point. The article below from an analyst at JP Morgan presents a historical perspective of the timing between recessions and stock market bottoms. (more…)
Published October 14, 2022
Investors await corporate earnings data over the next few weeks with concerns high that declining earnings outlooks will be the next shoe to drop on stocks. The chart below highlights where we have been on corporate earnings and how things have changed. (more…)
Published July 29, 2022
In a bull market, investors buy the rumor and sell the news, with the selling being typically light. In a bear market like we are in now, this week showed us it is the opposite. Investors fear the news, sell stocks down on the fear, buying them back when the news, though bad, is not quite as terrible as it could be. So it was with the Federal Reserve announcement this week. (more…)
Published March 25, 2022
The stock market has settled down quite a lot in recent days as this chart of the volatility index shows. When volatility jumped down over that blue trendline, and kept going down, it was a likely sign that stock investors could breathe a little easier. Nevertheless, we also note that volatility has been generally elevated since mid-November and has a ways to go before true calm returns to the market. (more…)
Published March 18, 2022
The question below, “Could we be near a market bottom?”, posed in the most recent letter from Blaine Rollins, coincided with what appeared to be a complete washout in European and Chinese, stocks. Whereas the emergence of the Omicron strain of coronavirus may have kickstarted the negative market proceedings back in November, the more recent events have mostly been happening outside the U.S. with the war in Ukraine and China’s covid crackdown adding further fuel to the downtrend. (more…)
Published January 21, 2022
Markets have struggled mightily so far in 2022 as looming Fed policy changes merge with Omicron-fueled slowdowns and Russia-Ukraine tensions to put investors on edge. Growth stocks, presumably more sensitive to rising interest rates, have stumbled the most. (more…)
Published January 7, 2022
Markets have kicked off 2022 with a bit of a bang. Interest rates have surged higher as investors bet that the Federal Reserve will act quickly to tamp down nascent inflation and return interest rates to their pre-pandemic levels. (more…)
Published November 12, 2021
This week’s inflation numbers put a little (temporary?) scare in the markets. But the one-day jump in interest rates did not even offset the past two weeks’ worth of yield declines. (more…)