POLITICAL EARTHQUAKES?

One of my favorite reads every day is an email newsletter from the publishers of MoneyWeek, a British magazine with a very bright collection of writers.  Their view of world markets, especially our markets, is always insightful, given their “outsi...

THE TRADE WARS CONTINUE

The financial press has been consumed recently with speculation about the outcomes of both the Fed’s latest meeting and President Trump’s ongoing trade negotiations with the Chinese.  As we warned in our last letter, there appears to be a stalema...

EARNINGS SEASON AGAIN

Every three months all companies that trade publicly are required to report their business results for the previous quarter.  Although not all companies report according to the calendar quarters, most of them do, and during the second week of April...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BULL MARKET!

If you have listened to the news on the financial channels over the past couple of years, you have probably heard many of the pundits wax and wane about the age of our current bull market.  Most market followers mark the beginning of this bul...

WHICH MARKET WAS RIGHT?

Commonly accepted among stock market pundits is the belief that stock markets predict our economic future by six months or more.  Although historical data shows that the market has only about a 50/50 track record in that regard, recent market vol...

MARKET DOWN / ECONOMY SOUND

Santa’s sleigh is usually pulled by reindeer. This year, it looks as if it were pulled by a team of bears. With the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 8.7% this past month, this was the worst December since 1931.

As Barron’s said this week, “Wh...

 SPLIT DECISION

Thank goodness the elections are over! I believe that was the message from the 525-point surge in the Dow on the day after the election. I know I will be glad that all the negative campaign commercials will be absent from our televisions for the time bei...

TIME TO BAIL OUT?

I haven’t thrown away a business magazine since the mid-80s.  The historical perspective you get as you thumb through old magazines is remarkable.  I recently retrieved the magazines of the 1990s from my attic as the markets in the 90s seemed to have m...

ECONOMY STILL IN GOLDILOCKS MODE

Each month we eagerly wait for the “Employment Report”, arguably the most important of the U.S. economic reports, that is released on the first Friday of each month.  If you study the long-term history of the employment report, it is unl...

NO EUPHORIA IN SIGHT

Sir John Templeton, a pioneer in the mutual fund industry, is notable to many of us in the investment business because of his legendary success in the stock market over the last half of the twentieth century.  In 1999, Money Magazine named him “argu...