October, what a ride! For those who stuck it out in the US markets, courage was rewarded by month-end. This was in line with our expectations, not only due to the time of year, but also because the selloff seemed more in sympathy to foreign markets than based on any …
Well, as expected, September turned out to be negative (down around 1.4% for the S&P500). Thankfully, not by much. However, October started out like it wanted to be in on the action, finishing the job that September started. This is fairly typical of “spooky” October. Like a mischievous uncle, it …
September 2014 Market Commentary It has been said that “April is the cruelest month,”but historically, September has the highest odds of the S&P500 ending the month lower than it began. So far in 2014, the Big Picture still looks good for domestic equities (US stocks), barring any sudden and …
Here is the S&P500. If we look back at the last year and a half, week by week, we can see that the UP trend is still in place. Even after the ugly last day of July, we’re still in good shape. We wouldn’t be concerned until we cross the …
I saw this headline this week and was reminded how often financial concepts are taken out of context: “The VIX is Soaring!” The VIX is a measure of volatility, and investors who watched their accounts bounce around the past week might have felt that statement was true. But, really, is …
Continuing onward and upward! And even though the Dow Jones Industrial average crossed 17,000 this week, we believe it will be much more important to see the S&P500 rise above 2000. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve felt the market bias was positive and would reward those who …
So far, 2014 has turned out to be a lot of nothing to write home about. Last year, the S&P 500 ended just below 1850 (see chart below). For most of the year, we’ve been stuck bouncing around in a narrow range (indicated by the horizontal blue lines). Five months …
So far, 2014 has been a complete rollercoaster. After a sad start to the year and a small sell-off in January, we got a nice rebound, recently getting back to new record highs on the S&P500. Strength in Technology and Healthcare have remained constant, though. What we found more interesting, …
I have to say we’ve had it pretty easy for the past couple of years. We’ve been long overdue for a correction and it looks like we are getting one. Our more conservative strategies have been positioned for this move. Some of our more aggressive strategies took action last week …
It feels like October 2007 all over again: We saw new market highs, retail investors are feeling like they’ve missed the boat and are getting more interested in taking on more risk. That was my initial impression on October 1 of this year. However, since the US Government shutdown and …
