Beware of Believing in Santa Claus
The traditional Santa Claus rally of the last five trading days of the year did not materialize. As I have mentioned before, Yale Hirsch of Stock Traders Almanac fame made popular the rhyme, “If Santa Claus should fail to call, bears may come to Broad and Wall”, meaning that bear markets typically follow in the ensuing years where there is no Santa Claus rally. While it all sounds nice and neat, the data do not support that conclusion. In 2014, […]
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Date: January 5, 2016
Three Last Minute Year-End Tips
As Kenny Loggins wrote, “Make no mistake where you are. This is it.” The last day of the last week of the last month of the last quarter of the year. 2015 will soon be in the books and it will go down as a year where the stock market was down a little and the bond market was down more while commodities were down huge. As I sit here finishing up my final blog post and newsletter of the […]
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Date: December 30, 2015
Santa Claus is in the House!
The last week of 2015. I hope you have been enjoying the holidays. The major stock market indices continue to behave as I spelled out over the past few weeks. Santa Claus came right on schedule and the seasonal trend has him taking a break to close the year with some mild strength to begin 2016. While I was very pleased that stocks reversed early last week and have followed through on the gains, we still need to see all […]
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Date: December 29, 2015
Santa Needs to Get a Movin’
Since the Fed wrongly raised interest rates last week, the stock market has done a good job of following the script. First, it rallied sharply from 2pm to the close on the day of the announcement. Then, it saw weakness on Thursday and Friday followed by strength to begin the new and holiday shortened week. While that all looks nice, I did not expect the amount of weakness seen when combining Thursday and Friday. That definitely bothered me regardless of […]
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Date: December 22, 2015
All Signs Point to a Horrifically Wrong Decision by Yellen & the Fed
FINALLY, or YET AGAIN, it’s FOMC statement day. Unlike every meeting since 2007, I do believe the Fed is wrongly going to raise short-term interest rates for the first time since 2006. Since 2008, my thesis has been and continues to be that the Fed should not raise interest rates until the other side of the next recession. This is your “typical” post-financial crisis recovery that’s very uneven. It teases and tantalizes on the upside and frustrates and terrorizes on […]
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Date: December 16, 2015
Third Avenue Travesty
After peaking way back in 2014 and declining ever since, the high yield (junk) bond market has finally made national news over the past week with the very high profile blow up of the Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund (TAFCF). This was not some fly by night little fund or fund family. It’s a small, mainstream mutual fund family and the fund itself had more than $3 billion in assets in 2014. Last week, after massive withdrawals, the fund announced […]
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Date: December 16, 2015
Bye Bye Bernie
I have been watching the various presidential debates and haven’t missed one for the most part. I find them to be sometimes informative and on the entertaining side although the recent democratic one was a bit tortuous in my opinion (more on that later). The democrats have only had one, but I can’t get Bernie Sanders’ voice out of my head when I watch Seinfeld reruns. He sounds exactly like the actor who plays Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner. I remember […]
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Date: December 11, 2015
Buy Small Caps for the Next Three Weeks
In my previous post, Underwhelming Rally but Don’t Count Out the Bulls, I was concerned about another “few percent” pullback given last Friday’s weak beneath the surface rally. So far, this week has been all red and it looks like stocks are getting closer to the low where the Santa Claus rally will begin. While the odds favor one more decline below Wednesday’s low over the coming few days, it’s anything but a slam dunk. I have been pounding the […]
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Date: December 10, 2015
Underwhelming Rally but Don’t Count Out the Bulls
Friday’s huge rally was fraught with bits of weakness. The ratio of stocks going up to down was just 2:1 on a 2%+ day when it should have been much, much stronger. The ratio of volume in those stocks should have been multiples stronger. New highs to new lows didn’t move much at all. The rally was narrow and underwhelming beneath the surface. As has been the case since summer, the stocks with the heaviest weightings in the cap weighted […]
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Date: December 7, 2015
Yellen Dousing Dollar & Stocks
After a big day for the bulls on Tuesday that did not close above the levels I spoke about to cause a spurt, stocks reversed on Wednesday and it looks really ugly on a chart. Bears will point to similar reversals at the major peaks in 2000 and 2007, which is true, but these kinds of reversals also occur routinely throughout a bull market. In analyzing their predictive power, they certainly have led to some short-term weakness, but the longer […]
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Date: December 3, 2015
