Post-Expiration Gives Some Ammo to Bears
I hope everyone had a great Father’s Day. For me, label it anything you want as long as I get time at my house with family. We are a small family so it’s always a highlight to have my kids, mom, brother, nieces and in-laws over. I beg my kids all the time to not buy me any gifts, just more family time, like staying in Vermont on Sundays through dinner. Like most weekend days, I wake up and make […]
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Date: June 20, 2023
Know When to Hold ‘Em, Know When to Fold ‘Em – Media’s Parade of Pundits
So the Fed stood pat. Powell was hawkish and left the door wide open for another rate hike in July. I think they are done. I have said they should have been done before 5% as the 2-Year Note told us. Stocks sold off on the news. And then went straight up to the close and followed through on Thursday. I can’t imagine what the bears thought and did after they finally saw some market weakness on the announcement, only […]
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Date: June 16, 2023
The Fed is Woefully Wrong & Jay Powell Has Become a Cocktail Party Punchline
As the popular 80s band, Whitesnake, once wrote, “Here I go again on my own. Going down the only road I’ve ever known.” You can substitute the “I” for “we” and you have the FOMC of the Federal Reserve. You know that group. The ones that raise and lower interest rates without fully assessing the markets and economy. The ones who are supposed to be smartest financial minds on earth and the greatest bankers. Before I continue, let me offer […]
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Date: June 14, 2023
Big Week Ahead – Bears May Get Something to Chew On
The markets return from the weekend with two highly anticipated “events” this week. First, we have the CPI (inflation) report on Tuesday and then that pesky ole group at the Fed concludes their meeting on Wednesday. Right now, markets expect another benign inflation report resulting in the Fed standing pat on interest rates. While that’s all well and good and you know how bullish I have been all year, I feel like the bull camp has become a bit too […]
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Date: June 12, 2023
Harvesting Some Acorns & Reducing Risk
It has been a quiet few days, but certainly not an opportunity-less few days. The major stock market indices have been bullishly digesting some very sizable recent gains. Gold and bonds have not. During the week, I used some of the continued abnormally strong action in the NASDAQ 100 to lower risk by rotating into the Dow Industrials. This comes at a time when I sense lots of investors recognizing what my readers have known since October; this is a […]
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Date: June 9, 2023
Bears in Tougher Spot w/ Small Caps & Junk Jumping
Tuesday’s market action in the downtrodden mid and small caps certainly answered the question as to whether Friday was a one-day wonder. It also kicked the bears right in the teeth. You remember those bears? The ones who claimed the mid and small caps couldn’t rally and were the “real” market indicating impending doom. Well, on the far right of the chart below, you can see a monster two-day rally in the Russell 2000. And it looks like it has […]
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Date: June 7, 2023
WHAT Will The Bears Say NOW?
I lost track of all the pundits and people who came into 2023 so negative, so defensive and so beared up. Those constant calls of a bear market, recession, inflation and the Fed gave me great chuckles for five months. And yes, some, many or much of the data pointed to recession coming, I kept hammering on the fact that the economy cannot be in recession or close to recession when hundreds of thousands of new jobs are being created […]
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Date: June 5, 2023
The Masses Remain Very Wrong
Two days ago, I argued that selling the rally post-debt ceiling agreement was the right strategy. After all, stocks had rallied sharply into the announcement and the underpinnings have not been super solid. Rather, as the masses have reported, the rally has been well short of powerful and impressive with essentially 7 stocks accounting for almost all of the gains in the S&P 500 this year. However, most of these pundits are the same ones who have been holed up […]
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Date: June 1, 2023
Behavior Befitting The Dotcom Bubble – Sell The Debt Ceiling News
The stock market continues to exhibit behavior that is really enjoyable if you are in the right indices, sectors and stocks, but not so much fun for the masses who are not. Specifically, the NASDAQ 100, semis, software and other technology at the expense of almost everything else. On the smallest level, it reminds me of the Dotcom Bubble. Yes, that Dotcom Bubble where it didn’t exactly end so well. Astute observers may also recall the inverted yield curve from […]
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Date: May 30, 2023
Stocks Pull Back on Schedule
The media is all over the stock market decline that has been going on for all of two days. Two days after a super nice rally off of the March lows. And the decline began almost perfectly on schedule as the leading NASDAQ 100 exceeded the key high from last August and the S&P 500 breached its 2023 high. See the charts below. Many or most times when prices revisit a previous peak or trough, they back off before going […]
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Date: May 24, 2023
