Interest rates are to asset prices what gravity is to the apple. When there are low interest rates, there is a low gravitational pull-on asset prices. – Warren Buffett Though December did not deliver higher stock prices market observers were still inclined to celebrate with the S&P 500 up 25% for the year. The Wall Street Journal headlined “Dow Ends Lower on Last Day of Stellar Year for Stocks” adding,...
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If something cannot last forever, it will end. – Herb Stein; Economist For investors in US equities November was indeed a month to be thankful for with the S&P 500 rising 5.9% for the month and 28% year to date with even that stellar return exceeded by the MidCap 400’s 8.8% and the SmallCap 600’s 10.9% November returns. MarketWatch headlined its story describing the month’s market action “Dow 45,000 is...
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Time is slow, time is fast. It never stops, but it always lasts. – Anxhelo Llangozi A Poem About Time The last day of October, Halloween, “spooked” investors in big cap tech stocks with The Wall Street Journal headlining its coverage of that day’s market action “Big Tech Earnings Drag Down Stocks” with the first sentence of the accompanying story reading “Disappointing quarterly results from big technology companies pushed stocks...
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Optimism doesn’t wait on facts. It deals with prospects. – Norman Cousins After having been cast into the role of Santa Claus on September 18th offering his fellow citizens a reduction in interest rates of half a per-cent US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell ended the month cautioning his listeners not to be overly optimistic about future rate reductions stating “This is not a committee that feels like it is...
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If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. – Winston Churchill “The flash crash” on the 5th of August is likely the event during the month that most investors deem as most memorable but perhaps it is the dramatic revision to the reported number of jobs created by the US economy that will be the most important. On...
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It’s ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so – Mark Twain Perhaps the greatest challenge for investors in July was to choose the single most important news story for the month. The shooting at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania? President Biden announcing his intention to not run for reelection? The CrowdStrike sourced shut down of the internet?...
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The greater the mismatch between perception and reality the greater the opportunity – Mark H. Tekamp “AI Frenzy Propels Stocks to Monster First Half” read the headline in July 1st’s Wall Street Journal. J.P. Morgan’s Chief Global Strategist David Kelly was quoted elsewhere as believing “the outsized sway of technology giants over US stocks is likely to persist, absent a major market rout.” Outsized it certainly is as the average...
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"So extraordinary a rise in the market price of Gold in this country…pointed to something in the state of our own domestic currency…" – The Report of the 1810 House of Commons Select Committee on the High Price of Gold May’s reputation as unfriendly to stock market gains has long been noted as evidenced by the mantra to “sell in May and go away.” The wisdom of that advice, at...
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