We talk a lot about sector allocation. It is incredibly important for investors, especially over the long-term. The correct sector allocation can lead to massive outperformance while the wrong sector allocation significantly increases your career risk.
Read MoreShorting long duration treasury bonds really is becoming the modern day widow maker, as we noted last August. Yet, despite all the pain endured since last August for anyone shorting treasuries, traders still maintain a historically large short position in futures and options on the 10-year.
Read More2014 was a rough year for commodities (and not just for oil).
Read MoreSince the ECB announced its open ended QE program we have seen numerous parallels being drawn with Japan’s amped-up QE program announced in April of 2013, but telegraphed in late 2012. One of those parallels is that like Japanese financial stocks, Europe’s financial stocks should experience a sharp rally in the coming months.
Read More
The EUR is trading at levels not seen in over a decade, in the wake of the ECB’s big QE announcement today.
Read MoreHas any government debt market ever had such a negative yield curve as Switzerland? One-year Swiss government bonds are currently ”yielding” -114 basis points. One week ago, one-year bonds were at -38 basis points and one month ago one-year bonds were at -23 basis points. Astonishingly, 10-year Swiss government bonds are ”yielding” -20 basis points.
Read MoreIn recent history, each time the EUR has fallen relative to the dollar, the implied volatility of the German DAX has risen– sometimes rather sharply.
Read MoreOff the October 3, 2008 low, Priceline.com has outperformed the MSCI All Country World index by roughly 1,100% making it the single best performing stock in the index. For this reason, PCLN is the leadership stock in the index.
Read MoreWith few exceptions, the 200-day moving average of the daily advance-decline ratio remains close to or below lows not seen since 2008– in direct contrast to the trend in prices for most MSCI sectors.
Read MoreAcross all regions of the developed world, the banking and energy industry groups have been the worst performers. The MSCI World banking industry is within .5% of making a new 5-year low compared to the MSCI All Country World Index.
Read MoreBanks, represented here using the KBW Bank Index, ended up underperforming the the S&P 500 by about 375 basis points in 2014. Since the beginning of 2015, bank performance has been much worse.
Read More
The last several weeks has undoubtedly seen some major moves in asset prices especially in the commodity and currency spaces. Yet, relative to history volatility in most asset classes still remains below average with the exception of the bond market.
Read More
As we noted yesterday, the US stock market has been the only game in town recently. The S&P 500 is up about 8% over the year and the median stock in the MSCI North America is up 7%. Meanwhile the median stock in the MSCI World Index has not changed over the past year.
Read MoreWhile the intraday performance trend of the stock market isn’t everything, it often gives clues to possible directional changes in the overall trend of the market. One of the ways we measure the intraday trend of the market is to count the number of weak closes over a period of time.
Read More
The United States stock market has been the only game in town. The US the only major developed country to have outperformed the MSCI World Index over the last year, joined only by the much smaller markets of New Zealand and Hong Kong.
Read More