With the S&P 500 up nearly 20% and international developed stocks up 13% year-to-date, the markets are having a banner year so far. But, we are squarely in the weakest seasonal months of the year (September and October) and we are starting to see the…
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Today at the annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reiterated that the Fed is in no hurry to either taper asset purchases immediately or aggressively. Additionally he made crystal clear that even when the Fed does eventually start tapering asset purchases…
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What a week for price data! We have been writing about the possibility of higher inflation for months now, most recently here. We have also highlighted the most likely assets to benefit from higher inflation like copper, oil and energy stocks. So far so good…
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There are a few ways to measure productivity. One simple way to measure productivity at the company level is to calculate sales per employee. Higher sales for the same number of employees obviously means each employee is pulling more weight. Profits are a byproduct. The…
Read MoreThis week investors learned of President-elect Joe Biden’s initial bid for the next round of COVID-19 relief. The number came in at $1.9tn. Importantly, included in this figure is mainly covid relief as opposed to a longer-term fiscal package that will be heavily weighted to…
Read MoreIn the last few weeks stock market sentiment as expressed in options has come full circle. Back in August we were noting a rather amazing level of outright speculation in stock options, mostly by small traders that were buying short-dated out of the money calls…
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We’ve been writing for the last month about the risks, and then the corrective activity in the stock market. Even as the market didn’t peak until the first few days of September, it “feels” like this pause has lasted longer than that. And yet, we…
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Two weeks ago, I wrote about the rising likelihood of corrective action in the equity markets, which was a follow up to our mid-quarter update. In both pieces we detailed some disturbing indications that suggested US stocks, especially large US stocks, had gotten quite a…
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The returns of the 2009-2020 bull market were nothing short of extraordinary. From the 2009 low in the S&P 500 to the 2020 high, stocks gained a massive 488%, or nearly 18% on an annualized basis. This compares to an average nominal price return for…
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Arguably the two most significant macroeconomic events taking place in markets currently are the drop in US Treasury yields to near historic lows and the breakdown of Chinese yuan below the “line in the sand” 7.0 level. Oddly enough, a similar thing happened back in…
Read MoreDear Stakeholders, We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your ongoing support and attention and to wish you the very best for 2018! In the next year, we’ll continue to focus our data driven analysis on what we feel are the…
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While today’s better than expected rise in the flash PMI indicator (black line) for the euro zone is a welcome surprise, it would seem that it will take quite a bit more improvement before we can reasonably expect substantial progress in the recovery of important metrics such as GDP or industrial production: By country, France
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It would be one thing if the recent fall in the price of oil was an isolated event completely explainable by supply side and/or geopolitical factors such as overproduction or the desire of the Western powers to punish Russia for its Ukrainian crusade. That, however, does not seem to be the case.
Read MoreAs of the close yesterday, the US two-year treasury yield was sitting at 61 basis points. For a little perspective, the two-year started the year at 39 basis points and hit a low in September 2011 of 17 basis points.
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Faithful followers will already know that we do not rely on meetings with management or analyst reports in our methodology for finding the world’s best knowledge leaders.
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