The Smart Money Index was constructed by Don Hays and measures the market action in the first half hour of trading and the last hour of trading. The indicator shorts the first half hour of trading as it is supposed to represent the trading by...
In a year when the US is experiencing massive fiscal austerity, monetary tightening, war, inflation and a pandemic, there are many drags to stock performance. In our view, this puts the onus on sales and earnings to carry the S&P 500 higher. Fortunately, so far,...
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...
With the US dollar index recently having completed a so called “death cross”, we thought it would be a good opportunity to review the investment implications of a potential trend change in the USD. The “death cross” is a technical chart formation in which the...
On Tuesday of this week we wrote about the four possible scenarios the Fed could adopt in their Wednesday policy decision. In order of most hawkish to most dovish, those scenarios were: Fed does not cut rates and signals that a rate cut may be...
Recently, fears of a slowdown in global growth brought on by a trade war have led to turbulence in cyclical assets. The US Dollar has risen while commodities and emerging markets have struggled. The Chinese Yuan has depreciated significantly, recalling fears of the 2014-2016 industrial...
As 1Q17 finishes with a gain in the books, the stock to bond performance ratio has also broken to a new cycle high, elevating to levels not seen since mid-2007. Our measure of the stock to bond ratio measures the total return of the S&P 500...
