One metric I look at fairly often for various countries is the relationship between the performance of stocks vs. bonds. The idea is straightforward enough: when stocks are outperforming bonds, it tends to be associated with a growing economy. When bonds are outperforming stocks, it...
As inflation fears have receded somewhat—though we’ll see in next week’s US CPI report how much they really have receded—European stocks have had a good start to the year. In the table below, I take the top 85% by market cap of large-mid firms from European...
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,...
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...
