Blog

  Fear sells!  There is no question about it, especially when it comes to the uncertainties associated with investment performance.  To the untrained eye, or simply to regular investors managing their own portfolios, it’s extremely difficult to differentiate between… More >>

Second quarter earnings reports are approximately 91 percent complete; needless to say, it’s hard to be disappointed.  So far, according to FactSet, S&P 500 companies have reported earnings-per-share growth of 24.6 percent, exceeding the expectations of 20 percent… More >>

Trade war rhetoric continues to dominate the headlines, and in some respects has put a damper on capital flowing into U.S. equities; perhaps this is overshadowing the fact that we continue to see strong U.S. corporate earnings growth. [i] [ii] On a positive note,… More >>

This past week was filled with market-moving surprises. First, Facebook announced slower growth ahead and lower margins due to increased spending on security and data integrity.  Following this announcement, the company lost approximately $120 billion of their market… More >>

  A few times a year I like to call out some bad behavior, but not the normal, everyday type of bad behavior. I’m talking about the bad behavior of investors. You might wonder what behavior has to do with investing.  Investing is simple: buy low and sell high. That’s… More >>

The last couple of weeks of trade war rhetoric has turned decisively real.  Our view was, and still is, much of the trade war talk is overplayed.  However, we are now seeing the first phase of implementation. [i] Consistent with the chart above, the United States has… More >>

“The Fed’s High-Wire Act” Today marks the start of the first full week of trading for Q3 2018.  We’d like to take this opportunity to present you with our Q3 2018 Look Ahead. For a PDF presentation, click here. For a narrated video presentation, click here. Below,… More >>

The Federal Reserve got the green light to continue raising interest rates as May inflation reports [x] showed it had finally reached its 2 percent target inflation rate after five years of waiting. [i] [ii] [iii]   Given that the Fed has met its inflation objective, I… More >>

The trade war rhetoric has heated up, although we continue to maintain our view that this is more of a food fight than an actual fight. With trade war tensions dominating news headlines for the better part of 2018, the U.S. large-cap indices have shown low- to… More >>

U.S. equity markets have remained relatively flat year-to-date, despite the phenomenal corporate earnings we’ve seen this year.  Just consider this: The S&P 500 index is up 3.33 percent.  [i] All the while, earnings per share growth in Q1 came in at more than 20… More >>