I was reading about China this morning in a daily email I receive and it reminded me of a general thought/feeling I’ve had in recent months. Let me preface what I’m about to say with the following: I’m not a geopolitical, foreign policy or globalization expert. I’m simply sharing thoughts I’ve had about what’s going …
Month: February 2018
The Proof is in the Pudding
I’ve been paying attention to the weekly Treasury auctions over the past several weeks out of curiosity and in light of all the chatter about rising interest rates and inflation. Auctions basically represent insight into the incremental cost of capital for the U.S. government as the bills, notes and bonds being sold at auction are …
Home Country Bias Alert
Most investors’ equity asset allocations tend to overweight their home countries, which can be very inefficient from a return standpoint. It doesn’t appear to be a problem when their home countries are rising but can be especially painful when markets reverse course. Developed market stocks and their investors have had a good run this cycle …
Are Wages/Earnings Really Growing?
There has been a lot of positive commentary surrounding the January Y/Y wage growth rate reported earlier this month. In general, the uptrend certainly has been encouraging, sowing seeds of optimism among many. However in looking at the Current Population Survey (CPS) from the BLS, the Y/Y growth rate in real median weekly earnings declined …
Much Ado About Nothing?
In spite of all of the commentary about inflation fears and rising rate concerns being the cause for the most recent bout of market volatility, the major indices jumped more than 1% yesterday after a stronger than expected inflation report. Of course, all of this could have simply been a case of buying the rumor …
Protectionism and Leverage
I came across two very interesting charts today that really have me thinking. I’m not exactly sure what conclusions to draw yet. The first chart was a depiction of the results of a GE survey regarding protectionist policies. Basically, more CEOs than not believe their businesses would benefit from the implementation of protectionist policies on …
Good Demographic News…for once
I feel like everything I have read in recent years about demographics has been fairly negative with the ageing population and falling birthrates. However, Bill McBride over Calculated Risk put out a working-age population update the other day that was very encouraging. In a nutshell, there are now more people in the 25-54 age group …
Some Context
In light of recent events, I revisited my handy trend charts for the S&P 500 (SPY), the NASDAQ (QQQ) and the Russell 2000 (IWM). In all three instances, large cap, tech and small cap stocks are still above important trend lines. So while volatility may be making a comeback, the trend for the major indices …
The Sky is Falling
Wow, news outlets can’t stop talking about the stock market. Market volatility is definitely good for the news outlets and pundits. However, the increased coverage and commentary is bad for investors and their portfolios. Per Axios’ Mike Allen’s AM news feed: Axios Business Editor Dan Primack (who noted that he hadn’t heard the word “contagion” in a …
Be Prepared
The Boy Scout motto resonates during periods of market volatility like we’ve experienced the past few days. My real-time news notifications have been blowing up with alarming alerts about the largest declines in the stock market in years. More interest rate hikes by the Fed, fears of higher inflation and higher long-term interest rates seem …