Clearly, we’ve had a tremendous run in stocks but it hasn’t been without a chorus of very intelligent naysayers who have made many astute observations and convincing arguments. However, their predictions and their timing have been wrong. I don’t mean to be critical because many valid points have been made. But the trend and rising …
Month: January 2020
Profit Growth
So US stocks were broadly up around 30% in 2019. As we’ve discussed before, valuations are a reflection of price relative to some fundamental metric such as earnings or cash flow. I came across this chart today. I’ve seen variations of it in multiple places in recent weeks. It’s worth sharing simply because profit growth …
Channels
Another interesting chart I’ve come across in the past few weeks looks at the Dow over the past 95 years. In particular, the chart focuses on the trend in the index over the past 70 years. Note that the index hasn’t broken the top or bottom lines of the channel. The Dow bounced along the …
Total Returns in Years After 20%-Plus Gains
Interesting chart from SunTrust Private Wealth Management on stock performance in years after years following a year in which the market gained 20% or more. Twenty percent of the time the return has been negative historically while 80% of the time it has been positive. Those are decent odds but in reality they don’t mean …
Goals versus Habits
The new year is a time when many of us focus on the upcoming year and what we would like to accomplish. For many of us, we plan to accomplish our objectives by setting goals. The problem with goals is they can be fleeting. One of the best examples is setting weight loss goals. We …
Inflation Follow Up
We discussed inflation in our post yesterday. We referenced financial asset and real asset inflation. I’ve now seen the tweet below from multiple professionals I follow and feel it’s worth sharing here. The tweet references financial asset inflation in terms of hourly wages of the average US worker. It’s pretty crazy to see how many hours …
Inflation Game Planning
Inflation is a phenomenon that impacts everyone. Granted inflation has been quite tame for the past 40 years, it hasn’t always been so. Inflation ramped up quite a bit in the 1970s as a result of various factors, the most famous being the oil embargo and rising oil prices. Beating the inflation of the 1970s …