Last week was only four days due to the President's day holiday but it was eventful. The big news of the week was the spike in interest rates, which according to the press reports I read, "came out of nowhere". In other words, the writers couldn't find an obvious cause for a 14-basis point rise in the 10-year Treasury note [...]
This is a holiday-shortened week in the US but there is some important data on tap. Retail sales are expected to show a month-to-month rise for the first time since September. Year-over-year numbers remain pretty subdued and likely will until life returns to something resembling normal. Producer prices will likely rise but inflation continues its benign ways. It is likely [...]
If you had known in October all that would transpire over the next 2 ½ months, how would you have positioned your portfolio? The conventional wisdom before the election was that a Biden win would be negative for stocks because he has promised to raise taxes and specifically corporate taxes. In 2016, conventional wisdom was that a Trump victory would [...]
Note: There are a lot of charts in this post. That doesn't mean that we are technicians. We use charts because we are primarily interested in trends, especially long-term, big-picture trends. And charts are the easiest way to present that information. In general, you will want your tactical adjustments to respect the long-term trend. There are times when it makes [...]
One of the hardest things to understand as an investor is that markets sometimes - often - don't line up with economic reality. Markets rarely reflect current economic conditions and at times they seem to discount a future that seems highly unlikely at best, and delusional at worst. That seems to be the case today, as stocks sit near all-time [...]
We have the luxury, the honor, of speaking to a lot of individual investors here at Alhambra. Whether they are clients or future clients (optimism is my default condition), the most common view of stocks is that they are overvalued and a fall – a large fall – is inevitable. And there is no stock that embodies that view more [...]
This seems an opportune time to review the difference between Strategy and Tactics. Strategy and tactics are how we achieve our goals and objectives. In our specific case, the goals and objectives are financial in nature. Strategy is the path we will take to get from where we are today to where we want to be tomorrow; it is the [...]
The economic data over the last month continued to improve but the breadth of improvement has narrowed. Additionally, while most of the economic data series are still improving, the rate of change, as Jeff pointed out recently, has slowed. I guess that isn't that surprising as the initial phase of the recovery comes to an end. 2nd quarter was a [...]
Anyone who follows Alhambra knows that we keep an eye on the dollar. It is a very important part of our process of identifying the economic environment. A rising dollar, when combined with a falling rate of growth, can be a lethal combination. That was the situation in March and of course during the financial crisis of 2008. So the [...]
Many of the weak dollar trends I noted in June’s update have moderated - even as the dollar has weakened further. US stocks surged over the last month, with growth indices leaving their value counterparts in the dust…again. About the only exception on the equity side was China, which outperformed for much the same reason as US growth – technology [...]
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