Weekly Market Pulse: Nothing To See Here. No, Really. Nothing.
The answer to the question, "What should I do to my portfolio today (this week, this month)? is almost always nothing. Humans, and especially portfolio managers, have a hard time believing that doing nothing is the right response....to anything...or nothing. We are programmed to believe that success comes from doing things, not not doing things. And so, often we look [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: Buy The Rumor, Sell The News
There's an old saying on Wall Street that one should "buy the rumor, sell the news", a pithy way to express the efficient market theorem. By the time an event arrives, whatever it may be, the market will have fully digested the news and incorporated it into current prices. And then the market will move on to anticipating the next [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: Perception is Reality
It is said that there are two types of people in this world. Those who see the glass as half full and those who see it as half empty. On Wall Street, we call them bulls and bears. A bull can see an economic report and perceive it in a way that seems wholly illogical, misguided, and downright stupid to [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: Much Ado About Not Much
The SLR exemption is ending! The SLR exemption is ending! Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? There has been rampant speculation the last few weeks about the fate of the exemption the Fed provided banks a year ago with regard to the Supplemental Leverage Ratio that allowed them to ignore Treasuries and reserves. The banks themselves warned that [...]
Weekly Market Pulse: The More Things Change, The More The Song Remains The Same
Markets continue to move based on the expectation of a post-virus boom. At least that is the dominant narrative right now. The economy, boosted by another round of stimulus, will surge once the virus is under control and things return to normal. President Biden last week offered his version of optimism by saying that families would be able to gather [...]
Tactical Update: Long-Term Trends
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 [...]
Winning The Beauty Contest
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 [...]
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