Good News is Good News is Bad News | August 13, 2022

Good News is Good News is Bad News A lower-than-expected CPI report for July (8.5% vs 8.7% expected) had markets rallying in expectation of interest rates quickly coming back. But stronger markets make the Fed’s job more difficult, potentially leading to more rate increases than expected. It is unlikely that would be received well by […]
READ POST

Searching for Goldilocks | July 9, 2022

Searching for Goldilocks Watching the stock market these days is very easy, but also very frustrating. Good news is bad news and vice versa. Case in point was Friday’s employment report. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 372,000 in June, well above the 250,000 Street estimate and the unemployment rate remained at 3.6%. What was the reaction […]
READ POST

Do you Believe in Miracles? | July 2, 2022

Do you Believe in Miracles? We just completed the worst first half stock performance since 1970. (See chart below.) To make matters worse, rates increased and bonds were also hit extremely hard. The result was that the ‘standard’ 60/40 portfolio (60% S&P 500 /40% Aggregate Bond Index) declined a record 16.1% in the first half. […]
READ POST

Looking for One Foot Bars | May 14, 2022

Looking for One Foot Bars After a difficult start to 2022, the tone of markets has become decidedly worse over the last 2 weeks, notwithstanding the rally on Friday, as markets appear to be shifting their focus from an inflation problem to a growth problem (i.e. a looming recession). The S&P 500 is now down […]
READ POST

Often Wrong, Never in Doubt | March 19, 2022

Often Wrong, Never in Doubt Economic projections are rarely easy and are most difficult when most needed. The Fed is forecasting an economic ‘soft landing’ (they NEVER forecast a recession!). The reactive Fed is now behind the curve – that is, reacting late to the inflationary surge, but it expects economic growth to continue unabated. […]
READ POST

It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better | January 15, 2022

It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better Sometimes Wall St. gets so involved in the details that it misses the forest for the trees. And then there are times when we are brought back to the simple basics and that happened this week in a webinar from DoubleLine Capital founder, Jeff Gundlach. Here is the […]
READ POST

Wherever You Go, There You Are | November 27, 2021

Wherever You Go, There You Are At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we find the current market valuation to be very high. But rather than just say that, we thought it might be helpful to give some perspective around that comment. (Please note that this comment was penned prior to the market […]
READ POST