Weekly Perspective: Dire Straits – PMI Contrarianism in the Age of Pandemic
The March Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) hit 64.7 last week, the highest in four decades. This makes the cyclical investor in me shiver (in the dark).
Weekly Perspective: For Whom the Bell Tolls
The degree of the recent rebound in yields (sell off in price) is so large because the starting point for yields was so low.
Weekly Perspective: Shine On You Crazy Diamond Hands
Narratives make the decision straightforward from a fundamental perspective, but they can blind us to environments that cause divergences between companies and stocks.
Weekly Perspective: New Regime, Who’s This?
The U.S. government is about to release nearly $3 trillion of fiscal stimulus on an economy that is expected to grow at its fastest pace in nearly 30 years and has a 6.2% unemployment rate, only slightly above the long-term average of 5.8% (80 year average).
Weekly Perspective: What’s Going On in the Treasury Market?
Treasury yields had a volatile week, pushing longer dated yields higher and causing shock waves through global asset markets. The sell-off reached a fever pitch on Thursday, after a “brutal” auction of 7-year bonds received much less demand than expected.
Weekly Perspective: Mind the Raptor Gap
During the 1980’s, angst about the U.S. falling behind the U.S.S.R. in military superiority ran high, despite signs for decades that the Soviet military spending and capability was being severely constrained by its faltering domestic economy.
Weekly Perspective: Small Caps Defying Gravity; Holding Out For the 1-Year
Back in 2020, one measure that was a helpful signal of a near-term overextension in markets that resulted in a pause was the distance that an index was trading above its 200-day moving average. The 200-day moving average is one gauge of a longer-term trend.
Asset Allocation Bulletin
The asset allocation process considers an investor’s return goals and how much risk the investor is willing to take.
Weekly Perspective: Meme Variance Optimization
How do you invest for the long run when there are signs you are in a speculative bubble? This could be one of the most confounding and yet important questions for investors currently.
Weekly Perspective: The Ox, The Ostrich, and The Outrage
There is an old anecdote that is often used in introductory finance and economics courses to display the power of free markets as efficient allocators of capital. It begins with Sir Francis Galton at a county fair in 1906.
Weekly Perspective: The First-Rate Intelligent Investor
The peril in focusing on these metrics is that they can engender fear that a top is near, while the metrics themselves offer little in terms of timing what “near” is.
Weekly Perspectives: Earnings High Jumps; Seasons Don’t Fear the Taper
In this week’s Market Perspective, we explore the latest high earnings jumps from the initial batch of earnings reports from U.S. companies, and we analyze the potential for the tapering of asset purchases on the part of the Fed.