Despite The Headlines Bulls Hold On

One of the great things about spending time out in nature is you don't focus on the intraday machinations of the markets nearly as much as when you are chained to your desk. This allows one to focus more on the big picture "state" of the market as opposed to the latest wiggle and giggle o…

Message From the Models: Continue to Give Bulls Benefit of Doubt

Greetings from the northern reaches of Yellowstone National Park. Although we've lived in "the west" for nearly 20 years now, my wife informed me earlier this year that we had never been to the nation's first national park. "Let's go this fall!" I replied. Of course this was before the tr…

A Fistful of Reasons to be Optimistic

Despite all the worry, fear, and/or uneasiness in the markets these days, the S&P 500 closed Wednesday within spitting distance of an all-time high (0.63% to be exact). Not too shabby for a "hated" stock market, eh? Yep, that's right, despite the global economic slowdown, the …

The Message From The Models: Stay the Course

Good Monday morning and welcome back. Although I had every intention of "penning" a market missive last week and have an abundance of topics to comment on, a business trip to LA left me with little time to get anything written. My apologies for anyone missing my subjective take on the sta…

Monday Morning Market Model Review: Bulls Retain Possession

Good Monday morning and welcome back to the land of blinking screens. As long-time readers are likely aware, my weekly missive has been comprised of two sections. First, there has been my subjective take on the state and the drivers of the current stock market environment. And second, I h…

Quick Take on The State of the Market

It's been a hectic weekend and as such, I'm going to keep my subjective analysis of the market brief and let the indicators and market models do most of the talking this morning. However, since returning from our trip across the pond late last week, I have been asked a few times a…

Has Anything Really Changed?

Greetings from London. My wife and I are spending a couple weeks exploring England and Scotland, which so far has been, as the Brits like to say, "quite lovely." Our visits to Westminster, Big Ben, Parliament, Buckingham, Kensington, Leeds Castle, Canterbury, Dover Castle and the local pu…

About That 'Message' From The Bond Market

After five days of wild, news-driven swings in the stock market, where the action was dominated by escalating trade tensions, the threat of a currency war, and the possibility that the next U.S.-China meeting scheduled for September may not happen, investors can't be blamed for starting t…

Indicators Suggest Weakness Should Be Bought

It's been a hectic travel weekend and I'm still on the road. And with all the news flying around at the moment, I feel it is important to spend the appropriate amount of time analyzing the situation and the market action. As such, I'm going to let the indicators do the talking this mornin…

How Do We Model For This?

As a risk manager, I try to find and/or create models for as many different market inputs as possible. For example, we have models for corporate earnings, monetary conditions, interest rates, valuations, the U.S. economy, commodities, the global economy, inflation, volatility, overbought/…