Daily State of the Markets
Quick Take: Data, Drama and the Lines in the Sand
It's "quick take" Friday (meaning you won't have to plow through 1,000 words to get to the keys to the session) and my take is that two economic reports, the ongoing FBI drama (which may or may not turn into something meaningful for traders - so far, it appears not), and the near-term lin…
My Back-of-the-Napkin Take
In yesterday's missive, I began a back-of-the-napkin review of market conditions. For me, the question at hand is whether the bulls will be able to break out of the trading range that has been in place for the past two and one-half months. I stated that in situations like these, I like to…
Leadership Is Clearly Narrowing
Good Monday morning and welcome back. The election in France, Warren Buffett wisdom, and oil are in focus this morning. On the election front, there was no big populist surprise in France on Sunday after Emmanuel Macron ran away with the Presidential election. As for Berkshire Hathaway's …
Friday Quick Take: Jobs, France, Buffett and Oil
There are several items in focus this morning including Warren Buffett's big meeting (as well as his take on both IBM and Apple), the election in France on Sunday (Macron continues to hold a 20-point lead - but strange things have been happening at voting booths around the world lately), …
My Take: Fed Will Stay The Course
Although nobody in the game expected Janet Yellen to make any moves regarding rates yesterday and the changes to the Fed's post-announcement statement required a microscope to identify, this week's meeting of the FOMC was important nonetheless.
After spending nine years pulling ra…
One of These Doesn't Look Like the Others
As I have written a time or two over the last few years, I'm of the opinion that the much of near-term machinations in the stock market are now mostly noise. Humans making judgement calls about what they see in a company or the economy are no longer the driving factor of intraday activity…
How To Build Modern Portfolios: Putting It All Together
While we wait on the Trump administration's proposal for reforming the tax code - a proposal that is likely to include a dramatic reduction in corporate tax rates - we might as well continue the discussion on how to build what I call "modern portfolio diversification" into portfolios.…
Seeing Some Improvement, But...
Good Monday morning and welcome back. Global markets appear to be in sigh of relief mode this morning in response to the preliminary round of the French election. Pro-growth, pro-EU, centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron emerged as the early leader as both of France's establishment parties w…
Building Modern Portfolios - Three Ways To Generate Alpha
In case you missed the first two segments of this series, the topic at hand is how to go about developing portfolios designed to outperform in today's modern markets. More specifically, how does a manager attempt to provide outperformance in a world where trading is done at the speed of l…
Looking For The Reason
Long time readers know that when markets do something unexpected - such as breaking a 3-day losing streak with a surge of 184 Dow points - I need to know why. And while I haven't forgotten that I'm in the middle of a series on "how to outperform" when designing portfolios (with the next s…