Daily State of the Markets
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…
While I Hate To Sound Like a Broken Record...
Good Monday morning and welcome back. While the bears contend that the market is ripe for a spill, so far at least, sideways appears to be the new down. For example, the S&P 500 has been moving sideways since mid-February and closed Friday just 1.68% off the March 1 all-time high. How…
Building Modern Portfolios - Step 1
A big part of my job these days is assisting financial advisors in the development of portfolios for their clients and their firms. I like to say that I have 30 years of mistakes under my belt in this business and that we will do our darndest not to repeat any of them. In short, I strive …
A More Cautious Stance Makes Sense
Good Monday morning and welcome back. Well, it's a new month and a new quarter - wow, where does the time go? As usual, let's start the week (and the month and the quarter) with a review my key market models and indicators. To review, the primary goal of this exercise (something I actuall…