Shocking But Not Uncharted Territory
January 27, 2025 Good morning, In investing, a good investment policy manages two kinds of future event risks: known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Known unknowns are the risks that are known to exist but are not fully understood. They are things we are aware of but cannot accurately quantify their impact. The market mechanism (auction-based […]
Messaging Against The Crowd
January 24, 2025 Good morning, Through 4 days this week, the major global equity indexes are up about +2% across the board (except EM at +1%), and with Futures off slightly this morning (-.15%), we’re probably looking at another bullish week of gains to add to last week’s. There is some significance to this week’s confirming bullish […]
The Read From The Room – Pro-Business
January 21, 2025 Good morning, After months of selling pressure, the U.S. Treasury market finally rallied last week, with the U.S. Treasury 10-year yield falling 18 basis points from its intra-week high down to 4.63%. The S&P 500 Index ended last week up +2.90%. Along with a good start to earnings season, the decline in […]
A Week Of Repair For Markets
January 17, 2025 Good morning, Under the heading, change can be refreshing. Morning Notes will be sent on Mondays and Fridays going forward —the week ahead on Mondays and deciphering the week’s market message on Fridays. With Futures up .5% premarket this morning, this week is shaping to be the strongest week for the major equity indices […]
Warning Signals Building
January 13, 2025 Good morning, The S&P 500 Index was off -1.92% last week; NASDAQ -.72%. Russell 2K -3.49%, International Developed and Emerging -.43% and -1.49% respectively – declines last week were U.S. centric. This is the second week in a row of declines – is this just a correction or something worse? At a […]
Hat Tip To History In A Conviction-less Market
January 6, 2025 Good morning, There is not much to write about this morning that wasn’t covered in last week’s Morning Notes. As a recap of the last two months, the post-election rally in stocks on the perception of a business-friendlier new administration ran out of gas toward the end of the year on higher yields in the bond […]
Not All Doom and Gloom
January 2, 2025 Good morning, Happy New Year everyone! On Monday, we wrote about changes that might be in store for markets in 2025. Sentiment changing to extreme bullishness by investors (recall that sentiment is a contra-indicator – bullish sentiment is bearish for equity index prices and vice-versa), yields rising throughout the yield curve while […]
December 2024 Monthly Letter
The following is your December 2024 Robertson Stephens Monthly Performance Report. 2024 was another impressive year for risk assets. Again, like last year, U.S. mega cap tech stocks dominated global markets. The tech-heavy, cap-weighted S&P 500 Index, and the tech-heavier NASQAQ led all other equity indices by a wide margin. Continued U.S. strength helped globally developed markets […]