Appears
September 15, 2021 Good morning, September is really earning its malcontent reputation this year, and we’re only half way through. So far this month, when the opening bell has rung, the bears have come out to play. Overnight equity futures have been up every day this month except one and in each case, the S&P cash […]
Feel Is Not Real – Part II
September 13, 2021 Good morning, The S&P 500 was down each day last week with Friday’s decline accounting for half of the week’s damages. For the week, the S&P 500 Index was off -1.71% and what I called a pause last week turned into what felt like a grand mal correction on Friday. The feel […]
Macro Through Micro Lens
September 9, 2021 Good morning, First, thank you to so many of you for your “feel better” messages and, for sharing some non-covid virus stories of your own. Hugely helpful to me. Let’s get a little micro today and see how that may fall into the macro picture. The S&P 500 Index was lower for a […]
Sleepy Start to the New Season
September 7, 2021 Good morning, Apologies for my radio silence last week, and the skipped note Friday with no explanation. Playing Hooky? – I wish. I woke up Thursday morning to a stiff fever and what felt like a king-flu concentrated all in my skull. Due to the intensity – chills like you read about, […]
When Feel Is Not Real
September 1, 2021 Good morning, Hello September – What! How is that even possible? Time is just flying. There are four months to go until year-end, and now bulls feel emboldened while bears are hushed. The S&P 500 posts a record every four days (Bloomberg), while each uncertainty the market faces turns out to be […]
Another Victory Lap for JBTD
August 30, 2021 Good morning, Friday’s Jackson Hole messaging was obviously well received by the markets. There was no news to speak of in the speech but the fear of a hawkish surprise was dispelled. It’s axiomatic to the markets: uncertainty removed -> market up. The S&P 500 Index was up .87% on the day […]
A Look Back
August 27, 2021 Good morning, The long anticipated speech from the Jackson Hole Symposium by Jay Powell hits the tape at 10am ET this morning. A virtual mountain of words have been written about what JP will say. There’s no point in adding to that this morning. Instead, let’s look back at previous tapers and […]
Summer Doldrums
August 25, 2021 Good morning, Did you see that? On Monday the morning note had a hint of a cautionary tone, and later that day the S&P 500 put up another new high, and then another again yesterday! This bull does not suffer fools. Undeterred and moving on – market action overnight has been mixed […]
Cautious – No Change
August 23, 2021 Good morning, Last week’s 50 bps decline (-0.5%) on the S&P 500 index disguised the real correction that transpired in the broader market. The Russel 2000 index (small caps & value), the MSCI EAFE index (international developed market), the MSCI EM index (emerging market), and commodities broadly speaking all suffered corrections 8-10 […]
Human Nature
August 20, 2021 Good morning, It has always been fascinating to me to see an entire market behave as a single normal person might under a particular set of circumstances. Wednesday afternoon’s sell-off was a good example of what is to me a phenomena. Educators will tell you that students often don’t hear a repeated […]
Steady As She Goes
August 18, 2021 Good morning, So far this week, market action has not been as quiet as last week with a couple of 1% probes lower each morning on the major equity indices. However both probes lower this week have been met by buyers with Monday’s mid-day losses completely erased by the close and yesterday’s […]
Vacationing Market
August 16, 2021 Good morning, “Welcome back!” – thank you, it was lovely and relaxing vacation. Special thanks go to Mr. Market however, who delivered a very quiet week in both amplitude and price action. Perhaps my dreaded market crash/vacation ratio will normalize going forward – time will tell. The S&P 500 index (SPX) and […]