Our Commentary

We hope that everyone has been having an enjoyable summer. It has been largely more of the same in the financial markets as they grind relentlessly higher despite the questionable economic backdrop. We certainly field a lot of calls on this topic and we remind everyone that financial markets can and will be an emotional herd from time to time. Really what this particular point in time comes down to is an example of what happens when endless money is thrown at a problem.

At some point, it becomes difficult to know what to say about today's financial markets. We watch as they morph into some kind of strange casino where no one ever loses. Don't get us wrong, we would love that to be the case, but don’t believe it will end that way. 2021 and 2020 as well have been the strangest of environments. No matter what the economic background, participants or maybe automated computer traders buy every dip in the market instinctively

What in the world? The craziness just continues in U.S. stock markets as the market just grinds higher. Nothing seems to warrant even a small pullback as inflation is beginning to show up and interest rates move a bit higher in tandem. Normally, this would not be a good sign for the markets, and it has been lost on investors that the 10-year U.S. Treasury now pays more than the dividend yield on the S&P 500 Index. As we have highlighted before, the market just keeps pricing in the good news

We hope everyone is enjoying a bit of the nicer weather. It is great to see, even as our Chicago yards have turned into mud pits as two feet of snow melts away. The markets have become extremely volatile with 3% drops being matched by new highs just 12 hours later. We certainly need a score card to keep up and the big question on our minds is have we reached the end of TINA? For the uninitiated, TINA stands for "There is No Alternative."

Well, that's it! We are going to stop analyzing the markets and just join some internet chat rooms for information on how to invest. For those of you that missed the fun this month, there were some chat rooms on Reddit that ganged up on some larger hedge funds causing billions of dollars of losses. Now, no one is saddened by the woes of these much larger and supposedly smarter traders, and we certainly love to see the little guys making a few bucks. However,

So now what? Well, the election seems to be behind us, and we hear rumors of several companies having effective Covid-19 vaccines coming soon. Of course, this can’t happen soon enough since we are all getting really tired of these masks. For many, the Thanksgiving holiday wasn’t the big family gathering we were hoping for, but thankfully, 2020 will soon be behind us, and we say don’t let the door hit you in the you know what on your way out!The markets have had a strong month w

So, what's next from here? This is a question that comes up more and more as the stock market and the economy are more at odds than at any time we can remember. The simplest indicator of the relationship between the economy and the stock market is the so called "P/E Ratio." This is a simple ratio that has the price of the stock market on the top and the earnings of the stock market on the bottom. Normally, this should stay in a certain range

How is this possible? This is a question we have been asked often in the last few months. How is it that an economy with a loss of 20 MILLION jobs in just a few months combined with locked up global economies, has a stock market at all-time highs? Let’s not forget, you can’t even travel to Europe if you wanted to. Cruise in the Caribbean? Ha! We’ve lost 20 MILLION jobs in hospitality, leisure, travel, restaurants, bars. You name it, if it was a service industry, it was decimate

Welcome to the Twilight Zone! As we write this, the S&P 500 looks poised to hit an all-time high in the next few hours. The alternative title for today's commentary would have been, "lt's deja vu all over again," as we seem to have travelled back in time to the dotcom boom. Not only do the markets seem to have just one direction now, but like then, it’s just a handful of stocks making the rise. FAAMG as it's now called (Facebook, Apple, Amazon

It just keeps getting stranger! The S&P 500 Index is now less than 10% from its all-time high. Indeed, the Nasdaq composite is positive for the year! We have certainly seen the markets do some conflicting things over the years, but this one takes the cake. We do not need to recount here what has been happening to the U.S. over the last month, and frankly, we find ourselves tired of hearing the C-word on the news.Let’s start with the economy. Last month we saw the worst payroll number i

Well, we've been looking at markets for a long time, and this is a new one on us. We have now just experienced the fastest bear market (-20%) decline in history, as well as the fastest increase in jobless claims ever recorded. We had been saying for some time that the market was overvalued and was looking for a reason to sell, but no one was predicting this outcome. We truly hope that our readers had been moving to protect some of their assets over the last year as we advised.

Well that escalated quickly! We found it to be quite the head scratcher a few weeks ago when this coronavirus popped up, and it seemed that the stock market couldn’t care less. Ah, the blissful times just 20 days ago when all news was good news and the market could only go up. What a difference a few short weeks make. Anyone with a working television is probably aware that the stock market has fallen nearly 25% in a very short period as the economic impact of this virus is assessed. A