Last Week: One of George Carlin’s best comedy routines was the insight from the Hippy Dippy Weatherman that the forecast for tonight would be dark. With continued dark overnight with widely scattered light by morning. Over the past two months, market gurus have been forecasting progress on trade talks with China and an accommodative Federal Reserve. Like the sun rising and setting, for another week the trade and Fed narratives remained [...]
Last Week: Where have all the Bears gone? Or perhaps the long-established visual of Bulls and Bears should be replaced with a cluster of chameleons (it’s actually a starship of chameleons according to Wikipedia, but that sounds made-up). The same chameleons that were relentlessly selling stocks from October through Christmas Eve have been buying ever since. They are strange computer-generated animals who seem to be almost entirely motivated by “blending in” [...]
Last Week: The market held onto its post-Christmas gains as reasonably good corporate earnings outweighed new evidence of a slowing global economy and continued uncertainty over trade policy. On the earnings front the blended (combines actual results for companies that have reported and estimated results for companies that have yet to report), year-over-year earnings growth rate for the fourth quarter is now 13.3% today, which is above the earnings growth rate [...]
Last Week: What a difference a month makes. December was one of the worst months for the stock market in history, with December 24, 2018 the worst Christmas Eve on record. Flip the calendar forward, and 2019 kicked off with the best January performance in 30 years. The triple headwinds of the Fed, the trade war, and the economy dissipated and then shifted to provide a decent tailwind. Most notably, Fed [...]