Last Week: Despite the general absence of fireworks (Mount Rushmore and other exceptions noted), the market enjoyed a festive pre-holiday rally with the S&P 500 gaining 4.02% and the Nasdaq Composite reaching a new record high. Three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue! For the quarter, the market posted its best performance in 33 years, parenthetically during one of the worst economic quarters on record. The week got a good [...]
Last Week: Mr. Market: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Confused Investor: Yes, Sir. Mr. Market: Are you listening? Confused Investor: Yes, I am. Mr. Market: Vaccine. Confused Investor: Exactly how do you mean? Mr. Market: There’s a great future once we have a COVID-19 vaccine. Until then, be careful and don’t do anything irrational (fade to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson”). (Reference: “One-word, Plastics, [...]
Last Week: On Monday the market opened sharply lower, but reversed course after the Fed expanded its asset purchasing to include corporate bonds. Optimism over the Fed Put (let’s have a contest to come up with a catchier name) and a significantly better than expected surge in U.S. retail sales drove prices higher on Tuesday. Wednesday was a welcome quiet day in the market, but the increase in COVID-19 cases and [...]
Last Week: We concluded our June 8th commentary with “Perhaps the glass is half full?” noting the surprising strong jobs report and the 43% bounce in the S&P 500 from its March 23 lows. On Monday the S&P 500 broke even for the year, and the Nasdaq Composite hit a record high. The mood shifted towards the middle of the week, with a nearly 7% decline on Thursday. A Friday afternoon [...]
Last Week: It is an occupational hazard of the investment advisory business that we are often asked whether the stock market is rational (always an uncomfortable question, but as Hyman Roth said “this is the business we’ve chosen”). The recent disconnect between the nightly news and the stock market table has never been more evident during my 37 years in this industry. The S&P 500 has now surged 43% since bottoming [...]
Last Week: The S&P 500 gained another 3.01%, with the most beaten-up economically sensitive companies outperforming. The yield on the Ten-Year Treasury dropped one basis point to 0.65%, while the Dollar declined 1.5%. Most of the holiday -shortened week’s gains came Tuesday morning following good news that morning from multiple vaccine programs. Meanwhile the U.S. COVID-19 death toll crossed over 100,000. It is safe to say that the market will be [...]
Last Week: In our May 18 Kuby’s Commentary (Happy Birthday Brooke Kuby) we noted the extraordinarily difficult year small cap stocks were having, posting more than double the S&P 500’s decline. In an attempt to “accentuate the positive”, we suggested that “when the gloom lifts, look for a nice rebound by this historically outperforming asset class”. The gloom vaporized Monday morning after biotech company Moderna reported that a phase one study [...]
Last Week: Every Saturday morning I settle in with my cup of coffee and read the New York Times and Barron’s. This past weekend each had a headline that when put together clearly painted the picture of the surreal state of the world. The NYT business section digest headline reads “Gloomy Week as Investors Assess Economy”. The parade of bad news continued as expected, with industrial production plunging 11.2%, manufacturing output [...]
Last Week: Reopening fervor overwhelmed COVID-19 fever as the S&P 500 surged 3.5% and the Russell 2000 jumped 5.5%! Following that rally the S&P 500 is now higher than it was a year ago: It is also almost 40% higher than it was five years ago, which seems like a very reasonable annual rate of return: It is worth noting the market was at an all-time record high at the starting [...]
Last Week: My standard opening: “Hang in there! As expected, more evidence of the economic fallout, combined with a continued ramp up in global coronavirus cases, has resulted in a 24/7 stream of disturbing headlines.” In the first quarter, which only included a few weeks of some states issuing stay- at -home orders, GDP contracted 4.8% and Personal Consumption dropped 7.6%. The Chicago PMI for April fell to 35.4 from 47.8 [...]