Corporate Earnings Going for Gold; Economic Data Reaches for Silver February 17th is a special day; in that, it is the birthday of both Michael Jordan and my wife. It also marked the top of the Chinese stock market, which has subsequently nosedived over 25%, including 8.72% last week. The S&P 500 has gained 12.49% during that time frame. As these nations compete for gold medals in the Olympics, they also [...]
Never-Ending Rally Back on Track Despite the scary headlines, the “Fear Index” continues to falter. We concluded last week’s commentary noting that “U.S. stock futures followed the global markets lower over the weekend, and the “Fear Index” (VIX) jumped 6% going into Monday’s trading session.” The Bull Market seemed to show signs of battle fatigue, fighting the stiff headwinds of inflationary pressures and the emergence of the highly contagious Delta variant [...]
Last Week: Whereas the major headline indexes set record highs again on Monday, the undertone of the market continues to soften, with declining issues increasingly outnumbering advancing issues. In fact, excluding the Fab FAANG Five (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, & Google) plus Microsoft, the rest of the market has been primarily in retreat for the past month, with Small-Cap and Value faring the worst. We believe the renewed COVID-19 concerns, inflationary [...]
Last Week: Early in the week, the market was singing “Mama Mia, here I go again!”, as COVID-19 resurfaced. Those fears were particularly apparent on Thursday when Japan declared a state of emergency and announced there would be no spectators at the Summer Olympics. On that news, the market sank over 2% and bond yields retreated to their lowest level since Valentine’s Day. Despite those headwinds, the major indexes managed to [...]
Last Week: We hope that everyone enjoyed their holiday weekend. One highlight at North Star was watching Joey Chestnut break his own world record at the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4th after devouring his 76th hot dog and bun in front of a packed Maimonides Park stadium in Coney Island. (Nathan’ Famous [NATH] is a 0.5% holding in NSMVX) Turning to the broader market, meet the new [...]
Last Week: What a difference a weekend makes. The selling pressure from the previous Friday vanished into thin air, and a bounce-back rally kicked in on Monday morning that continued throughout the week. The S&P 500 closed Friday at another record high, posting its best weekly performance since February, as investors bought the party line from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that the higher inflation will be temporary as the economy [...]
Last Week: Chairman of the Federal Reserve is near the top of my list of extraordinary stressful jobs that I would hate to have. Currently, it would fall somewhere between a war-zone surgeon and an undercover narcotics officer on the Chicago Police Department. Poor Jerome Powell probably listens to the opening of Eric Clapton’s song “Pretending” every morning and wonders “how many times must we tell the tale”, and then “how [...]
Last Week: Since the end of April when Fed Chair Jerome Powell dismissed inflation pressures as being temporary, “transitory” has become the new bullish buzzword for the stock and bond markets. The 5% year-over-year increase in the consumer price index reported on Thursday was the biggest jump since August 2008, but apparently not big enough to disrupt the transitory thesis, as both markets rallied on the news. The S&P 500 gained [...]
Last Week: “The heat is on, it’s on (Wall and Main) street, the heat is on, on, on." The economy has been rebounding sharply, and with that rebound, there has been a surge in inflationary pressures and related concerns over interest rate increases. As such, the market treaded water waiting for Friday’s May jobs report for a heat check on employment and the implications for Fed policy. The number came in [...]
Last Week: Equity markets ground higher, fueled by (1) good earnings from economy re-opening companies and from several residential real estate-related companies; (2) a benign bond market that seems comfortable with the Fed’s ‘inflation is transitory’ party line; (3) improving U.S. and European Coronavirus data trends that support economic re-opening plans, and even a meaningful decline in the 7-day moving average of cases in India to less than 200,000 since peaking [...]