April 14th Weekly Market Update This has been the weakest earnings cycle in 55 years. Every earnings cycle over the past 55 years has generated about a 7% annualized earnings per share (EPS) growth rate, when measured from peak to peak or from trough to trough. The...
April 7th Weekly Market Update So far this year, "defensive" stocks, those that are less sensitive to economic growth, such as utilities and health care stocks, have led the markets higher. However, we may soon be nearing a meaningful and durable shift in the...
March 31st Weekly Market Update Consumers are the most confident they have been in over six years, according to last week’s widely watched consumer confidence report from the Conference Board. Investors have been feeling confident too. The high valuations of stocks in...
March 24th Weekly Market Update The S&P 500 seems to have absorbed the prospect for rate hikes by the Federal Reserve (Fed) beginning as soon as the middle of next year reasonably well. While stocks slid on Friday, March 21, early in the day they hit a new...
Week of March 17th Weekly Market Update With the exception of last year’s steady rise, March has been maddening for investors. In three of the past four years the S&P 500 raced higher in March only to reverse all of those gains in a pullback of about 10% that...
March 10th's Weekly Market Update Bond yields have fallen this year, but they began to rebound in the United States in the latest week as the glass-half-empty bond market realized the all-time high stock market may have it right. But this was not the case in most of...
March 3rd Weekly Market Update The end of this week will make it five years since the second most powerful bull market in post-WWII history began. After five years, only the bull market that began on August 12, 1982 was stronger. It is not over yet. In fact, the bull...
February 24th Weekly Market Update The first market storm of 2014 (that we had named Angel) is over with the S&P 500 and broader Russell 3000 stock market indexes rebounding to all-time highs after reversing a 6% decline. The decline was sparked by turmoil in...
February 17 Weekly Market Update A comparison of the S&P 500 Index in 1929 just ahead of the stock market crash to the performance of stocks from 2012 through today has been making the rounds on the internet. The implication by the bears is that stocks are poised...
February 10th Weekly Market Update It was 1964, 50 years ago, that the film Goldfinger debuted. It is the quintessential James Bond film and the first one to win an Academy Award. In Goldfinger, Q — the head of the gadget-making "Q-Branch" — presents...