Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Seeking Value in a Pricey Market, Decent Short-Term Technicals, Thoughts on Tariffs & The Thing About Stimulus 'right here' (video)

Once playing, click the icon in the lower right corner for full screen. Focus should occur after a few seconds; if not, click the wheel to the left of the YouTube icon to adjust:


Attention Non-Client subscribers: Nothing in this video should be construed as investment advice. The examples expressed relate to portfolio management we perform on behalf of our clients, and, again, under no circumstances are they to be considered recommendations to the viewer.

Saturday, January 18, 2025

An Important Look at Conditions, at Stocks, at Yields, at the Dollar, at the Yen and Gold (video)

Dear Clients, definitely take this one in when you have a few minutes... thanks!

Once playing, click the icon in the lower right corner for full screen. Focus should occur after a few seconds; if not, click the wheel to the left of the YouTube icon to adjust:


Attention Non-Client subscribers: Nothing in this video should be construed as investment advice. The examples expressed relate to portfolio management we perform on behalf of our clients, and, again, under no circumstances are they to be considered recommendations to the viewer.

Friday, January 10, 2025

That Minsky Feel, and A Peek at Stocks, Yields, Gold, the Dollar & the Yen (video)

Once playing, click the icon in the lower right corner for full screen. Focus should occur after a few seconds; if not, click the wheel to the left of the YouTube icon to adjust:


Attention Non-Client subscribers: Nothing in this video should be construed as investment advice. The examples expressed relate to portfolio management we perform on behalf of our clients, and, again, under no circumstances are they to be considered recommendations to the viewer.

Tuesday, January 7, 2025

On Human Nature, on Isaac Newton, and on Today's Mixed Picture

Well, if I've learned anything over the past 40 years doing what I do, it's that, at nearly every major turning point the majority of investors, and policymakers alike, tend to assume that the future is going to unfold essentially the same as the recent past.

As, alas, BCA analyst Davil Joshi pointed out in this morning’s chat,
The winners of the old technology are never the winners of the new technology.”
His concern being that the market continues to, in his view, mistakenly bid up the companies that are essentially the winners of yesterday’s technology, that the true long-term winners of AI have yet to be discovered. 

Per Alan Watts (on human nature):
"We are driving a car, looking at the rear-vision mirror. The environment in which you believe yourself to exist is always a past one, it isn't the one you're actually in."
And that, in reality, waves and cycles are as inevitable in economies and markets as they are in nature:
“…there is no such manifestation as half a wave. We do not find in nature crests without troughs and troughs without crests.”
And that the longer the cycle, the more the crowd loses sight of this unalterable reality:
“The slower the wave goes the more difficult it is to see that the crest and the trough are inseparable.”
I.e.,
“Trough implies crest just as crest implies trough.
Thus, call it human nature, recency bias, what have you, it's easy for markets to ultimately do what they do best.

I.e., the old Wall Street adage:

Monday, December 30, 2024

PWA 2024 Year-End Letter, Part 4: The "December Mess," the Dollar, and Our Go-Forward View

Dear Clients, 

This is the finale to our 2024 year-end message. Please definitely take this one in. Feel free to skip to the summary video at the end. Thanks so much!!

Before we get to the dollar, I'd like to touch on what I'll call the "December Mess" of a market for stocks by quoting derivatives market specialist, and co-host of the uber-popular Market Huddle Podcast, Patrick Ceresna, as he charted the US equity market sector-by-sector during last week's episode:

Thursday, December 26, 2024

PWA 2024 Year-End Letter, Part 3: Finding Value, Globally

In this year's year-end message Part 1 we touched on three investing rules to live by.

Essentially: 

1. Control risk

2. Buy value

3. Be patient

So, while controlling risk may be accomplished in a number of ways, it's generally-speaking pretty easy, but it ain't free.

If we're talking diversification, cost comes by way of missing out on concentrated returns when a particular asset class, or, say, a small group of stocks realize outsized upside relative to the rest (à la recently, in record fashion!)... If we're talking insuring against massive declines in a given asset class, security or group of securities, there's the options premium we pay.

As for #2, buying value is easy enough, when you can find it, and of course you have to know how to measure it.

#3, patience, depending on who you are, can far and away be the most difficult rule to follow!  Particularly when you see a given tech stock or, say, crypto currency, rocketing -- without you -- to the proverbial moon... Or, on the other hand, when it feels like the world is melting down all around you, and panic begins to grip your decision making process.

Ideally, if we satisfy #1 well enough, we can keep panic-driven reactions at bay... As they, along with greed-driven decisions, are inevitably the worst decisions investors make!

Here, in Part 3, we're going to focus primarily on rule # 2, buying value.

Monday, December 23, 2024

Charts of the Day: Just another December '24 day...

Just FYI for you daily stock market-watchers... As I keep preaching, breadth (massive divergence[s]) in December doesn't paint the rosiest of pictures.

In the chart below:

SP500 white (largest market caps have the most influence): -1.38%
SP500 equal weight green (all the same stocks with equal representation): -6.02%