August has historically been a rough month for markets. This year proved no different as the stock rally ground to a halt. Stocks tumbled before paring back some of their losses, with Wall Street still trying to figure out when the Federal Reserve will end its long campaign of interest rate hikes. There were some…
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At the start of this year, Wall Street managers and analyst reported that 2023 would not be a great year to invest and investors should be defensive increasing their cash positions in lieu of expected volatility. BlackRock’s Chariman and CEO reported in the eve of 2023 that Investment Managers should throw out their investment playbook,…
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Now that we have reached the half-way point of the year, let’s review the last 6 months in the market. At the beginning of 2023, there was a prevailing sense of negativity as both the S&P 500 and bonds experienced significant double-digit losses. However, we argued that the smart investor should stay invested. We were…
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May 2, 2023 “Sell in May and go away” is probably the most widely cited stock market cliché in history. So let’s take a look at this historical seasonal pattern to see if it is indeed true in this current market cycle. What is sell in May? “Sell in May and go away” is the…
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Three months ago we along with much of the consensus were forecasting an imminent recession in Europe with the US following not far behind. We were also worried that China’s zero COVID policy would negatively impact China’s economy resulting in another year of anemic growth. We further viewed that Central banks worldwide would have to contend…
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“After a strong start to the year driven by institutional investors, skepticism over the sustainability of the rally is now unanimously in question as bears begin to wrestle control from the bulls,” said Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide. This pretty much sums up what we have been observing since the start of…
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January’s return surprised pretty much the entirety of investors including Wall Street. As of month end January 2023 most investors remained unconvinced by last month’s rally sitting on one of the largest money market balances since September 2021. Recall 2022 wiped out TRILLIONS of dollars in market value. Not to mention, January has seen a…
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For 2022, the Dow Jones declined -8.8%, the S&P 500 lost -19.4%, and the Nasdaq collapsed by -33.1%! It is essential to say that the annual percentage declines for all three indexes were the biggest since the 2008 financial crisis! Moreover, sanctuary could not be found in bonds. The U.S. Federal Reserve hiked the benchmark…
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After Wall Street’s worst year in more than a decade, investors approaching December and the year ahead probably want to know if things will get worse before they improve. It’s never a good idea to predict too far into the future. After all, few would have thought in late 2019 that a pandemic would soon…
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Winter is coming: What we know What we know is that the S&P 500 hit an all-time high of 4,818.62 on January 4. We also know that it hit a low of 3,491.58 on October 13. There have been a lot of changes since January 4 – war in Ukraine, Covid related supply chain issues,…
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