Archive for the
‘Market Commentary’ Category

Debt Explosion, Few Downgrades If you’re looking for something to worry about, consider corporate debt: $1 trillion of it.  Research by the Bloomberg News organization found that corporations have taken advantage of more than a decade of historically low interest rates to make highly-leveraged acquisitions, taking on debt at unprecedented rates.  Looking at some of […]

Don’t Believe Every Indicator You See You’ve heard the phrase: “The most dangerous words in investing are: ‘This time it’s different.’”  Right?  But sometimes the investing world DOES change, perhaps permanently, and investors have to adjust with the transition.  This is made much harder when, as the markets experience adversity, people start posting all sorts […]

Fire in a Crowded Theater Yesterday’s market declines—the Dow down 3.15%, the S&P 500 down 3.29% and tech stocks, as represented by the Nasdaq index, off 4.08%–were entirely within the normal range of mini corrections, which we’ve experienced numerous times since March 9, 2009.  But they represent an interesting test of character for the press […]

2018 Third Quarter Market Report If you believe that the trend is your friend, then perhaps the U.S. stock market is in for an excellent fourth quarter. U.S. equity markets suffered small losses in the first quarter, followed by decent single-digit gains in the second quarter.  Now that the third quarter is in the books, […]

Beware the Bears If you’ve been paying attention to the financial news lately, you’re probably seeing a lot of ominous predictions—and they’re usually backed up by some ominous headline.  The most simplistic are saying that the bull market has now lasted ten years, so therefore it’s about to come to an end—as if bull markets […]

The Long Bull You can be forgiven for wondering what all the hoopla was about when, on August 22, the newspapers erupted with the announcement that the current bull run in the U.S. stock market was the longest in history.  Wasn’t the day before and the day before that part of that run? The answer […]

Behind the Turkish Meltdown What the heck is going on in Turkey?  Whatever it is, it’s having a visible effect on the markets.  After the Turkish stock market index fell more than 24% since the start of August, Eurozone bank stocks fell 24% and emerging markets stocks overall (a category which includes Turkish stocks) dropped […]

The Growth Spike Recent reports about the U.S. economy were a case of good news and bad news.  The good news is that, in the second three months of the year, the U.S. economy grew at an estimated 4.1%—better than the 2.2% growth posted during 2018’s first quarter.  The 4.1% figure is subject to revision […]

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