Farewell and thank you to 2023 which exceeded almost everybody’s expectations after a dismal 2022 and predictions of a dire recession. This blog was more positive than most, projecting a 5% to 10% gain for the S&P 500 vs. the actual price gain of 23.9%. Now it’s on to 2024. Let’s start with our quarterly … Read more
The “Magnificent Seven” has now replaced “FAMANGs” as the nickname for current market leadership. It is also a somewhat deridingly used term for the “overpriced” stocks hated by value managers. Holdovers include Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Gone is Netflix. New are Nvidia and Tesla while Facebook had a facelift to be renamed Meta. As … Read more
The third quarter of 2023 is now history. The September effect overwhelmed mildly positive returns in July and August to submerge all six benchmark indexes we monitor quarterly into the red. Although the order of best to worst varies among the six indexes, one commonality is having September as the worst historical month, both in … Read more
The US Stock Market, led by technology, has outperformed most expectations this year. Going into Memorial Day weekend, SPY, the most popular S&P 500 ETF, has risen more than 10%. That’s a very impressive number in the face of many of the best-known strategists predicting a down year for the major index in 2023. As … Read more
In the wake of the Chinese Evergrande collapse, the S&P 500 shed more than 2% last Monday. Analysts speculated that Chinese real estate contagion might be especially detrimental to Apple, Google and Netflix, all purported to have huge exposures to China. In fact, two major investment banks issued predictions last week that the market would … Read more