Tag Archive: Bear Market

Weekly Market Pulse: Just A Little Volatility

2022-10-17

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2022-10-17

Markets were rather volatile last week. That’s a wild understatement and what passes for sarcasm in the investment business. Stocks started the week waiting with bated (baited?) breath for the inflation reports of the week. It isn’t surprising that the market is focused firmly on the rear view mirror for clues about the future since Jerome Powell has made it plain that is his plan, goofy as it is.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Peak Pessimism?

2022-10-03

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2022-10-03

Goodbye and good riddance to the third quarter of 2022. That was one of the wildest 3 months I’ve experienced in my 40 years of trading and investing. The quarter started off great with the S&P 500 rising 14% from July 1 to August 16 but ended with a 17% swan dive into the end of the quarter. And we closed on the low of the year.

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Weekly Market Pulse: The More Things Change…

2022-09-07

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2022-09-07

I stopped in a local antique shop over the weekend. The owner is retiring and trying to clear out as much as she can before they close the doors so I paid a mere $3 for the Life magazine above. I think it might be worth many multiples of that price for investors who think our situation today is somehow uniquely bad. The cover headline could just as easily be describing today as 1970.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Same As It Ever Was

2022-08-22

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2022-08-22

History never repeats itself. Man always does. Mark Twain is credited with a similar saying, that history doesn’t repeat but it rhymes. Of course, there is scant evidence that Clemens said anything of the sort just as Voltaire may or may not have penned the quote above. But both men were much wittier than I – than most – so I’ll take them both as being representative if not genuine.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Expand Your Horizons

2022-06-29

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2022-06-29

Late last year I wrote a weekly update that focused on the speculative nature of the markets. In that article, I focused on the S&P 500 because I wanted to make a point, namely that owning the S&P 500 did not absolve investment advisers of their fiduciary duty.

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Market Pulse: Mid-Year Update

2022-06-24

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2022-06-24

Note: This update is longer than usual but I felt a comprehensive review was necessary. The Federal Reserve panicked last week and spooked investors into the worst week for stocks since the onset of COVID in March 2020. The S&P 500 is now firmly in bear market territory but that is a fraction of the pain in stocks and other risky assets.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Is The Bear Market Over?

2022-05-31

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2022-05-31

Stocks had a rip snorter of a rally last week and a lot of people are pondering the question in the title over this long weekend. The S&P 500 was down 20.9% from intraday high (4818.62, January 4th) to intraday low (3810.32, May 20th). From that intraday low the market has risen 9.1% in just six trading days.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Is This A Bear Market?

2022-03-16

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2022-03-16

I don’t know the answer to the question posed in the title. No one does because the future is not predictable. I don’t know what will happen in Ukraine. I don’t know how much what has already happened there – and what might – matters to the US and global economy. I don’t know if the Fed is making a mistake by (likely) hiking interest rates by an entire 1/4 of 1% this week.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Are We There Yet?

2022-01-31

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2022-01-31

I’ll just get this out of the way right at the beginning. The question in the title of this post refers to the end of the ongoing stock market correction and the answer is likely no. There are no sure things in this business so it isn’t an unequivocal no, but based on history, the odds favor more weakness.

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Jim Grant: “Markets Trust Too Much In The Presence Of Central Banks”

2017-12-15

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2017-12-15

James Grant, Wall Street expert and editor of the renowned investment newsletter «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer», warns of the unseen consequences of super low interest rate and questions the extraordinary actions of the Swiss National Bank. Nearly ten years after the financial crisis, extraordinary monetary policy has become the norm.

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A Look Inside The Secret Swiss Bunker Where The Ultra Rich Hide Their Bitcoins

2017-10-25

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2017-10-25

Xapo Vault
Somewhere in the mountains near Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne lies a hidden underground vault containing a vast fortune. It’s no ordinary vault, according to Quartz. Built inside a decommissioned Swiss military bunker dug into a granite mountain, it’s precise location is a closely guarded secret, and access is limited by myriad security precautions.

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The Swiss National Bank Owns $80 Billion In US Stocks – Here’s The Catch

2017-07-03

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2017-07-03

Switzerland is a small country of just 8 million people, but they make an outsized impact on economics and finance and money. Because Switzerland is considered a safe haven and a well-run country, many people would like to hold large amounts of their assets in the Swiss franc. This makes the Swiss franc intolerably strong for Swiss businesses and citizens. So the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has to print a great deal of money and use nonconventional...

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Jim Grant Puzzled by the actions of the SNB

2016-10-27

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2016-10-27

James Grant, Wall Street expert and editor of the investment newsletter «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer», warns of a crash in sovereign debt, is puzzled over the actions of the Swiss National Bank and bets on gold.

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The Great Physical Gold Supply & Demand Illusion

2016-10-21

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2016-10-21

Numerous consultancy firms around the world, for example Thomson Reuters GFMS, Metals Focus, the World Gold Council and CPM Group, provide physical gold supply and demand statistics, accompanied by an analysis of these statistics in relation to the price of gold. As part of their analysis the firms present supply and demand balances that show how much gold is sold and bought globally, subdivided in several categories. It’s widely assumed these...

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US Negative Interest Rate Bets Surge To Record Highs

2016-06-17

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2016-06-17

As the "deflationary supernova" sweeps across the world, dragging bond yields to zero-and-beyond, even the almighty omniscent Federal Reserve has been forced to capitulate as the 'cheapness' of Treasury bonds lures the world's yield-hunters dragging ...

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The Swiss National Bank Doubled Its Apple Holdings in 2015

In the spring of 2015 we showed something unexpected: one of the biggest buyers, and holders, of AAPL stock was none other than the already quite troubled - in the aftermath of its disastrous Swiss Franc peg which ended up costing it tens of billions...

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Global Risk Off: China Reenters Bear Market, Oil Tumbles Under $30; Global Stocks, US Futures Gutted

2016-01-15

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2016-01-15

   "We're gonna need a bigger Bullard"     - overheard on a trading desk this morning. Yesterday, when looking at the market's "Bullard 2.0" moment, which was a carbon copy of the market's kneejerk surge higher response to Bullard's "QE4" comments fr...

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