Is It All Bad News?

2022 is officially in the books and many investors would say good riddance! Using the benchmark indexes as our “market” proxies, it was pretty ugly. But indexes can be misleading.  The DJIA ended the year down -7.67%, which, given all the noise last year, really isn’t awful.  The S&P on the other hand, fell -20.28%,…

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A Story About Japan, the U.S. Dollar, & Gold

Investors woke up to a major macro surprise Tuesday morning when the Bank of Japan announced a de-facto rate hike by allowing the yield on their 10-Year Treasury to reach .50%. Although the Bank of Japan (BOJ) didn’t actually raise rates, the net result is the same. What the BOJ did was allow the 10-Year…

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A Hawkish Fed & A Defensive Stock Market

As most investors already know, the FOMC hiked interest rates again last week by another 50bps, establishing the Federal Funds rate at 4.25-4.50%. If you listened to Jerome Powell during the press conference, you know that he minced few words and was decidedly hawkish. CPI data came in better than expected, although inflation over 7%…

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All I Want for Christmas Is a Rally

Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is a rally!  Let’s hope Santa comes through… Each and every December, investors wait in anticipation hoping to see what the jolly big guy in the red suit brings. No, I’m not talking about gifts under the tree. I’m referring to a stock market rally that often comes…

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This One Investing Style Is Having a Banner Year

Trend-following managers are having a banner year in 2022 amidst a year of turmoil for traditional portfolios. Trend-following has provided valuable diversification to investors who may have otherwise had much larger losses in traditional allocations. Consider that the SG Trend Index, an index designed to track the 10 largest (by AUM) trend-following CTAs and representative…

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Big Moves for a Forgotten & Unloved Asset Class

Have individual investors forgotten there is more than one asset class? It sure feels that way, because lately, all the excitement seems to be about one asset class – stocks. I get it, stocks have had an incredible rally coming off their October 2022 lows. But I’m not focusing on stocks today. There’s another asset…

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Here’s the Real Catalyst Moving the Market

There will always be an endless string of news bites telling us why the market is moving in one direction or the other. I’m sure you’ve heard them… It’s interest rates or inflation. It’s Opec, Russia, or the latest crypto crash. It’s not that those things aren’t important… But they tend to be more of…

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