Admit it. You are feeling a little bit edgy these days. While you understand that fear is the elixir of investment opportunity, you also recognize that there is little glory for the last person standing on a sinking aircraft carrier. Most in the media have been touting bull market accomplishments, job gains and economic progress. Writers regularly highlight the monster percentage gains that U.S. stocks have enjoyed since the lows hit in March of 2009 rather than discuss the reality…
My wife and I sold two condominiums near the tail end of 2005. We could not justify owning residences that were 40% more expensive to own than to rent. Simply put, it was time to cash in. Due largely to my comfort with the liquidity of market-based securities, I did not wade back into the real estate investment waters until 2012. I purchased a mixed-use property in a short sale. And today, I operate Pacific Park Financial, Inc. – a…
The S&P 500 has served up a 7%-plus return through the first six-and-a-half months of the year. That’s remarkably impressive when one considers the depth of geopolitical conflict, the implication of structural under-employment, the October end of quantitative easing (QE3) and the strong possibility of a significant change to the legislative branch this November. Naturally, some investment sectors of the economy have outperformed others. Here’s a peek at the 2014 year-to-date results: Sector ETF Performance (1/1-7/21) in 2014 …
Many of the word’s most respected economists projected the direction of interest rates at the start of the year. The average assessment? Experts collectively anticipated that the 10-year Treasury bond yield would rise from 3.03% to 3.41% by the end of 2014. I didn’t see it. For one thing, the well-being of real estate in a below-trend recovery largely depends on rate containment. Yet rising interest rates adversely impacted home sales in the 2nd half of 2013. Second, the Federal Reserve…
Committee members of the U.S. Federal Reserve forecast economic growth every year. Not surprisingly, investors place a great deal of faith in those projections. After all, Fed estimates may impact monetary policy. Estimates for each of the last five years turned out to be exceedingly rosy. Time and again, the “recovery” turned out to be sluggish rather than robust. Granted, the Federal Reserve’s actions succeeded in suppressing interest rates, and ultra-low rates have contributed handsomely to corporate refinancing. Some might…
One of the best web sites for identifying trends in the ETF marketplace is ETFscreen.com. And one of the best features at the data aggregation portal is the Relative Strength Factor (RSf) reporting. According to ETF Screen, the Relative Strength Factor (RSf) represents a percentile ranking of fund performance relative to all other funds in the universe. While it is measured over an entire year, the factor heavily weights recent performance to identify funds that have been accelerating versus those…
Is the enthusiasm for the real estate market built on a solid foundation? Existing home sales fell in March to its lowest pace since July of 2012. Worse yet, sales have declined for seven out of the previous eight months, ever since the the Federal Reserve signaled its intent to slow the pace of its Treasury bond purchases. Surprisingly, a number of media reports have accentuated the positives. For example, the rate of declining home sales has slowed. Some economists…
Don’t blame weakness in home sales on weather conditions. The National Association of Realtor’s pending home sales index has fallen for eight consecutive months. In fact, you can trace the trouble directly back to when 30-year fixed mortgages pole vaulted from 3.5% to 4.5% in the summer of 2013. The rate-sensitive home-building segment has been able to cling to a technical uptrend in spite of increasing uncertainty surrounding home affordability. Yet, the SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB) is down roughly…
One of the more noticeable trends in the current U.S. stock bull has been the flip-flopping of the bears. Steven Russolillo at WSJ.com recently profiled a variety of prominent voices who received accolades in the past for extreme pessimism. Yet, even as price gains started to pile up in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, these folks insisted that the moves higher would not last. Eventually, each relented; each changed course by professing bullish optimism on U.S. equities. And names that had…
Does anyone really think that the monstrous erosion in homebuilder sentiment and the disappearance of mortgage applications are due to the nasty weather? Perhaps one can attribute the sad state of retailer earnings to cold spells and polar vortexes. One can even consider excusing two months of abysmal payroll data to rain, sleet and snow. On the other hand, if weather had been the main issue for home construction companies, sentiment would have risen on the promise of a sun-filled…
