When I co-hosted a national talk radio show in 2000, tech stock inquiries came furious and fast. JDSU or Sun Micro? Powerwave or Cisco? Webvan or theGlobe.com? Few expressed concern about a recession. Few wondered if they might lose money by investing in the New Economy’s Internet favorites. Even fewer callers believed that they might want to take less risk rather than more. Granted, tech stocks may not be as wildly overvalued as they were in 2000. That said, the U.S….
I readily acknowledge that I know precious little about the world of art. In fact, I would struggle to distinguish Picasso from Velazquez, Van Gogh from Monet, or DaVinci from Rembrandt. On the other hand, my brain has retained a bit of knowledge about several artists for one reason or another. Not only did I see the 2002 movie on the life of Frida Kahlo, but I attended a Kahlo exhibit in New York. Similarly, whenever I gaze upon a…
I may not be a passionate fan when it comes to America’s pastime. Still, baseball is serving up a seventh game of a World Series. It rarely gets better than that. Who would have believed that the Los Angeles Dodgers would be one win away from celebrating their greatest wire-to-wire season since Kirk Gibson’s 1988 team? Who would have imagined that the Houston Astros would be poised to claim their first World Series title in franchise history? In a similar…
It does not matter what you call it or how you explain it. The Trump trade. A tax reform rally. Heck, you can attribute the longest uptrend in history without a 3% pullback to global quantitative easing (QE). It makes very little difference. Stocks have been stupendous. Does a record number of trading days without a 3% correction mean anything? Not in isolation. The second-longest streak occurred between January 1995 and January 1996. And yet, back then, the phenomenal ’90s…
Those who do not wish to draw any parallels between today’s stock market and the 1999-2000 tech stock bubble typically claim that “All of those turn-of-the-century dot-coms weren’t making any money. Today’s 2017 superstars — Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX) and Google/Alphabet (GOOG) — make money hand over fist!” The problem with this rationalization is threefold. First, the 1999-2000 tech balloon was not an online-only phenomenon. The ‘Four Horsemen’ that controlled more than half of the market capitalization for the…
There are no shortage of Warren Buffett quotes on successful investing. The one that never fails to reassure me? “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” If one of the greatest investors on the planet strongly suggests that one become risk averse when the herd is throwing caution at the proverbial wind, it makes sense to identify the extent of ill-advised risk taking. For example, the CBOE S&P 500 VIX Volatility index (a.k.a “fear gauge”) closed out September…
Back in 1999, low inflation and fabulous headline unemployment (<5%) warranted a Federal Reserve overnight lending rate of 5.0%. Today, low inflation and desirable headline unemployment (<5%) come with $3.75 trillion in electronic money credits still on the central bank’s balance sheet and a Fed Funds Rate of a mere 1.25%. That is 375 basis points lower than it was with similar economic fundamentals less than two decades ago, not to mention a whole lot of “electronic money printing” since the…
I asked my Vice President at Pacific Park Financial, Inc. if he thought that anything might wobble the stock market. Rob said, “Extra-terrestrials could invade the planet. That MIGHT send the Dow down 0.4% for a few hours in the middle of the day.” “I disagree,” I counter-punched. “If outer space beings visit Earth, they will share secrets on how to travel faster than the speed of light in exchange for shares of Amazon.” “They’ll want bitcoin,” Rob said matter-of-factly….
As long as central banks around the globe are creating monetary credits at a breakneck clip of $200 billion per month, assets from stocks to real estate to higher yielding securities may have a floor underneath them. In particular, saber rattling in North Korea, government shutdown threats, natural disasters from Harvey to Irma, slower job growth and/or the demise of big name retailers may not cause long-lasting stock declines. And therein lies a problem: extreme complacency. The masses are beginning…
In the current business cycle, the Treasury bond yield curve has rarely been flatter. The spread between 30s and 2s is a paltry 1.4% and the spread between 10s and 2s is a meager 0.8%. Historically, the yield curve has been close to flawless as an expansion-contraction indicator. When a flattening curve dipped below ‘zero,’ the inversion foreshadowed seven out of the last 8 recessions. However, the Federal Reserve’s creation of trillions in electronic dollar credits (a.k.a. “quantitative easing” or…
