The bears have their hero in Nouriel Roubini. Yet the bulls have a star in Laszlo Birinyi, a long-time money manager who believes the cyclical bull market has just begun. Birinyi’s belief is that the current rally may last through the presidential election of 2012. His evidence? He trusts price-to-sales more than price-to-earnings, and the P/S [...] Continue Reading...
Over the last month, the single worst performing S&P Sector ETF was the SPDR Select Health Care (XLV). It picked up a mere 3% whereas the S&P 500 (SPY) picked up 7%. The reasons may be two-fold: (1) Health care is a defensive segment, and typically produces both smaller declines in corrective phases as well as [...] Continue Reading...
Let me get this out of the way… I am NOT calling the next crash. Let the doomsayers from Whitney to Roubini to Farrell ply their trades as perma-bears… that’s not the way that I roll. Time and again, however, I discuss an investment methodology that is simple to implement and focuses on what you can [...] Continue Reading...
Perhaps the most common question that I receive from financial journalists at popular publications (e.g., Investor’s Business Daily, Smart Money, Business Week, etc.) regards ETF risk. For example, with U.S. stock assets eclipsing their January highs, and coming off a 9.2% correction, writers are asking, ”What do you see as the next big hurdle?” In truth, it would be [...] Continue Reading...
This morning, I read Richard Shaw’s commentary with a great deal of interest (Brick Chart View of Major Indexes). In the editorial, Shaw explained the nature of “brick charting,” including: (1) Time Independence. Like Point & Figure Charts, new blocks (bricks) rely on price changes alone, and they may not occur for several time increments. (2) Recovery. The [...] Continue Reading...
There may be 33 million people in Canada. All of them, and perhaps most of the world’s citizens, may have cheered its gold medal victory over the Americans in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Yet investors have been cheering Canada on for years with iShares MSCI Canada (EWC) outperforming the S&P 500 SPDR Trust (SPY) in the previous decade. In [...] Continue Reading...
According to Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at S&P Equity Research, bull markets typically reclaim as much as 4/5 of bear market losses in the inaugural year. Using this historical logic, the S&P 500 should have made it as far as 1385, not merely 1140. Stovall sees this underachieving bull… one that has recaptured about 1/2 of its losses from the [...] Continue Reading...
I think there’s a television program called, “Million Dollar Listing.” I’ve never seen it. Instead, I find myself in scores of conversations with real estate professionals. And if you speak to enough of them about their industry, your head will start to spin. The optimists will tell you that the overall sales volume trend has picked up considerably, [...] Continue Reading...
If we’re close to seeing 1000 U.S. exchange-traded products, what percentage of those ETFs or ETNs represent Apple (AAPL)? The answer is… 10%. There are more than 100 ETFs with exposure to tech’s best-known innovator. Most broad-based large-cap ETFs may have a 2% weighting. A variety of tech ETFs target 6%-8%. Yet there are number of [...] Continue Reading...
It’s been a spectacular week for the bulls… no doubt about it. Both the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 gained ground in all 5 trading sessions. In fact, the iShares Russell 2000 (IWM) hit fresh 52-week highs, closing in on territory not seen since the Lehman bankruptcy (9/2008). Some attribute the new-found desire for stock assets to better-than-anticipated jobs numbers [...] Continue Reading...
