Below is a fabulous article that was in the Wall Street Journal outlining why banks are extremely attractive investment right now, especially in relation to something like Commercial Real Estate. Much of this is due to the greatly distorted political environment in which the banks are still vilified for the Financial Crisis that ended 7...Read More

Stock markets around the globe have been panicking on fears of Chinese growth.  Today’s made news was the China manufacturing index slipped deeper into contraction territory.  The Dow is now down just about 10%, which is correction territory.  In this type of environment, just about all stocks fall.  Yesterday many of the momentum stocks that...Read More

Value investing is a somewhat broad term, but the concept is basically the idea of buying securities at a discount to “intrinsic value.”  By doing so and by being willing to take a longer-term approach, the value investor is able to invest with a large margin of safety and also achieve better investment returns.  It...Read More

Hello Everybody, In year 6 of a bull market, it has become clear that performance chasing is very much in vogue.  We’ve taken a number of calls from individuals who’ve been thrilled at their ability to profit in positions by holding them for a few days or weeks.  In addition, performance tracking on a monthly...Read More

Read Part I – A Review of 2014 and 2015 Preview from Chief Investment Officer Tim Travis.   Part I – A Review of 2014 and 2015 PreviewRead More

While most people were recovering from a gluttonous Thanksgiving, the energy markets were extremely active last Friday.  The price of U.S. crude oil fell 10.2% in the day, while energy stocks were massacred.  The primary reason for the decline was OPEC’s decision to keep production steady, despite calls from many of its constituents to cut...Read More

Today, the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article on the weak performance of “blue chip” stocks such as Coca Cola, IBM, AT&T and Wal-Mart this year.  “Blue chips” is a term that has no relevance to me but has been and still is a popular term for much of the investment community.  A “blue chip”...Read More

On behalf of our Chief Investment Officer Tim Travis… Hello Everybody, In today’s WSJ, there is an interesting article about the largest U.S. pension plan’s decision to exit their hedge fund portion of the portfolio.  The rationale behind the decision is that the hedge funds have underperformed the overall market and the costs are higher...Read More

Below are two interesting articles from today’s WSJ.  One discusses the fact that because stock prices in general are relatively expensive, but with bond yielding being so low, it is very possible that this type of range-bound market that we have seen this year could continue.  The second article discuss bond yields, which have just...Read More

Below is an interesting article about Hedge Funds underperforming in 2013.  It has been an interesting year thus far with a buoyant equity market, and hedge fund short positions are likely hurting quite a bit.  There are a lot of really overvalued securities in my estimation, which have gone up quite a bit, burning shorts’...Read More