Heightened concerns about military conflict between Russia and Ukraine have rattled markets the past two weeks. Just today, the S&P 500 was down 2.12% and the Nasdaq was down 2.88%.  The 30 second version is that Russia wants assurances that Ukraine won’t join NATO and has long-term cultural affinity with the territory.  Ukraine wants its...Read More

Today we got the latest update on the Consumer Pricing Index (CPI) and it was a doozy, showing annual inflation of 7.5%.  As you can see on the image above, the Real Fed Funds Rate (Fed Funds Rate Minus CPI) is now a negative 7.4%, which is the lowest since 1974.  This means that money...Read More

The S&P 500 closed out its worst January since March of 2020, declining by 5.3%, despite two strong rallies to end the year.  The Nasdaq fared even worse, declining by 9%.  Stalwart stocks such as Microsoft, Netflix and Nvidia even declined 7.5%, 19%, and 17%, respectively.  The primary culprits for the selloff are concerns relating...Read More

Stock market volatility has continued with a vengeance throughout January as inflationary concerns, and the coinciding likely interest rate increases to combat it, are front and center on investors’ minds.  In addition, while the economy is still reasonably strong, how durable would it be in a higher rate environment?  Throw into that mix geopolitical uncertainty...Read More

It was quite a week for the markets with the Nasdaq dropping 7.6%, the S&P 500 5.7%, and the Dow 4.6%.  The Nasdaq is now down 15.1% from its November high and is off 12% YTD.  Staggeringly, 45% of Nasdaq equities are off 50% from their highs.  There were not many places for solace as...Read More

Market volatility in January has continued with the Nasdaq now down in excess of 11% from its high’s, and the S&P 500 down 7.1%.  Once again, the damage in the market is understated by the indices, as we are currently seeing huge numbers of stocks down 40-80% from their highs.  Fortunately, value stocks have held...Read More

It was quite an interesting first week of the year.  The S&P was down 1.87%, the Dow was down .29%, and the Nasdaq was down a whopping 4.53%.  That really doesn’t tell the whole story of what is going on though.  Roughly 40% of stocks trading on the Nasdaq are now down 50% from their...Read More

I thought it would be helpful to share an options trade in real time, to give you an idea how it works.  Keep in mind, most junk bonds are yielding around 4% and the 10-year Treasury sits at about 1.7%.  One stock that we like long-term is Lending Club (LC).  This is a fintech company...Read More

Happy New Year and I hope that you have a wonderful and healthy holiday season.  The year is off to an excellent start as value stocks have started to catch fire.  Bond yields have risen quite dramatically in the first few days of the year, which has caused the expensive tech stocks to sell off,...Read More

In our last newsletter written on Friday, we wrote about just how much risk market participants are having to take to target a 7.5% return, mostly due to how low yields are on bonds.  The bailout has been that equity markets have performed exceptionally well, but of course now we are starting at valuations that...Read More