I’ve been writing a lot about elevated valuations for equities and the absolutely horrid risk/reward in almost all bonds.  I’ve kept the same graphics at the top of this email for the last month as I want to emphasize the importance.  We’ve also covered inflation, which is rearing its ugly head, with the September PPI...Read More

Today the Case/Shiller housing price data came out and it showed prices up nearly 20% YoY. Brent crude oil touched $80 per barrel and is on course for its best month since February. Treasury yields have risen quite dramatically over the last week, with the 10-year now above 1.5%, the highest since June.  Natural gas...Read More

Rob Arnott of Research Affiliates is one of the best investment strategists around. He wrote a fantastic article on the opportunity in value investing, so instead of going on about it, I’m just going to let you read it to get a good grasp of the opportunity in front of us.  Here was one quote...Read More

Global markets have sold off pretty hard to start the week.  Most of the narrative surrounds the Chinese property market and one of their largest developers, Evergrande.  China’s government is clamping down on leverage and demanding many industries to buy in, literally, to their social objectives via cash “donations”, cheaper housing, etc.  Both the Shanghai...Read More

  Interest rates are without a doubt one of the most important drivers of investment returns, if not the most significant.  Warren Buffett has mentioned in the past that there is almost a reverse gravitational impact of interest rates, in that lower rates tend to raise equity valuations.  Conversely, higher interest rates tend to pressure...Read More

    The image above shows the S&P Growth/Value ratio. As you can see, this ratio has hit a new marginal high, to an all-time record.  This means that the valuation spread between growth and value has never been more extreme.  Interestingly, we saw a similar pattern occur in 2000, right before the Nasdaq began...Read More

We are beginning to see a bit of increasing volatility in equity markets arise, as concerns around Covid-19 and the Delta variant have caused increases in positive test results and restrictions, albeit on a far smaller basis than what occurred last year.  We’ve been writing about the market getting a bit ahead of itself for...Read More

Wall Street, like many other industries, is designed to sell you what you think you want. It is like a candy store offering you a wide variety of delectable offerings, that while tasty, might not be best for your health.  Good investments don’t need massive promotional campaigns to sell prudent investors.  Usually a paragraph or...Read More

2020 was a truly unique year from a stock market perspective in that the most expensive stocks got more expensive, while the cheapest stocks got cheaper.  All of this was in spite of the year starting with the spread between value and growth already at near-record levels, with many astute investors betting on mean reversion. ...Read More

Today the U.S. consumer prices numbers were released.  The numbers topped forecasts significantly, increasing by 0.8% from the prior month, reflecting gains in nearly every major category.  To put it into context, the gain in the overall CPI was twice as much as the highest projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists.  It is clear...Read More