2017 Wall Street Forecasts
It’s forecast time on Wall Street and despite the folly of it, individuals and professionals alike pay attention anyway. On average, and according to Bespoke Investment Group, the 15 most prestigious analysts and strategists are calling for a measly five percent gain, which would put the S&P 500 at 2,356 at year end, compared to 2,234 from last week. Collectively, that’s the lowest average forecast since 2005, when the strategists… Read More
Bond Market Fascinations: An Interview
Since the election, interest rates have risen across the curve. The Federal Reserve raised short term interest rates last week for the first time this year, but perhaps more importantly, longer term rates have also risen, which means falling bond prices. Right now, the Barclays Aggregate Bond index is still positive for the year, but the gains are muted, especially compared to the 5.8 percent gain that they enjoyed just… Read More
Dow 20,000
When I graduated from college in 1995 and started in this industry, I was told that the current saying for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was ‘10,000 by 2000,’ referring to the turn of the century. It seemed impossible to me because, at that point, the DJIA was trading below 4,500. Just a few months before, one of my finance professors said the market was overvalued. Less than six months… Read More
Occasionally, the Unlikely Happens
One of the most notable market reactions to the election is the rally in small cap stocks. For the month of November, the S&P 600 Small Cap index gained 12.55 percent, compared to a 3.70 percent gain for the S&P 500 index of large cap stocks. It was fourth best month for the S&P 600 Small Cap index since its inception in 1994. While the results were definitely a surprise,… Read More
Inflation On The Horizon
Interest rates are higher and once again it has a lot of investors paying attention to the interest rate risk in their portfolio. Since the Ten-year yield dropped to 2% at the depth of the financial crisis we have had multiple periods of volatility in the bond market when rates rose only to fall back down or in some cases go even lower. Each time the reason was a little… Read More
Taxes: A Hint of What’s to Come
One of the immediately obvious results of the election is that the tax code is going to change. Republicans have had several plans in the works for years that differ from what Trump has proposed on the trail, so the final result won’t be known for a little bit even though changes are a priority for the President-elect and both houses of Congress. Income Taxes For the sake of simplicity,… Read More
Bond Rally and Rout to Nowhere
It’s not a stretch to say that 2016 has been full of surprises! One of the big surprises from our perspective up until the election was the decline in interest rates and corresponding strong return that bonds delivered. I wrote about the surprising decline in yields as early as February and was going a little bananas as yields throughout the world went negative (here, here and here). We never went… Read More
Trump and the Reflation Trade
At this point, my view is that most of the market activity since the election can really be broken down into two distinct categories. The first category are stock sectors that clearly stand to win or lose from expected changes in government policy. The most obvious winner is bank stocks, which will benefit from lighter regulation. The big loser is hospital stocks that will lose Obamacare related revenue. The second… Read More
Small Cap Surge Continues
One of the interesting elements of yesterday’s trading was that small cap stocks continued to pop, jumping 1.59 percent. I don’t have a particular explanation for this movement, but it’s significant enough that I think it’s worth mentioning and it’s an example of positive volatility. Too often we think of volatility to the downside, but the movement in small cap stocks in the past few days is a good reminder… Read More
Mr. Trump Meets Mr. Market
Most people probably caught the wild swings in the Dow and S&P 500, from a five percent drop in futures trading overnight to a 1.1 percent higher close, with most of the action in the 30 minutes before the market opened. Small cap stocks, which gained 3.1 percent during the trading session are particularly interesting because their relative performance to large cap stocks can be viewed as a signal of… Read More