Much of what has been discussed on financial news networks over the course of the past several days has centered on tariffs and the escalation into a potentially larger trade war. This is the type of negative news that the media enjoys pounding into its readers and listeners. Of course one should not put their head in the sand about potential consequences of an all out trade war, which we believe ...

Today, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) reported the May Small Business Optimism Index increased to the second highest level in the survey's 45-year history. The May reading increased 2.6 points versus the April reading and exceeded the high end of the consensus range.Econoday reports:"the rise in optimism among small business owners was broad-based, with 8 of the 10 componen...

Writing blog commentary serves as a permanent record of one's thoughts at a specific point in time. When reflecting back on earlier posts, expectations and conclusions do not always unfold in the market or economy as anticipated and written about at that time. The benefit is one can adjust future thinking and conclusions if necessary. Sometimes events occur that one simply could not anticipate and...

I had the fortune to read an article yesterday, Uh-oh: Unemployment Falls Below 4%, that noted,"On each occasion that the unemployment rate sank beneath 4%… recession was soon on tap. To remind, it now rests at 3.8%. But why should recession rapidly follow peak employment?"The article included the below chart and provided several reasons that would seem to justify the fact a recession is near when...

As regular readers of this blog know, from time to time I opine on investor sentiment whether it is the AAII Sentiment Survey, the Investor Intelligence Advisors' Sentiment report or the NAAIM Exposure Index. At the moment, suffice to say that these 'investor' sentiment reports are neither overly bullish or overly bearish and conclusions drawn from them are most useful when the data are at extreme...

As seems often the case, it is the bad news that leads headlines and garners the attention of those interested in digesting news reports. In the current economic environment though it seems somewhat difficult to promote the bad news when there seems little of it. I am not saying there is no bad news, but much of the news today that is related to the market and the economy is decidedly positive, ho...

Seems as though much has taken place in the first five months of this year that is newsworthy and impactful to the markets, i.e. Iran, North Korea, tariffs, an increasing 10-year yield, and I could go on. With the volume of news flow though, the equity market has essentially traded sideways this year with the S&P 500 Index price return equaling just 1.78%.It seems with an equity market that has be...

A recent strengthening of the US Dollar has some investment commentary now favoring small cap stocks over large cap stocks. This is partly due to the earnings headwind that can negatively impact multinational companies as they convert foreign earnings back into the Dollar. One recent report titled, Rising Treasury Yields And Dollar Completely Change Investment Themes, noted:"The resumption of the ...

This week's Sentiment Survey report from the American Association of Individual Investors continues to show a falling trend in the level of bullishness of individual investors. This week's bullishness reading was reported at 28.4% and down from 36.9% in the prior week. The current bullishness reading is near the minus 1 standard deviation level and these sentiment measures are most useful as a con...

Investors are experiencing a market exhibiting a higher level of volatility. This heightened volatility is more normal than the lack of volatility experienced in the few years leading up to 2018 and yet the S&P 500 Index is down less than 2% this year.Including the last two months of 2017 (November and December) the S&P 500 Index is up just less than 2%. Given some of the financial commentary one ...