For many investors it may seem difficult to believe since it has been so long ago, but the equity markets do go through negative returning periods. The average intra-year decline for the S&P 500 Index since 1980 is 14% and the last double digit decline was in February 2016, nearly two years ago. So what in the world is going on that has stocks in what seems an uninterrupted climb?The below 'monthl...

In May 2011 crude oil (WTI) hit $113 per barrel and remained elevated at or near that level until the summer of 2014. Given the high price of crude and the expansion of fracking at that time, crude supply continued to grow until peaking in mid 2017. I wrote about the high crude supply level in mid 2017 and its impact on keeping oil prices down, Higher Oil Prices Contend With Too Much Supply And Hi...

Today's weekly AAII Sentiment Survey reports a drop in bullish investor sentiment of 11.1 percentage points to 48.7%. The bullish sentiment reading has been on a steady move higher since November 16 when the bullishness reading was 29.4%. The weekly readings tend to be more volatile and one can look at the 8-week moving average in order to eliminate some of this volatility. As a result, although t...

Our Winter 2017 Investor Letter provides commentary on 2017 and our thoughts and observations on the coming year. Many strategists and investors have either commented on or know from first hand experience, in 2017 the equity market saw very little downside market volatility. Our expectation for 2018 is the market will see a more normal level of volatility. As we comment on in our Investor Letter, ...

For the first part of 2017 low volatility equities were outperforming their high beta counterparts. However, as tax reform talk began to look more a reality in late August, high beta stocks resumed their outperformance that really began in early 2016. As the maroon line in the below chart shows, this high beta outperformance is carrying over into the beginning of 2018.From a sector weight perspect...

I am re-reading Justin Mamis' book, The Nature of Risk, a worthwhile read by the way, and being reminded of the dissemination of information prior to the internet age, which is difficult for many to believe if they did not work in investments at that time. Simply gauging market sentiment prior to each day's market open at that time was much different than it is today, of course. As he notes in his...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average pushed through 25,000 in the first week of 2018. True to form, the President weighed in on this record and indicated 30,000 is the next target, skipping over the 1,000 increment target milestones. His comment was replayed numerous times on television by the financial media Thursday with many commentators spinning his comment as hyperbole, but might a Dow target of ...

One equity market phenomenon that played out in 2017 was the fact larger capitalization stocks were larger contributors to market returns. One way to evaluate this is to review the return of the cap weighted S&P 500 Index versus the equal weighted Guggenheim S&P 500 Index (RSP). As the below chart shows, the equal weighted index underperformed the cap weighted S&P 500 Index by more than 300 basis ...

The end of Friday trading was certainly interesting as the last thirty minutes of the trading day incurred most of the day's half of a percent loss. A few Twitter posts I read were comments in the vain of "this is the selling I have been anticipating." The market is over due for a pullback.Although the first day of January is simply another day on the calendar, much is made of the fact it is Janua...

Below is a list of the most read blog articles in each month during 2017. One interesting commonality for some of the top posts is the fact the ones focusing on investor sentiment tend to gain higher levels of readership. Sentiment is one important market factor we monitor on a fairly regular basis. Secondly, some prior articles seem to remain applicable as 2018 is set to begin. For example, artic...