Today's Sentiment Survey release by the American Association of Individual Investors reported a  15.1 percentage point decline in bullish sentiment. Of course this report comes one day after the 800+ drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index. Two-thirds of the decline moved to the bearish camp with the other one-third moving to the neutral category. When all is said and done, the three catego...

The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for the month of September was reported at 107.9 and just slightly missed consensus expectations of 108.0 for the month. Also, the Index declined .9 points from the recording setting 108.8 reported in August. However, the September reading represents the third highest reading recorded in the 45-year history of the Small Business Optimism Index. In short small...

Not too long ago the concern around interest rates was the fact the yield curve was flattening and the Fed's rate hikes might end up inverting the interest rate curve by pushing short rates above long term rates. This past week though the focus seems to have shifted to a quickly rising long term 10-Year U.S. Treasury rate and a resulting steepening of the yield curve.Following are several article ...

As of Wednesday's market close, the S&P 500 Index is up 11% on a year to date basis, while most bond strategies have struggled to breakeven at best. Longer term bonds have been the most challenged as evidenced in the below chart. The iShares 20+ year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) is down 7.7% year to date. Through Wednesday's close, the 30-year U.S. Treasury is down 11.1% year to date. Of course, as int...

In our recent article, “Respect The Predictive Power Of An Inverted Yield Curve”, a colleague noted that investors ignore this highly reliable indicator at their own peril. Today, I will argue for why investors should perhaps ignore this highly reliable indicator because “it may be different this time”.To be clear, it may not be different this time, but it is always worth considering both sides o...

During the early part of this year quite a bit was written about the outperformance of small cap stocks versus large cap stocks. One commonly referenced reason for the outperformance was based on the trade and tariff issues and the potentially greater negative impact this would have on large cap stocks. It does seem though the trade issues are slowly being resolved and this headwind subsiding for ...

Investors directed sizable investment fund flows towards equities for the week ending 9/19/2018 as reported by the Investment Company Institute (ICI) on 9/26/2018. Total equity inflows for that week equaled $10.2 billion dollars. This completely reversed the $10.4 billion net outflows reported over the prior seven weeks that ended 9/12/2018. Bonds continue to receive inflows as well and equaled $4...

September this year certainly seemed like an odd month. For example, the fifth business day of the month was Tuesday, September 10 as Labor Day in the U.S. was on Monday September 3. The first business day was September 4. The end of the month is this Friday, September 28. I mention this as the Presidential cycle is getting more attention since the mid term elections are a little more than a month...

In the mid 1990's famed investor Peter Lynch stated, "Far more money has been lost by investors in preparing for corrections, or anticipating corrections, than has been lost in the corrections themselves." With this quote in mind it seems a number of investment pundits are once again trying to sell fear regarding the current equity market. This morning I ran across the following chart on Twitter.S...

One morning my then 4-year-old daughter, we’ll call her Bee, asked me “What are the rules of the family?” Kids have a way of asking you deep questions when you are least prepared. My quick answer was: Stick together Love each other Have fun These were all things she could understand given her limited scope of experiences and frame of referen...