Market to BAC and T; Drop Dead
Or should it be the other way around?Bank of America (BAC) closed below $5 yesterday during the regular session although traded above the figure after hours. The whole sector was down a lot yesterday; I saw articles blaming Europe and others blaming th...
Foreign Markets in 2011? Not So Good
Bespoke Investment Group had a post the other day with the YTD returns of all the stock markets in the world. Of the 78 that they track only ten were positive. Of the ten that were positive, only six were up more than 2%. There are still two weeks left...
Sunday Morning Coffee
We all know that the concept of retirement will, by necessity, look much different for many now-working age Americans than what it did for the parents and grandparents of now-working age Americans. Over the years I've tried to explore this inevitabilit...
The Big Picture for the Week of December 18, 2011
A reader asks;Will you comment a little further on deflation, disinflation and inflation? With gold on a slide, the euro approaching parity, world deleveraging, and the US consumer only shopping the "blue light specials" - seems that the economic clima...
What Happens if Correlations Change?
You probably are aware that gold has gotten taken to the woodshed recently. YTD it is still up 9.8% (as measured by client holding GLD) but it is down over 15% since peaking in August.The chart is a very near term comparison of the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD...
Process
In the last few days I've made a couple of references to the 2012 Outlook article I've been working on for Seeking Alpha. In the follow up questions that came back on the original submission there was a question that in the context of the article did n...
Portfolio Expectations
Over the weekend I spelled out a scenario where I think at some point in 2012 there will be a large, fundamentally unjustified lift in the S&P 500. I also said that I would sell the rally if it happened. I think it is plausible as opposed to the im...
Thinking Long Term
I spent most of the Patriots Redskins game yesterday working on a 2012 outlook article for Seeking Alpha. I had answered one question for Saturday's post and then the other 19 yesterday. This was interesting in terms of comparing how I answered the que...
Sunday Morning Coffee
I am starting to concoct a wacky theory about US equities for 2012. A part of how I think markets work is that price performance can deviate from fundamentals and obviously when this occurs there is not necessarily any reason it just happens. Sometimes...
The Big Picture for the Week of December 11, 2011
Every December I am fortunate enough to be asked to participate in various roundtable (ish) panels. The way they work is that a word document goes out and we are asked weigh in on a multitude of topics. One of them is due in a couple of days so I thoug...
Friday Look In
Quick post to start what will be a very busy day for me.Yesterday the S&P 500 was down 2.1% and this morning the futures indicate a 14 point upside open about two hours before the open. If this lift sticks throughout the day then we will hear a lot...
What Is Diversification?
Yesterday I found this post by NYU professor Aswath Damodaron that tried to reconcile the divergence between Mark Cuban saying diversification is for idiots and John Bogle's (essentially) saying that diversification is all that matters, advocating owni...
