What tends to generate less buzz in market news and other media outlets than the attention that is focused on the Tech sector that has dominated most of the past year is another COVID-driven trend that I think is also very important and has a few different interesting layers to it. Stay-at-home orders, shuttered restaurants […]
Read MoreI’ve been writing quite a bit lately about positioning yourself conservatively to keep trading in a functional way even when the market is very extended. The commentary lately, and even market activity (increasing bond yields, rising inflation uncertainty), seems to be grappling with this question too. One of the biggest elements that comes to play […]
Read MoreIt has been interesting to see how market commentary seems to have shifted as much as possible away from COVID-related news since the beginning of the year. In one sense, I think that could be a good thing, since there are a lot of issues, economic, political, and otherwise that are worthy of attention. This […]
Read MoreSince the beginning of the year, broad market momentum has mostly stalled. Investors seem to be confronting the reality that the pandemic’s economic effects appear set to linger well into the rest of this year, even as vaccinations across the country begin to increase and new vaccine candidates appear ready to apply for emergency use […]
Read MoreFor the stock market, 2021 clearly appears to reflect investor’s desire to move away from the pandemic-dominated conversations of 2020 and look ahead. One of the ways that has been seen over the last few weeks is in a pretty broad rotation away from conservative, defensive-oriented stocks in sectors like Consumer Staples and into more […]
Read MoreOne of the early threads of this new year, aside from commentary and opinion about the political landscape, rising COVID-19 infections (not to mention a new strain that appears to be more infectious than the first) is the way the Financial sector has been among the sectors that have led the market higher. Two weeks […]
Read MoreThroughout the course of the last couple of years I’ve found the Consumer Staples sector, and specifically the Food Products industry a good place to find useful investing opportunities. In 2018 and 2019, a lot of that was being driven by international trade concerns that increased uncertainty in the marketplace. 2020 made the industry a […]
Read MoreIf you think strictly about price performance and what the price of a stock is now relative to where it was in the past – in particular, relative to where it was on a pre-pandemic basis – it’s pretty easy to understand why so much attention has been paid to Tech stocks that make remote […]
Read MoreBeing a contrarian investor can mean a few different things. To some, contrarian investing is correlated with value investing, and I think that makes sense in a lot of ways. For one thing, being a contrarian means recognizing that all price trends – up or down – are finite in length and duration. That means […]
Read MoreUncertain economic conditions have proven to be a good time to think about stocks that most people tend to overlook because they’re “boring.” These are stocks that also tend to operate in counter-cyclical fashion. It’s been interesting – but not surprising – to see a bit of a resurgence in stocks in the Food Products […]
Read MoreGetting ready to close out a year that most of us are probably anxious to put behind us and look ahead to the future has been a common theme lately on social media. I think it’s certainly true that exhaustion about COVID and everything associated with it has most people hoping for better things in […]
Read MoreGood news about continued vaccine approval and deployment, along with Congress’ approval of a second stimulus package over the weekend has the major indices very near the highs they set last week. There is a not-too-surprising temptation to think about the end of the pandemic and start looking for all of the ways that the […]
Read MoreGiven the way the market – and let’s face it, just about all of us – have been focusing all year long on pandemic-related news, including the prospects for practical vaccines, it’s safe to say that this week could see some uncertainty coming back into play. Positive news about clinical trials for a couple of […]
Read MoreI hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! I’ve written a lot in this space about my belief in defensive sectors and industries for more than a year now. The market is showing a lot of bullish momentum right now, but I think the initial relief that I attribute mostly to decreasing political uncertainty is […]
Read MoreUncertain economic conditions have proven to be a good time to think about stocks that most people tend to overlook because they’re “boring.” These are stocks that also tend to operate in counter-cyclical fashion. It’s been interesting – but not surprising – to see a bit of a resurgence in stocks in the Food Products […]
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