“Coronavirus exhaustion” may not be a real term – but I do believe it’s a real thing. Over the last few months, it seems that there is real fatigue about hearing more news about COVID-19, vaccine trials, or the importance of hand washing and mask wearing. That comes in the face of increasing infection rates […]
Read MoreThroughout the year, I’ve been fascinated to watch market and consumer trend shift and adjust to pandemic-induced conditions. Not all of those shifts have been pleasant, even if they were necessary; as an analyst, though it is important to understand where those changes fit into the current market and economic landscape. It is also useful […]
Read MoreOne of the interesting threads that comes out of periods of market volatility is a wave of investor rotation into “defensive” sectors, which usually includes Utilities, Consumer Staples and other pockets of the market that investors tend to think of as safe havens when market uncertainty is high. Another favorite topic analysts seem to like […]
Read MoreThrough the summer, one of the best sectors of the stock market’s rally back to, and even above pre-pandemic levels has been the Materials sector. Beginning in mid-May to the end of the last week, the sector had increased in value by more than 71% as measured by the S&P 500 Materials Sector SPDR (XLB). […]
Read MoreSometimes there are forces that affect a sector or industry in such a way that it creates a storyline that extends into not merely weeks, or months, but years. These can be positive or negative, but one of the things that I find interesting as an analyst is to look for those threads and try […]
Read MoreIt’s kind of funny to see how popular opinion among investors shifts under different conditions. A stock market that has recovered in record time from the fastest plunge to bear market low in recorded history, in the face of the pandemic that prompted the downturn in the first place continues practically unabated, has prompted investors […]
Read MoreThe tech sector has been a bright spot during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are multiple factors that I think are contributing to that reality. Those include signs of increasing recovery and economic activity in China, where a major portion of manufacturing activity for semiconductor companies takes place, and the ability of a large number of […]
Read MoreSometimes market, economic, and other forces work on a global scale to turn against an industry in such a way that even long-term forecasts remain uncertain. The Aerospace industry is a good example of what I mean; the global spread of COVID-19, which as of this morning has now taken more than 900,000 lives brought […]
Read MoreWhile investing strategies fall in and out of favor with popular market news media types and talking heads depending on the shifting winds of opinion and popular preference at any given time, I think value analysis provides the best way to find stocks that you can work with in any market or economic environment. That […]
Read MoreAs an analyst, I take a lot of interest in trying to find reasons the market stages some of the moves it makes. The factors, geopolitical, economic, or emotional, that drives trends over any time period can be widely varied, and sometimes it’s interesting to see not only what is influencing the market today, but […]
Read MoreIf you read my highlights in this space on a regular basis, you’ve seen me highlight stocks in the semiconductor industry pretty frequently. It’s an interesting segment of the market to me for a number of different reasons. Over the last decade-plus, it’s been one of the highest-performing pockets of the market, arguably one of […]
Read MoreWhen it comes to identifying stocks that might make useful investments, there are as many strategies as there are people. You can break these strategies into any different number of categories. I like to differentiate between strategies by thinking first about the amount of time I might actually plan to hold the stock in question; […]
Read MoreThe last three days have marked the market’s biggest three-day drop since March, when coronavirus-driven shutdowns brought the global economy to a screeching halt and sent the market plunging to bear market levels in less than a month. For many analysts, myself included, the drawdown has been long overdue, as all three major market indices […]
Read MoreOne of the ironies of the stock market right now is that if you look at the major market indices, it’s easy to say that, right or wrong, investors continue to look for a V-shaped recovery in the U.S. economy. That’s the hope that, while the impact of COVID-19 on virtually every sector in the […]
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