Consumer Discretionary stocks are interesting in any market conditions because so many of them are subject to cycles that don’t necessarily coincide with normal economic cycles. One of the sub-industries within the sector that I think fit this description is tax services. That is because, moving into the latter stages of winter towards spring, one […]
Read MoreThe Consumer Discretionary sector cuts a wide swath across the economic landscape of the United States. It’s easy to think about the sector as the place you’ll find retail stocks, but the truth is that there are a lot of other businesses within the sector that are much more than just the department stores and […]
Read MoreI know – it’s cheesy to use Valentine’s Day as a tagline today. And it’s also more than a little odd to use it with a tech stock. Even so, NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) is set to make its latest quarterly earnings report after the market closes today, and the fact is that this is a […]
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 MoreIf the market’s recovery since the beginning of the year is legitimate, it becomes more and more tempting to start thinking about expanding our view of the stocks we pay attention to, so we can consider more useful investing opportunities. The temptation for a value-oriented investor is just as real, because when the market experiences […]
Read MoreWatching the market bounce higher off of late-2018 drop that nearly pushed the major market indices to bear market levels means that it starts to get tempting to think that it’s a good time to start jumping back into stocks and get ready for the rally back to the next set of market highs. The […]
Read MoreYesterday I was interested when I saw a headline indicating that since the beginning of the year, only 3 of the 11 total sectors identified by Standard & Poor’s remain at correction levels. That’s a pretty impressive recovery in the last five weeks or so, when every sector in the market was testing bear market […]
Read MoreEven with a nice rally in the market to start the new year, there are a lot of stocks that remain at or near 52-week, or even historic lows. If you like looking for value as I do, that’s actually a pretty nice problem to have; it means that there are plenty of options to […]
Read MoreOne of my favorite methods for paying attention to the broad market, and to track the ebb and flow of institutional interest is to pay attention to sector rotation. As economic data indicates one sector may be more favorably positioned than another, institutions like mutual funds and investment banks will often shift their assets into […]
Read MoreThe energy sector is one of the most cyclical segments of the market. That’s because so much of the sector is tied, to a greater or lesser extent, to the price of a single commodity: oil. From mid-2014 to the beginning of 2016, oil plunged from about $100 per barrel to as low as $26. […]
Read MoreAs the market dropped from historical highs, nearly to bear market territory in the last quarter of the year, the Consumer Staples sector was one of the hardest hit. That seemed a little ironic, since much of the broad decline was driven by uncertainty and fear about the health of the global economy, and the […]
Read MoreSometimes natural phenomena imposes its will on the world with force. Hurricanes in the South or along the Eastern seaboard, tornadoes in the Midwest and massive snowfalls in the North during the winter months are all examples of times when Mother Nature demands attention from the world – even the stock market. At the beginning […]
Read MoreWhen market uncertainty gives way to fear, stocks generally tend to fall, and while the market in the past week has been trying to rebound from lows in December that tested bear market territory for the major indices, the general tone has really focused more on the negative than anything else. If investors and analysts […]
Read MoreOver the last several years, one of the biggest benchmarks the Fed has used to evaluate the need to raise, lower or maintain their interest rate policy has been the employment rate. Every month, the market seems to hold its breath as a new set of unemployment and salary data is made available and everybody […]
Read MorePolitics have been putting more pressure than normal on the stock market of late; after the Trump administration announced a preliminary agreement with China to halt imposition of any new tariffs at the beginning of this month following the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, the market seemed poised to rise a new wave of bullish […]
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