The advent of a new year brings with it the prospect of new challenges and new opportunities to embrace. Whether you are the type to set New Year’s resolutions or not, for most of us turning the calendar from one year to the next usually includes some thought about what’s happened and what’s coming up. […]
Read MoreFor investors, the holiday season generally marks a time when consumer activity should be healthy and demand for consumer goods will be high. That’s a big reason that the latter part of the year, as the colder months set in across the country that retail stocks often start to see healthy increases in prices. That […]
Read MoreNo matter whether you prefer to focus on short-term trading strategies that emphasize a stock’s current price momentum or longer-term methods focusing on fundamental strength and a stock’s value-based price, there are a myriad number of issues that come at you and demand attention. Some of those elements can be foreseen to a certain extent; […]
Read MoreI’ve written quite a bit in this space about my opinion that the Consumer Staples sector – and more specifically, stocks in the Food Products and Food and Staples Retail industries – are smart places to find good values in today’s market. That’s because most of the stocks in these industries are benefitting from the […]
Read MoreDifferent investors react in different ways to the price action that drives a stock from a low to high and back again. For growth investors, for example, a stock at or near historical highs usually means they’ll sit up and start trying to figure out how much further it could go up, while they discard […]
Read MoreSince the beginning of this year, the energy sector has rebounded strongly from the pandemic-driven pressures that had kept prices – particularly in crude oil – depressed throughout 2020. From a November 2020 low point at around $34, for example, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude more than doubled to an early July peak at around […]
Read MoreThere’s a popular saying that you might have heard in a lot of different settings outside of the stock market: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and smells like a duck…then it’s a duck.” It’s interesting to me that I haven’t heard or seen the saying used when talking about stocks, […]
Read MoreI have written quite a bit about how I like to pay attention to stocks in the Food Products industry when market conditions become more uncertain and broad volatility starts to increase. That’s because while the industry itself can hardly be described as disruptive – in fact, I’ve seen analysts throughout the year dismiss the […]
Read MoreThere is a pretty significant difference in the way different investors perceive a stock in a long-term upward trend. For growth oriented-investors, the longer the upward trend, the more attractive the stock is, simply because the expectation is that the longer, bullish trend will outlast any near-term, bearish sentiment or momentum the stock may see. […]
Read MoreOne of the sectors that I like to pay attention to as a barometer for the underlying relative health of the economy is the Materials sector, because the companies that comprise it produce or mine many of the raw materials that make up the building blocks used to create most of the finished goods we […]
Read MoreOver the last year, one of the best sectors of the stock market’s rally back to, and even above pre-pandemic levels has been the Materials sector. From last year to a fresh high this week, the sector had increased in value by almost 70%, as measured by the S&P 500 Materials Sector SPDR (XLB). This […]
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