Judging if the near 37-year bull market in interest rates is over is not a simple exercise. Many bond pundits have made the call recently. The pattern of lower yield highs and lower yield lows have continued for decades. Calling the end of this trend
One element of technical market analysis that is often a leading indicator is called breadth analysis. There are many different breadth indicators. Today, we look at the percentage of stocks above their own 200-day average given that we bounced off that level again last week.
In 2016, Sweden introduced the idea of creating a digital currency. Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, was the first central bank in the 1660s to issue paper notes. The amount of notes and coins in circulation had been cut in half globally in the past
I have said many times over the years that the bond market is often the best forecaster of the economy, but it’s not typically until the yield curve inverts (when short term yields become higher than long term yields) that we must worry about what
According to FactSet, 52 companies in the S&P 500 have issued negative EPS guidance and 53 companies in the S&P 500 have issued positive EPS guidance. While this sounds quite balanced, history shows that companies issuing negative EPS guidance is well below the five-year average
In 1994 when I did an internship on Wall Street with many of the top technical analysts I learned many important lessons. One that stands out is that a market is a sum of its parts. If you are going to forecast a market index
There has been a lot of talk recently about the similarities between the 1987 period and today. The current market volatility looks a lot like the period before the 1987 market crash. Like today, economic growth was strong, inflation pressures were rising, and the economy
Germany has finally formed a coalition government and the far-right AfD (Alternative for Deutschland) is not the official opposition. Current poling has their support now higher than Merkel’s coalition partner SPD. In Italy, we saw the Eurosceptic alternative M5S party and other hard right parties
Looking out over the next year at what the most likely economic scenario is should help to position your portfolio. When making longer-term forecasts you have to start with some assumptions. The most reasonable assumption is that the Fed will be raising rates, possibly a
There are several indicators and behaviors I like to see to suggest a trading bottom has developed. First, and most important, we need to see strong oversold conditions in market breadth indicators. One of my favorite is the McClellan Oscillator. It looks at the trend