The cover story in yesterday’s USA Today Money section speculated that investors’ reduction in their common stock holdings could be a market malady that lasts for years.  It prompted me to re-visit a study I did for our 24th Annual Mission/Marathon Investment Conference in April 2007.
At the time, we posed the question as to which [...]

As interest rates continue to decline, we increasingly receive questions about how we can obtain a greater yield on portfolio assets.  As I have frequently said, we can always obtain more yield if we simply accept more risk, either in the credit quality of the assets we hold or in the maturity of those assets.
For [...]

This entry will be shorter than usual, as my wife Carmen and I are celebrating our 24th anniversary today with our daughter’s family in San Diego.
The week ended with stocks showing a negative bias but no clear directional conviction. The major equity indexes closed mixed with the Dow, S & [...]

Unless you are extremely well off ($10 million or more in liquid assets for individuals or families), fight the urge to retire in this era of great financial uncertainty.  The United States and much of the world has embarked on an unprecedented venture to absolve the financial sins of the current and immediate past generations [...]

ISI Group technical analyst Jeff deGraaf highlighted a negative volume trend in the stock market’s decline from the April highs and in the recovery from the July lows.  The declining markets saw trading volumes in May and June climb to 116% and 113% respectively of their longer-term averages.  When the markets rallied in July, volume [...]

Trading volume remained subdued during another summer week, enabling professional traders to dominate market activity with their ultra-short-term orientation.  We experienced several strong market price moves through the week: up about 150 Dow points, down 100+, up 100+, down almost 200, up almost 150, down 175, up 150, down 100, up 100, before drifting off [...]

Another week of striking volatility closed on a high note today. The Dow was up 102 points after relatively benign news came out about European banks following their “stress test.”  Only seven of 91 tested banks were said to have “failed”.  Some cynics suggest that not much stress was applied.  Details of the testing procedure [...]

I corresponded this week with a business associate who is running for the U.S. House of Representatives from another state. First, I sent a contribution to his campaign, because he is prepared to push for term limit legislation. I have long argued that legislators will not concentrate major efforts on the solutions to [...]

We are in the process of working on our quarterly commentary letter, which we will send out soon.  It will be posted on this site after we have sent it to clients.
As we suggested last week, the stock market went into the long Independence Day weekend significantly oversold and in need of “at least a [...]

Last week’s post concluded with the statement: “The next week or two could go a long way toward determining the market’s direction for the summer.” Earlier in the post we indicated: “This week has not been pretty, but neither has it done any significant technical damage.” By contrast, this week’s negative market action [...]