China: Trading Opportunity Emerging… Rest of World: Too Late To Be Bearish, Too Early To Be Bullish
China Recently, developments in China indicate an almost chaotic exit to the country’s “zero covid” policy, suggesting potential opportunities in Chinese equities — which are still highly under-owned by global investors. In our view, as a brief, counter-trend technical euphoria in U.S. markets fades, a recession continues to loom over Read more…
Earnings and the Recession Trajectory
In keeping with our perpetual motto, that “earnings are the mother’s milk of stock prices,” we are listening to a lot of earnings calls and digesting a lot of companies’ commentary about their current environment and their anticipation of future developments. We are also looking more broadly at market- and Read more…
The Fed, Inflation, and the Future of the Dollar
Many thanks to those who joined us on our periodic conference call on March 24. We will be editing the call into bite-sized thematic sections and providing the links to you in coming days, to watch or rewatch. If you would like a copy of the slide deck that accompanied Read more…
Interest Rates, Inflation, and Earnings: What Matters Most?
This past weekend we were invited to present our views on the current investment landscape to the local chapter of the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII). As our title indicates, there are many macro factors at work, all of them of fundamental interest to investors. How do we rank Read more…
“Transitory Inflation” Gets Less Plausible, “Stagflation” Gets More Plausible: Guild Basic Needs Index Set to Top 32% Year-on-Year Rise
Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released monthly inflation data, showing the consumer price index (CPI) for all urban consumers rising at a 5.4% year-on-year pace. In the world of official CPI reporting in recent decades, that is hot. At the same time, retirees got a reminder of their vulnerability Read more…
Earnings Growth: Is This As Good As It Gets?
Earnings season is a busy time at Guild, since our management style emphasizes the careful selection of individual stocks rather than broad indices. That means that we typically have two or three dozen company conference calls to listen to; we find that significant details are often neglected in the summary Read more…
Market Summary: January 9, 2020
We mentioned in last week’s Market Summary that we saw heightened terrorism risks in 2020, and right on cue, the next day the U.S. assassinated the leader of Iran’s Quds Force. Iran responded with missile strikes against U.S. facilities in Iraq. The risk of regional destabilization was, briefly, on everyone’s Read more…
Third-Quarter Earnings Help Dispel Recession Fears
As we’re fond of saying, corporate profits are the mother’s milk of stock prices, so every three months, as quarterly U.S. earnings reports come out, we’re busy watching and listening to see what trends are emerging and what companies have to say about the immediate past and about the near Read more…