Markets This Week

After a brief moment of optimism (intoxication?) after Fed Chair Powell took 75-basis-point rises in the Fed funds rate off the table, stock markets accelerated their decline. The damage to stocks is more evident internally than externally.  On the surface, the correction has only started getting to the broad indices. Read more…

As earnings season unfolds, we are hearing many company managements mentioning foreign exchange issues as headwinds — when you hear “currency neutral” numbers being reported, it is likely that under the hood, there are negative foreign-exchange effects to be found.  A strong dollar will hurt many companies which are reliant Read more…

What is Happening In China?  Shanghai, and many other Chinese cities, are once again under extreme covid lockdown conditions — the most stringent since April 2020, as China pursues its apparent “zero covid” policy.  The images and videos percolating through to western social media are profoundly disturbing, and prompt a Read more…

Earnings season is underway.  As we wrote last week, we expect a down quarter for real earnings; of most interest to us will be the tone of management forward guidance.  We are already hearing a lot of talk about rising costs and ongoing supply chain issues.  We’ll be listening closely Read more…

The points raised in our main post this week all suggest to us that the shelf-life of the traditional, indexed, 60/40 portfolio is close to expiration.  Bonds were long thought to be — and long functioned as — counterweights to the equities in a portfolio, and would blunt volatility, since Read more…

Markets have staged a strong rally following the volatility that accompanied the start of the war in Ukraine.  The S&P 500 has rallied 10% from its bottom, and the NASDAQ 15%.  (The NASDAQ is still 10% down from its peak, and the S&P is down about 4% from its peak.)  Read more…

Our Upcoming Conference Call: Optionality Is King We have written before that the investment climate has changed dramatically.  The cost of money is rising, and the risks of illiquidity episodes are rising.  This is probably not the time to be locking yourself into anything, unless you absolutely must (e.g., you Read more…

Stay liquid.  This is not the time to be locking yourself into anything unless you absolutely must (e.g., you need to make a 1031 exchange).  In our view, current conditions and the speed of current developments indicate a cardinal truth for investing in 2022: liquidity and optionality are king.  This Read more…

Please join us for our periodic conference call at 10 AM Pacific on March 24, 2022 — there will be a lot to discuss, and we welcome your questions.  We’ll discuss ways you can increase your liquidity, flexibility, and optionality as the world moves into a more volatile and unpredictable future. Read more…

Vladimir Putin pulled the trigger and has begun an apparently full-scale attempt to occupy Ukraine — or at least enough of it to create a permanent instability that will forestall its accession to NATO.  We have long identified this issue as the lynchpin of Russia’s policy in its “near abroad.”  Read more…