I have been alerted that today is Epiphany thanks to my Google calendar and its incessant nagging. That's what I get for clicking the 'holiday' setting, but it helps me avoid confusion since every day is a holiday when you're retired. The original 'Epiphany', 2000 years ago, marked the realization of something that had seemed implausible but later became apparent. Do I have any epiphanies for the year ahead? I list a few below in no particular order, and they are subject to

It's time to reflect on an excellent year for stocks despite a bad year for almost everything else. If ever there was a year that defied prediction, it surely was 2025. If you had told someone every headline in advance, like a cowering Warren Buffett, you would have been a seller. You also would have missed out on one of the best stock market years in history. But such is the nature of risk markets. They behave as they always have, on the anticipations of the crowd. Once the

Investors can see the 2025 finish line now. With median fund returns ranging from 15 to 30+%, the trick will be to avoid stumbling at the tape. The huge home runs of the past year are generating conflicting emotions for stock market players. Gold, Emerging Markets, and selective AI winners have produced eye-popping returns of 30-50%. And losing trades in Bitcoin are giving tax loss sellers an excuse to purge losers, such as Coinbase. With such enormous embedded gains in many

The end of the Fed's rate-cutting cycle may be tomorrow. The widely anticipated cut, the primary catalyst behind the market's recent rise, is unlikely to spur stocks higher. But it will be a necessary precondition for the acceleration of the economy that many, including myself, see in the year ahead. You may be asking, "What acceleration?" Isn't the anecdotal 'whisper' data on U.S. employment weak? Perhaps, but that stale data set will be in the rear-view mirror shortly once

In my world, the second most important person in the United States government is not the Vice President, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or the Speaker of the House. - especially now that Trump has them all under his tiny thumb. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve matters more than those sycophants. As long as the global financial system is under the hegemony of the U.S. dollar, the Fed maintains its primacy in financial asset valuation and direction, full stop. It's w

Investment professionals often use the Greek alphabet to describe market analytics. Risk is quantified by the term Beta, which any hapless meme trader can buy with the click of a keypad - at least until last week blew them all up. Options traders use Delta, Gamma, Theta, Vega, and Rho because the mathematics of derivative market analysis is exceedingly complex. It also makes them seem smarter to their clients. However, the holy grail of active management is still Alpha. It

As I have been saying, it's time to buy the dip. But what to buy? The answer may surprise you. Just look down at your feet. A chilling 'AI Bubble' narrative is suddenly dominating the investing zeitgeist. NVDA will report earnings tomorrow, and fear and loathing are already priced in. Despite last month's hyped-up Investor presentation that featured CEO Jensen Huang's "half a trillion" backlog revelation, over the past two weeks, the stock erased the Pavlovian rally it experi

Today is not the day to talk about the stock market. It is a day to remember those who have fallen in the service of protecting our freedom. Here is a poem written by my 9-year-old grandson. As a new generation relearns this lesson, it gives me hope that the sacrifice of our veterans will never be forgotten. Lest we forget.

So, as a good contrarian would do, I'm buying. One could be excused for not paying attention to the market this year. With your Social Media feeds crammed full of political news, it has been hard to pay full attention to the bull run that started in April. However, "Independence Day" marked the low point for the cycle of economic deceleration caused by previous Fed rate hikes. The massive investor sentiment hit that resulted is still in repair mode. A couple of scary headline

I've never met a metaphor I didn't like. I was reminded of this after hearing from an old Bay St. friend this week - (sorry, DM, but you are old now). The Goldman Sachs market note he sent used the term 'beachball underwater' to describe the current state of the stock market. I was cited by my pal as the originator of the term, despite the lack of any confirming evidence. I probably heard it from somebody else back in the early part of my career. It was perhaps an ex-floor t