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

You may be asking - What dip? Last week, I posited the possibility of a shallow dip. We got one - sort of, unsatisfactory as it was. But it did exhibit all the necessary attributes. Sentiment declined sharply. The VIX spiked. Bonds outperformed stocks. Financial fraud made front-page news. All that this correction lacked was magnitude. The market is undefeated when it comes to confounding the consensus. The seasonal weakness was pretty temporary. Earnings are now back in the

Having watched prices surge this year, investors might be wondering what gold is saying. Is it higher inflation expectations stemming from tariff-induced price hikes? Is it the threat of regional conflicts spilling over into global wars? Is it the de-globalization of trade creating demand for alternatives from foreign central banks? Is there rampant profligacy of government spending as populist policies expand debt-to-GDP ratios? Answer: a) Yes. ___