Come on in, the water's fine. But can anybody tell when it's time to get out? It has been said that valuation is a lousy timing tool in the stock market. But now that the global bond bears are in the ascendancy, I'm paying more attention to valuation. It's not like anybody has been arguing that stocks are cheap over the last couple of years; they haven't been cheap since the 'Covid-19' bottom in 2020! The chart below is evidence of that. Admittedly, the rally since the 'Liber

DJT has some 'splaining to do. He got us into this mess, so he'd better hurry up and get us out of it. The market has been merrily heading toward new highs until today. I guess nobody believes he won't capitulate at some point, but when? Welcome to the orange hair-trigger world. Recent market behaviour has given us a lesson in humility. The linkage between the front page and the business pages seems irreparably broken. As I wrote a few weeks ago, the S&P 500's elevated level

When two opposing forces have equal power, a stalemate occurs. That sums up risk markets today. Investors find themselves torn between two conflicting motivations: continue playing the AI-driven bull market strength or sound the retreat amid rising rates and slowing economic growth. This dynamic has created a stalemate in investors' risk appetite, leading to a trading range market. Earnings are rising at the fastest pace since the post-COVID recovery period. The price-earning

The fog of war has finally descended on Wall Street. After a narrowly based snap-back, markets are poised to contract once again as the second sober thoughts of higher-for-longer oil prices dampen economic hopes and, by extension, risk appetite. The stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz is less a Black Swan event than a 'known unknown'. And investors have seen oil price spikes driven by geopolitical factors before. With Trump as its progenitor this time, I see it more like an O

Imagine going on a 9-week vacation to South America with the intent of avoiding anything to do with the U.S. While you were away, Trump started a pointless war, causing oil prices to double, interest rates to spike 50 basis points and investor confidence to collapse. But you see that the stock market is virtually unchanged from the day you left! Investors were put through the wringer. I'm just glad I was in an abandoned 600-year-old city and off the grid when all that was goi

As the U.S.stock market continues to blithely march ahead, seemingly unmoved by the continued societal devolution unfolding weekly on the streets of America, one has to wonder when or if it will ever matter to Wall Street what Main St is feeling. When I lived in the U.S. as a teenager, the Vietnam War was raging, and youth disaffection with the business community was palpable. Today's youth has a similar disdain for the establishment, as they see a disconnect between the elit

There's been much hand-wringing over the "K-shaped" economic recovery since the Covid 19 recession lows, and with good reason. The massive stimulus that followed fiscal and monetary policy responses to that crisis created multiple economic distortions, not the least of which is now described as the 'affordability' crisis. Despite the stock market's all-time highs, the 'Average Josephine' is in a serious funk. This chart says it all. University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment -

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