News

The Trade War™ wiped over ONE TRILLION DOLLARS from the stock market on Monday.  Will the market ever recover from this disaster?  It turns out that a trillion bucks ain’t what it used to be.  Financial reporters showed Monday’s market movement as -2.41%.  Financial entertainers breathlessly echoed the ONE TRILLION DOLLARS talking point.  Being down over 2% in one day isn’t good, but it was a useful tool to separate news sources that are serious about their reporting from the click-bait farms.  Oh and will we ever recover?  The S&P 500 was down 0.11% on the week, as of Thursday’s close, but oddly we haven’t heard any stories of the market gaining ONE TRILLION DOLLARS over the last couple of days.  Weird. Trade War™ There is a lot of hand-wringing over the consequences of the very public negotiation with China.  Bad financial news of all sorts is inevitably traced back…

I’ve got some dry powder set aside for a situation just like December.  During a bear market (when the market drops 20%), the plan is to deploy half of it into equities.  The S&P 500 fell 19.4% from September through Christmas Eve.  It was chaos on CNBC.  This was the big one…  And I turned up my nose because it was half a percent short of a formal bear market.  I was not ready to buy until that last 0.6% bled away.  It didn’t hit the magical 20% number.  Since this bear kiss, the S&P 500 is up 9.6%.  Oops. Eddy Elfenbein of Crossing Wall Street (great follow on Twitter) has a quick hit this morning “What if the Bear Market is Already Over?” that is a great reminder that the market doesn’t care about our arbitrary mindsets.  Usually, I think about this in relation to the calendar.  The market…

The market was down 3% yesterday although you’re more likely to see this as DOW PLUMMETS OVER 800 POINTS.  I don’t know why it’s down, but neither does anyone else.  No one knows what it will do from here, either.  However, I do know how things will play out on CNBC as every perma-bear in New York City is wetting their pants waiting for their booking agent to tell them what time to arrive on set.  I expect doom n’ gloomers making victory laps and appealing to our baser instincts. It’s All SportsCenter’s Fault The golden age of ESPN was wall to wall SportsCenter and actual sporting events.  Today it’s talk shows and even SportsCenter is less focused on actual sport and more story-driven.  Why?  Drama sells.  The WWE is basically soap operas for rednecks and you’re smarter than a redneck, right?  ESPN is the WWE of sports.  What’s really…

Let’s set aside the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a flawed measure of the overall stock market.  The media, your parents, and their parents have all accepted the Dow as the standard.  Besides, over time the Dow does move in line with the overall market.  So instead of arguing semantics, let’s talk about the headline: a 4-digit drop in the Dow today along with a 600+ point drop on Friday. While the average person associates the Dow with the overall market, we should also recognize that the media loves the Dow because of the potential for attention grabbing headlines.  To paraphrase Wooderson in Dazed and Confused: That’s what I like about the Dow, the points get bigger, but the size of the returns stays the same. On average, the S&P 500 experiences a drawdown of 14% every year.  If we apply that average to the Dow, it would…

Each year, BlackRock’s Chairman and CEO, Larry Fink, writes a letter to CEOs of “leading companies” in which BlackRock’s clients are shareholders.  Last year’s letter encouraged long-term thinking in the context of a world that is increasingly focused on short-term volatility.  This year’s letter strikes a similar tone, but goes a step further in mentioning environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters as factors CEOs should be considering in their long-term strategies.  Socially responsible investing (SRI) is gaining traction among investors.  Is this just kumbaya investing or is it for serious investors, too?  Why would anyone do this?  On the other hand, why would anyone NOT do this? The Basics ESG and SRI are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are different.  SRI is the broad overarching investment thesis of the movement.  ESG filters this mandate through three lenses, environmental, social, and governance.  SRI is open to personal interpretation just like the…