News & Insights

  The major U.S. stock market indexes have experienced powerful positive momentum for the past two years. Rising prices over an extended period of time invariably breed the expectation of continued rising prices, and that has certainly occurred this year among equity investors. The unprecedented level of money creation over the past decade and a [...]

The exciting narrative about artificial intelligence has dominated equity market news in recent years. AI’s effect, however, has produced positive results in just a narrow segment of the stock market. The market performance results above testify to the outsized influence that the Magnificent Seven mega-tech stocks (Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla) [...]

The Asterisk Era Sports fans with at least a little grey hair remember well the steroid era in baseball, ranging from the late-1900s into the early-2000s. Performance-enhancing steroids were outlawed but commonly used, and sluggers like Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds were shattering decades-old home run records. Fans with respect for cleanly earned [...]

Fundamentals vs. Technicals Over the past century, U.S. securities market technical conditions have been in agreement with fundamental conditions most of the time. As we enter 2024, fundamentals and technicals are clearly at odds with one another, creating highly uncertain prospects for investors (for readers unfamiliar with those terms, see Appendix A for explanations). Financial [...]

Bull Market or Bear? The markets have just concluded a weak quarter, a mixed year-to-date, a mostly strong trailing 12 months, and a significantly negative period overall since the end of 2021. The worst fixed-income decline in U.S. history has been unfolding for more than three years. In the minds of many, however, it is [...]

In our April Quarterly Commentary (please visit 2023 1st Quarter Market Commentary - Mission Management & Trust Co.), I analyzed Warren Buffett’s counsel that in the short run the stock market is a voting machine, while in the long run, it’s a weighing machine. In the recently concluded second quarter, voters clearly dominated. Excitement and [...]