Posts Tagged
‘Nasdaq’

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 [...]
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 [...]
The bear markets that began for all major US stock indexes between November 2021 and April 2022 got a reprieve in this year’s first quarter. The bear markets for domestic investment quality fixed income indexes began even earlier, from early to mid-2020, but likewise saw returns improve in this year’s first quarter. The worst returns [...]
I don’t always agree with what is written on The Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages, but the following was part of a particularly insightful editorial from its year-end edition: "[F]ree money can’t last forever… is the reality that financial markets brought home in 2022 as U.S. stocks finally fell back to earth after being inflated [...]
The Future Is Now Virtually all investors have suffered so far in 2022.  As the table shows, the traditional 60/40 stock/bond portfolio lost more than 20% of its value.  Even far less aggressive portfolio allocations experienced significant declines.  And most investors did even worse, because the most popular stocks substantially underperformed the major market indexes. [...]
This year’s third quarter was unproductive for investment assets. Domestic stock markets were mixed, with the S&P 500 fractionally positive but the Dow Jones Industrials, Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange Index all negative. Risk-free Treasury Bills continue to pay virtually nothing. Bloomberg’s U.S. Aggregate Bond Index was also essentially flat and remains negative [...]
The securities markets experienced drama in positive and negative directions in the year’s first quarter, as the Federal Reserve and most other world central banks continued to flood their respective economies with newly printed money. Only risk-free securities avoided the excitement. In fact, Three-Month Treasury Bills barely registered a pulse with a 0.01% return. By [...]
For several years, investors have wrestled with a profound dilemma. With Federal Reserve and other substantial government stimulus, stock prices have risen to and remained at valuation levels that have, throughout history, ultimately been severely punished. As the years rolled on and the Fed consistently provided one sort of stimulus or another whenever stocks appeared [...]