November 5th, 2024. It’s a date that been circled on the calendar since 2023 concluded. The hype is over. It finally came; The consequential American Presidential election. The people mailed in their ballots and headed to the voting booths in size. The mood had been extremely tense, at times vitriolic, with a surplus of nervous energy. That’s prett…

The Stock Market kept the brakes on. There have been back-to-back weekly decliners, which followed 6 straight weeks of gains. It makes sense with so much going on. This was as big of a week for Market-moving events as I can ever remember in my near 30-year career. There's a ton for the Market to absorb: Earnings. Economic data. Fed Meeting. Global …

The Stock Market rally took a breather. The streak of 6-weekly gains came to an end. Momentum slowed with election uncertainty, deficit concerns and added pressure on interest rates. Leadership narrowed back to Tech ahead of a massive run of earnings next week. It was rising yields that caused the speedbumps...…

The Stock Market keeps on keeping on, as they say. This week, the S&P 500 hit its 47th fresh all-time-high in 2024. It’s been 6 straight week of gains for the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq. This marks the best performance for America’s Stock Market at this point in the year since 1997. Now that’s saying something. What makes it more remarkable is that it is …

The rally on Wall Street continues. The Dow and S&P keep hitting fresh, all-time highs. It’s happening in an environment of crisis and extremes. This year has witnessed growing fears of an economic slowdown, inflation, high interest rates, expanding wars overseas, natural disasters and an exceptionally divisive and unpredictable Presidential electi…

America is hitting an energy bottleneck as the AI revolution accelerates power demand to unprecedented levels. Data centers supporting the computing power are popping up all over the country which has created a need for clean and sustainable sources of energy. The ability to fuel them is getting stretched. Something’s gotta give. America is struggl…

The Fed officially put an end to its restrictive monetary policy by cutting interest rates for the first time since March of 2020. That was back deep in the heart of Covid. After a strong recovery for the Economy and asset prices, America’s central bank launched a hiking campaign, raising rates 11 times, starting in the Spring of 2022. They took th…

September sure started out with a bang. Not in a good way. The low volume rally into Labor Day proved to be a bit of a sucker's rally as the winds changed towards Autumn. The increased volatility sure has shaken investors out this Summer. Buy-the-dip has worked all year. The 8% August sell-off in the wake of the Japan crash nearly got erased last w…

Summer is coming to a close. Well, unofficially that is. Labor Day marks the unofficial end of Summer in America as the calendar turns to September. Kids are mostly back at school. Vacations have concluded. People start returning to the office. Reality sets back in. Of course, Summer officially ends with the Autumnal equinox on September 22nd.…

The balance of risk has changed. That opinion was evident from Fed Chair Powell Friday. In his widely anticipated and widely followed speech he green lighted rate cuts. He indicated increased comfort around taming inflation and believes now the bigger risk is rising unemployment. He appears confident that the risk of recession is going down because…

Paris won the Gold Medal in 2024. That was the consensus from the international press, which continues to rave about this year's Olympic Games. The Eifel Tower with the Olympic rings was a standout star, among many, which include Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky and Steph Curry. It was no guarantee, that's for sure. One mustn't forget that France was mi…

It’s early August, often referred to as the “Dog Days of Summer.” The term is rooted in Roman times. August generally means warm weather, family vacations and Stock Market volatility. It’s also wildfire and hurricane season. Last year saw selling start in August with a bottom put in October, which set up the multi-month run to new all-time highs. T…

The Olympics are in full swing in Paris. In fact, they've already reached the halfway point. The world has been watching. Olympic viewership is up 80% from the Tokyo Games in 2021. 34 Million Americans have been watching the games this week on average in primetime. This is a significant number considering the time distance in France. The actual eve…

Have you noticed an increase of black crows in your neighborhood over the years? Apparently, the crow population has spiked 15-fold in the Bay Area the last 2 decades. That, according to the Audubon Society. The black crow has become populous and common across the country. Conversely, there's a black bird that is not so common: The black swan. They…

Summer slowdown? No chance. Like that Hurricane that whipped through the Caribbean and the Yucatán Peninsula before landing in Texas, there have been swirling winds and rapid cross currents in Washington, on Wall Street and beyond...

America's Economy is showing some signs of cooling. Weaker than expected retail sales indicate consumers are slowing their spending. Make no mistake, they continue to spend. But the spending has become more selective. One thing still seems evident: Americans still want experiences. The Market reflects it...…

Apple has officially entered the AI race. The company has faced criticism for months for being late to the party. Better late than never. And realistically, the delayed timing is very much in Apple's style. This year's announcement at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, held in Cupertino, was the most widely anticipated Apple speech since S…

80 years ago this week, nearly 200,000 troops from 8 allied nations stormed the beaches of Normandy or parachuted behind enemy lines. Over 130,000 were American. It will forever be known as D-Day. On June 6, 1944; The liberation of Europe commenced...

America has a debt problem. It's currently $34.7 Trillion and counting. It costs over $1 Trillion a year to service it. As a reminder, if you stacked $1 Bills vertically end-to-end from the ground to the sky, it would reach the Moon and nearly back to Earth. How about that for a visual? The Congressional Budget Office recently reported it expects U…

It's Memorial Day weekend. That marks the beginning of the Summer driving season. The economic health of the American consumer will be on display. It certainly matters to the Market as consumer spending accounts for 70% of America's Economy. The good news is the price of Oil is below $80. Gas prices across the country are back near lows of the year…

The Stock Market hit a fresh, all-time high this week. The S&P 500 cleared 5300 for the first time. The Dow reached a new, major pinnacle of 40K. The rally continued. All that seemed to matter to the Market was that Fed Chair Powell signaled the next rate move will, in all likelihood, be down, and not up. It was off to the races for stocks with a h…

One thing is clear: Investors are still in good shape. The rally continued with a series of low-volume gains this week. The Dow rose 8 straight days for the first time this year. The 5% sell-off in April has all but been erased. The Dow, S&P and NAS are less than 1% away from their all-time record highs reached last month. Sector participation has …

After April brought showers to the Stock Market, sliding more than 4%, the first week of May brought flowers with Markets rallying nearly 2% to start the month. Volatility has certainly picked up and I'll get into the why. I can't recall a busier week of market-moving key economic reports, Central Bank news-driven flow, fiscal announcements, and ea…

Heightened volatility remains within the Market. It's been that way all April. This week brought upside movement as the S&P put an end to its weekly losing streak. Choppy price action is to be expected. It's a volatile world in which we live...

Market turbulence is back. It returned with a vengeance this week. I last wrote on March 31st these words: "The Market was running pretty hot heading into Spring. We could see a cooling off period before another run higher. It's not a stretch to say volatility is likely to pick up as we head towards Summer. A lot of good stuff has been priced in fr…

That sweet tooth is getting increasingly more expensive to satisfy. The culprit this time: Chocolate. Cocoa prices have tripled since last year due to a bean disease in West Africa. It's not looking like prices will come down anytime soon. Cocoa supplies are down drastically. There’s no quick nor easy fix. Production has been curbed by severe weath…

It's that time of year again: The NCAA tournament. The big dance in college basketball. Practice is over. Proper preparation is key. It's the time for performance. Anything can happen. Win or go home. Titans tend to reign. But Cinderella stories are also born. It's an event like no other. It's March Madness...…

I was in Arizona this week for strategy sessions with Schwab. There were over 150 firms represented from across the country congregating together to discuss industry issues and opportunities. The focus was both on today and, even more so, tomorrow. The future is clearly now....

Many of you know that I wrote my thesis at Cal on Mark Twain and the Western Frontier. It was out west where Samuel Clemens experienced the expansion of the then 9-decade-old nation. Clemens was born on the banks of the Mississippi. He grew up and grew wise in his adventures out west. His childhood dream was to be a riverboat pilot. He fled Mississ…

Amazon entered the Dow this week. It's another major milestone for the innovative American company. It's a prestigious achievement; A badge of honor in US Stock Market history. There are only 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average at any given time. They do change periodically. Amazon, a longtime NASDAQ member, entered the S&P 500 in 2005...…

Nvidia saved the rally. The most talked about stock in the world reported earnings Wednesday. As I wrote last week, Nvidia and AI have become more important than the Fed; At least to the Market. Expectations were sky high. Nvidia delivered, and then some. It was another blowout quarter for the company that's powering AI. Nvidia had already grown re…

Retail sales declined 0.8% in January. That was much worse than the 0.1% decline expected. It was a notable slide from December's 0.4% monthly increase. After a strong Holiday spending season, a slowdown in January is pretty customary. This one was obviously bigger. Building materials and supplies saw the biggest decline, down 4.1% in January. Furn…

It's that time of year. Americans from coast-to-coast will be glued to televisions. Food and beverage consumption will skyrocket. It's Super Bowl Sunday. Over the last 57 years, audiences and Dollars spent have increased in size for this special Sunday. This one, Super Bowl 58, is going to be a Super Bowl like no other. First of all, it's in Las Ve…

This was another one of those eventful weeks. The Market absorbed so many news items and priced them in on the fly, as it does. The Market is a discounting mechanism. It anticipates outcomes and instantly prices them in. As probabilities move, the Market adjusts. It has the wisdom of crowds. There was a lot of movement this week. Here's another rap…

The most widely anticipated recession never showed up in 2023. Not only that, the US Economy accelerated in the Summer and kept up a solid pace into year-end. The unemployment rate remains near 50-year lows. That has supported the American people's grand spending habits.

The results are in: Americans opened their wallets over the Holidays. Retail sales rose 5.6% in December compared to a year ago. Higher prices contributed to the increase, but not all of it. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) was up 3.4% in December. That was a sharp decline from the inflationary pressures in 2022. Inflation is going back in the right …

Las Vegas was abuzz this week and it had nothing to do with football. The Raiders season is done and the Super Bowl will be held there for the first time in February. (Side note, the Raiders belong in Oakland). This week was all about tech toys and innovative gadgets as the annual Consumer Electronics Show, now referred to simply as "CES," took ove…

What an eventful year. 2023 sure has been a banner year for investors. It definitely didn't start out that way. Remember the banking crisis and the takedowns of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic in the Spring? That seems like forever ago.

'Twas the night before Christmas From coast to coast, Not a creature was stirring Not even a cable news host The stockings were hung By the chimney with care With hopes that this rally Still will be there Artificial Intelligence is a game-changer It's affectionately known as "AI" The Magnificent 7 are the early winners Their stocks soared to the sk…

The Federal Reserve's rate-hiking cycle has come to an end. At least that's the message that was received Wednesday. The Market exploded with enthusiasm as the year-end rally continued. The magic words were rate cuts in 2024. This was a major pivot by the Fed.Door Mike Frazier

Energy prices keep slipping. It's a big deal in the continuing fight on inflation. The price for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Crude Oil has declined 22% in the fourth quarter. It's down 7 consecutive weeks, undercutting $70 a barrel at one point, the lowest since July. It sure looks like prices are going to stay low for a while. The 6-month time s…

The American Consumer keeps proving, time and again, it has some serious resiliency. That was on display last weekend as people from coast-to-coast were scooping up deals in their shopping baskets as the Holiday season commenced. Many continue to purchase on the go or from their couch. Online sales now account for over 15% of retail today. That num…

I couldn't focus on just one topic this week. There were so many events that matter taking place. The Bay Area drew the most attention. It wasn't due to the Niners' resurgence, although that in and of itself is no small development. Fast and furious activity is a constant these days, some scale large, others small. But things are so intertwined. Wi…

There will be a major meeting in the Bay Area next week. The World will be watching. Presidents Biden and Xi will sit down, face to face, in a significant engagement for the top economic powers. It will be the first and only in-person meeting for these two leaders this year. They last met at the G20 Summit in Bali in November, a year ago. The perce…

Stocks soared to start November, with the best weekly gains of the year. Of course it came as October ended with 3 consecutive monthly declines. That had not happened since 2020. That was deep in the heat of Covid. We know all too well how price action can shake things out.

The American people keep spending. That's an important takeaway from a series of data points reported this week. Despite chronic high prices and spiking interest rates, consumer spending hasn't seen much of a dent; At least not yet. Of course this matters as the Consumer accounts for 70% of America's Economy. In Q3, spending was still strong.…

I have been dreading writing this piece all week. What happened, what is happening and what will further happen in the future makes me both sad and furious as a fellow human being on Planet Earth. Hate and anger is everywhere. The violence is simply horrific.

The United States Federal Government is set to shutdown at midnight Sunday. This, unless there is an 11th-hour continuing resolution agreed to by Congress, which looks doubtful at best. I outlined some of the implications of a shutdown last week. The Market has been taking it pretty much in stride all along. In fact, the Market has absorbed multipl…

Price action picked up its choppiness this week. Both stock and bond prices fell. Higher interest rates are finally mattering. It sure has taken longer than we anticipated. The 0% interest rate environment from the last decade and a half has completely come unwound. It's a healthier place for the Market to get to. But the process of recalibration h…

I know I say it a lot, but there's so much going on these days. The Market is a living, breathing animal which is driven by a myriad of issues and events around the world. As a discounting mechanism, it prices in expectations of various outcomes quickly. It's the wisdom of crowds. Here's another rapid rundown of the week's events and implications a…