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Category: Paul’s Insights

Stock Market Trend Morphing As It Weakens

Anyone notice how the gains have moderated lately? The stock market seems to be transitioning from strongly up to modestly up and sideways. Here is the Dow Industrials. Not a lot to criticize nor worry about. Just an observation. Here is the NASDAQ 100. And finally, the Russell 2000. This is how markets digest or mildly correct after a big run. And as I have written for some time, I am looking for a Q1 peak, followed by a low […]   Read More
Date: March 18, 2024

Successful Investors Do Not Sit On Their Hands

Thursday was a day to punish some bulls. Lots of the sexy and glamorous stuff got hit. My readers weren’t surprised as I have been writing about it for weeks and longer. I have spoken about good portfolio management of pruning and planting, cutting exposure and risk and in favor of the boring, stodgy and unloved. I lost count how many times I have written about booking gains in the high flyers, like Nvidia, Facebook, Marvel, Broadcom, Apple, Microsoft and […]   Read More
Date: March 15, 2024

Be a Smart Investor – Don’t Hold On For Dear Life

You have to give credit where it’s due. The bulls have been relentless for almost 18 months, but certainly over the past 5 months. It’s  been incredibly impressive and a pleasure to enjoy. These kinds of runs are semi-generational. When I look at our strategy lineup, I don’t recall anything as strong as this nor as widespread in my 35 year career. Granted, it’s not apples to apples because we have 18 strategies today and I started with one single […]   Read More
Date: March 13, 2024

Emotional Reversal on Friday in Tech, Semis and Nvidia

Friday saw one of those emotional reversals where the day began all bulled up with lots of celebrations from those who came late to the party. It ended with the bears overwhelming the bulls heading into the weekend. While those kinds of days look ugly on a chart, we need to see follow through selling early this week to have any significance. Below is the NASDAQ 100 which is dominated by all those popular tech names. Epic run since October. […]   Read More
Date: March 11, 2024

State of The Union & The Markets

It’s amazing how many people ask me about the election and the impact of politics on the markets. I think that’s because all we hear is how the other person is going to wreck the economy and crash the markets. As with most commonly held beliefs, it’s all pure nonsense. There is no correlation to any of this. No single president has ever nor ever will have that kind of impact. Last night was the State of the Union (SOTU). […]   Read More
Date: March 8, 2024

Don’t Marry Stocks – You Will End in Divorce

As has been the theme all quarter we continue to prune and plant, reducing exposure in those areas that have essentially melted up and adding exposure in areas that have not. In other words, you could say that we have cut back on those handful of super sexy stocks and sectors and rebalanced into the rest of the market. Again, that is how you successfully manage portfolios for the long-term. Otherwise, your portfolio ends up severely overweighted in a small […]   Read More
Date: March 6, 2024

Small Caps Beat The Bears – NYCB Did Not

The markets sure have been resilient. In the strongest of uptrends which this clearly is, all the bears get are 1-3 day pullbacks where they all wonder, “is this it, the top?” Last week, the S&P 500 had a very mild early week pullback along with the NASDAQ 100. By weeks end, they were at fresh all-time highs. At the same time the two aforementioned indices were slightly declining, the Russell 2000 index of small companies was going up. You […]   Read More
Date: March 4, 2024

Inflation Versus High Prices

Happy Friday! Rather than a written blog today, I did a video on the most asked question of late regarding inflation versus high prices. Weekend is here and as far as the eye can see, Mother Nature is back to her unkind ways in New England. Cold, thaw, rain, warm, rinse and repeat. Of course, my buddies at Kirkwood are preparing for 120-150 inches of snow over the next 5 days. Now that is insane! On Wednesday we bought levered […]   Read More
Date: March 1, 2024

Complacency Rises – People Getting Giddy, Cocky & Greedy

The markets sure have gone quiet or so it seems. Let’s take a look at the Volatility Index (VIX) below. While stocks have marched steadily higher since the October bottom, the VIX tells a slightly different story as it fell into December and then mildly rallied since. I would have expected the VIX to be below 12. Does that matter? Not really, especially not in the short-term. It is just telling us that the options trades are expecting a bit […]   Read More
Date: February 28, 2024

Ducks Are Quacking – Sexy & Exciting Out, Boring & Stodgy In

The ducks were quacking last week, but especially on Thursday and Friday. For newer readers, that means investors were hungry for stocks. Those same people ridiculed and scorned me in Q4 2022 when I pounded the table about a new bull market launching. They laughed at my 2023 forecast labeled “The Year of the Bull”. Today, they can’t buy enough stocks. They want Nvidia and Super Micro and Microsoft. Well, folks, they can have them. Over the past week we […]   Read More
Date: February 26, 2024