The Federal Reserve surprised us by not raising interest rates last week. Fed policy mandates it to be driven by employment and inflation. The Unemployment rate at 5.1% is very close to full employment, and inflation, excluding food and energy, has been running at 1.8%. The Fed cited concern about international economies for maintaining the…
Read BlogThe Federal Reserve meets on Wednesday and Thursday and will decide on whether to raise interest rates. The Fed-funds futures indicate a small chance of an increase, and half of all economists surveyed by Bloomberg believe they will raise rates. The Fed has two goals; full employment and containing inflation or for now protecting against…
Read BlogDuring August, the S&P 500 fell -6.4% and the PVG Loss Averse Equity Income Strategy was up .19%. The high in the market on July 20th to the low on August 25 was a decline of about -12.3% and over the same time period our strategy declined -2.4%, which is about 19.5% of the decline….
Read BlogBelow is a graph of the S&P 500, the 200 day-ma is currently at 2072, the 50 day-ma at 2054, the 20 day-ma at 1999 and the current price is roughly 1965, which is nicely off the low of 1860. The big picture on the technicals of the market, as we see it, is the…
Read BlogThe S&P 500 fell about 12% from its recent and all-time high, and bottomed out last week. The market subsequently rallied off the bottom to be down only around 6% last Friday. The S&P 500 has had a text book 50% retracement off the bottom. We are exactly in no man’s land. Our technical model…
Read BlogThe S&P 500 is off around 11.3% from its recent high in May and actually all-time high. The last several days have been brutal, as the market declined -12.6% from the very high to the intraday low on Monday. It is rather hard to believe some of these prints on Monday morning. The SPY traded…
Read BlogLast week, China devalued the Yuan by 3%, and the U.S. stock market responded poorly but then bounced back. We believe that is just the start. Exports from China declined by -8% in July. Keep in mind the vast majority of China’s economy is from exports. An -8% decline has got to have really shaken…
Read BlogOver a full cycle we have historically performed best on a relative basis during falling or bear markets, performing strongly on an absolute basis through most of the bull market, but the later stages of the bull market we have generally underperformed. The underperformance or bond like returns during the later stages of the bull…
Read BlogThe PVG Loss Averse Equity Income strategy historically has performed very well over a full market cycle. A full market cycle is defined as a peak in the market, followed by a bear market to the next market peak. It can also be defined as a trough to the next trough. The importance of analyzing…
Read BlogLast week, we highlighted Trinseo (TSE) before they reported earnings, thinking the stock was going to pop on the earnings as there was a large short position and the shorts had the wrong story. The stock was up in 4 days by about 22%. Nice call by our new associate Richard Prati. You can see…
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