There is an old Wall Street proverb that “nobody rings a bell at market tops and bottoms”. At first glance, this adage seems both self-evident and reasonable, as it simply points out the obvious fact that market timing is, at best, both highly challenging and very difficult to do successfully on a consistent basis. Indeed, […]
The technology-heavy NASDAQ Composite Index just experienced the worst January through April period in its history (-21%), with more than 45% of listed stocks falling by at least 50% from recent highs, more than 22% falling by at least 75%, and 5% plummeting by at least 90%. The carnage in the 10 largest technology-oriented stocks […]
On April 4th of this year, one of Per Stirling’s Directors was interviewed for an in-depth article in Barron’s Magazine, which addressed a wide array of topics that we think will be of interest to our readers. In the following pages, we will share our responses to the interview questions that dealt with the “Fed […]
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We are in the midst of the largest war in Europe since World War II; there are very elevated tensions between numerous nuclear superpowers; consumer confidence is far worse than it was at the most uncertain point of the pandemic, and the U.S. bond markets are experiencing the second worse start to a year in […]
The concept of “American exceptionalism” was first introduced by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831. It promoted the idea that the United States was not only quantitatively different, but also superior to other countries, as a result of its unique historical evolution and its national credo. For example, America (which boasts the world’s largest military) could […]
In our most recent commentary, which we published on December 16th, we concentrated on the fact that the U.S. stock market was nowhere as strong as it appeared on the surface, and that it was being distorted by six stocks (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms [formerly Facebook] and Tesla) that represent about 25% of […]
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To quote the opening line of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness”. For the two indexes most commonly used as a performance benchmark for equity portfolios, the Standard & Poor’s […]
As American investors settled in for Thanksgiving this year, it appeared that they had much to be thankful for. While inflation was still a worrisome issue, there were some signs that the supply chain snafus that were exacerbating the problem were starting to unwind, and the Fed continued to offer assurances that inflation would […]
It is quite ironic that, in April of 2020, after years of inflation running at undesirably low levels, the Federal Reserve unveiled a series of new policies that were designed to elevate the inflation rate. These changes included a shift to “average inflation targeting, where they would seek an average inflation rate of 2%, as […]
We had a very rewarding experience last week when one of the firm’s Directors was the featured guest on the prestigious Barron’s Live blog. As part of our preparation for that event, we spent some time trying to anticipate what kinds of questions might be asked by the moderator and/or the audience, and then organizing […]