“It is not the end, but it is the beginning of the end, and it is well passed the end of the beginning”. We concluded last month’s commentary with the above bastardized version of a line from Winston Churchill’s so-called “Victory Speech”, which he presented after Britain effectively repelled a German invasion during World War […]
Thus far, 2022 has been a year of extremes, with the highest levels of inflation in more than forty years forcing the Federal Reserve to pursue the most draconian monetary policies since Ronald Reagan occupied the White House, Paul Volcker was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Whitney Houston was lighting up the Billboard […]
Inflation is an economic storm that reached new heights of ferocity on July 13th, when the June consumer price index came in at its highest level in 41 years. If maintained over the longer term, the reported 9.1% year-over-year inflation rate would be sufficient to cut the purchasing power of one’s savings in half approximately […]
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 […]
bear marketbull marketdeflationdomestic economydomestic equityequity marketsEuropeEuropean Central BankEuropean UnionFederal Reservefiscal stimulusinflationinterest ratesRussiaUkraine
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 […]