Animal Spirits: Is the Stock Market Wrong?

We discuss: What would a vaccine mean for the markets? Is the vaccine a sell-the-news event? Could we potentially see a stock market bubble when this crisis is over? Why is Uber’s stock price up this year? Why people are so angry at the stock market Is private equity a retail killer? What happens to…

Low Bond Returns Are Nothing New

Government bond yields remain unbelievably low across the maturity spectrum: The correlation between starting yields and future long-term returns is very high, meaning you can use these rates as a decent approximation of forward bond returns. In other words, don’t expect much from the bond portion of your portfolio. When you compare today’s yields with…

Animal Spirits: Too Young, Too Dumb & Too Inexperienced

We’re back for show number two of this week. We discuss: Corporation inequality Retail spending is making a massive shift to online shopping Why aren’t video game company stocks up more? Deflation is here Inequality in the unemployment numbers Pain for even the very best restaurants Why the government needs to extend unemployment benefits and…

Nothing Fails Quite Like Success in the Stock Market

A reader sent me an old piece I wrote in early-2014 that contained a stat that made me do a double-take: The energy sector outperformed the S&P 500 by nearly 7% per year with nearly the same standard deviation. This seems almost impossible to believe at the moment. Oil prices went negative this year. Energy…