Stock market valuation and beauty have a lot in common: They are both in the eyes of the beholder. At the end of the original version of the movie King Kong (1933), the big ape’s death is blamed by his

The week ahead is packed with inflation, consumer, and manufacturing indicator releases. Long-term Treasury yields could climb closer to 5.00% this week if fears about stickier inflation intensify. We’re expecting solid updates on consumer spending. In addition, Q4’s S&P

Last year, during August, we anticipated that US bond yields would rebound. Indeed, they have. During December, we expected a stock market correction at the start of the new year. So far, there has been a significant pullback in

I. US FINANCIAL MARKETS The bull/bear ratios have dropped sharply over the past couple of weeks (chart). From a contrarian perspective that’s a bullish development for the US stock market. The US bond yield has been increasing while the

The backup in bond yields since mid-September did not surprise us. But it has surprised lots of other financial pundits, who are warning that this could be bad news for stocks. It could be, especially if the 10-year US

The US economy continues to roar. December’s ISM purchasing managers survey showed that services activity remains strong. The JOLTS data, albeit a bit stale from November, showed job openings jumped. That aligned with the recent rise in measures of

Today was another good day for technology stocks, semiconductor stocks, and the Magnificent-7. In the S&P 500, they were up 1.44%, 3.28%, and 2.01%. We continue to recommend overweighting the LargeCap S&P 500 Information Technology and Communication Services sectors.

The economic week ahead is chockful of labor market indicators for November and December. We’re expecting them to beat expectations. As long as corporate earnings continue to reach new record highs, companies are likely to hire more workers and

The Q4-2024 earnings reporting season is about to start, led by the big banks. We expect that during their conference calls, company managements will discuss how AI may be starting to boost their productivity. In effect, they’ll be trying to

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports: “Now, as Trump prepares for his second administration, American companies have largely gone silent about the importance of the U.S.-China relationship. That is because American businesses no longer see China as the land of opportunity. The

This is the time of year when we all wish one another a healthy, happy, and prosperous new year. The past two years were certainly prosperous ones for equities investors, as the S&P 500 rose 23.3% following a 24.2% gain in 2023. Those gains more

The post-election rally has been losing steam since early December (chart). The S&P 500 peaked at a record high on December 6. From a sentiment perspective, there have been too many bulls. From a technical perspective, breadth has been

The 10-year Treasury bond yield is up 100bps since the Fed started lowering the federal funds rate (FFR), by a total of 100bps, on September 18 (chart). Even the 2-year Treasury yield is up about 75bps. We warned about

January could start the year off with some volatility in the bond and stock markets. There are lots of fundamental and technical crosscurrents and a few possible riptides. The Q4 earnings reporting season during January should show a solid

We’ve been bullish on the stock market since October 2022. We remain bullish, targeting 7000 on the S&P 500 by the end of next year. That puts us near the head of the pack (chart). Here’s more on earnings