April 2, 2019 Who Makes Your Investment Decisions? Money is the mother’s milk of the financial markets. Without it, prices would float down toward zero as sellers wait for buyers with money to spend! As a result of this relationship, one of the indicators I follow is money flows in the markets. As my friend Tom McClellan, publisher of the McClellan Market Report, has said, “There

March 5, 2019 Recession? What Recession? Harry Truman once said, “I’d like to find a one-handed economist.  All my economists say one thing and then add, ‘on the other hand’”. I thought of Harry several times this week when there was a flurry of news articles on the possibility of an economic recession.  To keep things in context, remember that our economy has a constant cycle

February 5, 2019 “Buy and Hold” Is Getting Old Since almost all investors had a poor year last year thanks to the bear market of 2018, it seems fitting to discuss risk management, which buy and hold investors have none of. Buy and hold works fine over very long periods of time, with most studies about it looking back over more than 90 years of data. 

January 2, 2019 What Really Caused This Bear Market? The 3-month stock market decline that appears to have ended on December 26th is more notable for what wasn’t happening than for what was. There wasn’t much bad economic news. Banks aren’t failing as in 2008-09. Tech companies aren’t dropping like flies as in 2001. The trade war is on the back burner while the US and

December 4, 2018 The Investment View from Prescott, Arizona The Trade War is Not the Boogeyman The trade war is really not much of a war, but I had a good insight into the issue when I was in Europe in October. I was marveling at all of the cars I had never heard of like Skoda, Vauxhall, and ones that we rarely see in the US,