Our investment committee does not put much value on economic forecasts. Ask us if we are headed to a recession, a soft landing, or continued growth in the economy and our answer is likely “we don’t know”. It is not that we don’t pay attention to weekly updates on jobs, manufacturing, retail sales, etc., but […]
Risk happens fast. Or does it? We believe risk is always present, it just rears its ugly head at different times for investors. Stocks finished last week with one of the largest weekly drawdowns since April. The S&P 500 sold off more than 2% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq gave up more than 3% in five […]
As the year progresses past the halfway point, I’d like to highlight some market dynamics which we think will become common themes in the second half of the year. Most importantly, the significant one-sidedness in outperformance from the largest public companies, mostly in the tech sector, has created an extremely top-heavy market. What exactly does […]
The previous Napatree quarterly commentary, “Divergent Paths,” illustrated that the broad stock market, most quoted as the S&P 500, generated a nearly 17% return through June 30. But under the covers, many stocks in that index performed poorly. Returns were dominated by the largest companies in the index. From the conclusion in that commentary: Broad […]
The start of the fourth quarter has been rough for financial markets, a follow-through from when stocks hit a 12-month high in July. The factors contributing to the sell-off: All is not dire, however. Financial markets look ahead and so do we . . . below is our stance on the issues outlined above:
Is Washington, D.C. broken? The global rating agency, Fitch, certainly believes so. On Aug. 1, the company downgraded the credit of the United States one notch, from AAA to AA+. It is only the second time in history that our nation’s credit has been downgraded, the first in August 2011 by S&P. In its explanation, […]