Analysis by Jeff Liguori for BusinessWest.com Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a California-based lender, was taken over by the FDIC due to fears of insolvency. The process was one of the swiftest in history. Silicon Valley Bank was a niche banking franchise founded in 1983 to fill a growing need in the financial-services marketplace. The primary customers […]
Read MoreIt is the ideal term for the current market environment. It seems as though each time markets attempt an advance, the bottom falls out. Maybe it really is difficult to time these things… Since our last note in the third week of June, where we highlighted extreme bearishness among investors, stocks rallied almost 18% into […]
Read MoreWhen markets slide, investors’ knee jerk reaction is to draw parallels to difficult markets in the past. The most recognizable episode in recent history is the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008-09. The S&P 500 peaked in October 2007, followed by a crushing sell off that bottomed out in March ’09 — but not before […]
Read MoreBelow is the performance of major indices through the end of September. A few themes to highlight: Russell 2000, which is an index of small, public companies (small caps), has appreciated nearly 50% in the past year. We believe the strength of this segment of the market is characteristic of investors having a healthy risk […]
Read MoreLet’s start with a recap of 2021 thus far. It is hard to imagine that a little more than a year ago investors were emerging from sheer panic selling as the world struggled with the pandemic. But such is the cycle of investing; typically, that panic sets the stage for strong gains, and here we […]
Read MoreIn our last quarterly commentary, “A Nervous Bull”, we discussed how a little bit of investor worry actually fuels a bull market. The volatility of the past week has not changed our opinion. In fact, we believe the type of pullback we are seeing in stocks is a welcome event and should propel the market […]
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