I’m posting this blog today (Friday Feb 2nd) in lieu of Monday’s usual blog. I’m on BNN on Monday at 5:30 pm EST (see bottom of this blog for details) and wanted to get a blog out prior to that appearance. Hope you can catch the show. The TSX is guided by a concentration in Read More
How long can this keep going on?
The 1970’s group ACE wrote a hit song from which I borrowed today’s title. Here’s a video of that song, which may bring back a few memories. Below is a chart of the Dow Industrials since 1900. We’re looking at 117+ years of data on this chart – certainly representative of the greater portion of Read More
How quickly we forget
Humans are myopic by nature. Market participants move in tandem through waves of cautious optimism, to irrational buying exuberance, to speculation – and then reverse direction into doubt, and ultimately sheer panic selling. A commonality of the irrational exuberance (topping stage) and the panic (crash) stage are the attitudes of market participants. A common rally Read More
A case for midcaps
A friend in the industry who isn’t as analytical about the markets as I am (which is often a way better way to live!!!!) asked me for my opinion on this obviously overbought market. I relayed to him some of the comments I made in this blog about the lack of corrections, and in this blog Read More
Armchair Elliott Wave
Elliott Wave Theory (EWT) gives us a rough map of where we are in the investment cycle. It’s kind of like looking at a globe. You can identify the country and the region and perhaps even find a major nearby city that approximates your location on a globe. However, a globe is pretty useless at Read More
Trading Places
One of my favorite Eddy Murphy movies was Trading Places. It’s a great story starring Dan Ackroyd as a successful currency trader, Jamie Lee Curtis as a prostitute, and Eddy Murphy as a street beggar. Dan Ackroyd and Eddy Murphy, through no fault of their own, end up “trading places” with their lifestyles – with Read More
Horizontal mambo
Life is a horizontal fall (Jean Cocteau: French writer, designer, playwright) I wrote a blog that was well received back in May on sideways trading stocks. I mentioned on the blog that I quite like stocks stuck within a range because you can define your trading plan – you know upfront what your entry and Read More
Seasonal patterns for the summer
Allow me to quote John Murphy’s recent message from his blog on www.stockcharts.com” “Most corrections occur during the late summer/ early autumn period. The two weakest months of the year are usually August and September. October often starts off weak and ends up strong, which makes it a tricky month. A lot of corrections Read More
Comfortably numb
Eric Parnell, a US Portfolio Manager, wrote an interesting article in Seeking Alpha recently. Here is the link to his article Uncomfortably Numb As we approach the end of the first half of the trading year, Eric notes that the stock market has had only 2 days that fell 0.7% or more in the past Read More
Words from the wise
At ValueTrend, we pride ourselves in being one of the more open and “fully disclosing” Portfolio Managers on the street. Our clients receive very detailed email updates on the existing positions held within our models – including current and future expectations as to when we might be selling these holdings, or buying new positions in Read More