Here is a quick recap of what's happened so far this year: January started with a 10% correction and many potential investors I spoke to were borderline suicidal. That's not an exaggeration. They couldn't sleep, they couldn't eat, and many cashed out near the lows. I think their emotional reaction was due to a market [...]
People are happy when they are making progress and moving forward in their lives. With regards to the financial markets, progress means making money. It doesn't necessarily mean making crazy returns, but people are generally pleased when their accounts are moving forward in a slow and steady manner. I've talked to many people in the [...]
My friend Ryan Detrick posted a chart recently showing that bullish sentiment among individual investors dropped to its lowest level in 23 years! There are fewer bulls now than in March 2009 and March 2003. For those who don't remember, the low in March 2003 was after a brutal 3-year Bear Market that started with [...]
One strategy I use during market corrections is Relative Strength. Specifically, I look for stocks showing "strength" and holding up well "relative" to the market. The theory behind this is that if the big institutions do not sell certain stocks during corrections, these stocks have a high probability of moving higher when the correction is [...]
For the past month, I've been writing on this blog how I moved my clients to 90-100% cash at the beginning of the year. The number one email question I've received is: "When do you get back in?" Before I answer the question, there are a few points I would like to make: 1) This [...]
I am writing this blog post to offer words of encouragement and to hopefully help people learn from my past mistakes. Most people don’t like to admit their mistakes because we all want to pound our chest and let the world know how great we’re doing. I have no problem admitting that I used to [...]
Part of my investment philosophy is raising cash and sitting out during unhealthy markets. I've received several emails telling me "it's impossible to time the market" and "you're arrogant to claim you know when it's unhealthy." It's not called arrogance, it's called putting in the work, studying history, and having the confidence to act. If [...]
1) The first week of 2016 was the worst 5-day start in the history of the stock market. The non-stop selling caught many market participants by surprise. While most were expecting some form of a bounce during the second week of January, the selling continued. It was mostly fueled by: slowing fundamentals, poor technicals, lack [...]
I'm beginning to think the weekends are giving people amnesia about the stock market. We started this year with two BRUTAL weeks of selling. After the MLK long weekend, the market gapped up the morning of January 19th and sentiment seemed VERY complacent. It was as if the long weekend made everyone forget all the [...]
Here are excerpts from the memo I sent to clients this evening. It's a summary of the market so far this year and some possibilities going forward: I am very pleased that we survived the first 2 weeks of 2016 with our heavy cash position. The first week of January was the worst 5-day start in the history of the [...]