S&P 500 Index 2075 By Steve Blumenthal November 11, 2015 Following below is my market, investor sentiment and economic dashboard. Notable this week is that excessive optimism remains despite the recent market sell-off.  Excessive optimism is short-term negative for equities.  Our trend [...]Read More >

By Cinthia Murphy November 4, 2015 There’s much soul searching in the financial advice industry these days. What will its future look like? Thanks to a leap in financial technology, largely at the hands of robo advisors, traditional advisors today are faced with a changing relationship with [...]Read More >

10/25/2015 @ 11:17 AM Steve Blumenthal, Contributor CMG Capital Management Group CEO writes about hedging equity exposure in overvalued markets in his latest Forbes article titled Using ETFs And Options To Hedge Equity Exposure In An Overvalued Market. Some excerpts from the piece: "Many [...]Read More >

November 6, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “U.S. interest rates are already zero. Japanese interest rates are zero also. European interest rates are negative. All of these central banks have printed trillions of dollars in their respective currencies under various QE programs. They are at the point [...]Read More >

S&P 500 Index 2109 By Steve Blumenthal November 4, 2015 Following below is my market, investor sentiment and economic dashboard.  In short, excessive optimism is short-term bearish for stocks, there is a high risk of global recession (strong data/chart below), no signs of a U.S. [...]Read More >

October 30, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “Whatever the form of risk and risk measurement one uses, the important thing to know is that diversification reduces risk and can be used to reduce risks without reducing returns.” – Ray Dalio Ray Dalio’s “risk parity” or “all weather” investment process has [...]Read More >

October 23, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal  “Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it — even though others may hesitate or differ. (You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with [...]Read More >

S&P 500 Index 2030 By Steve Blumenthal October 21, 2015 Investor sentiment has moved from “extremely pessimistic” (which is short-term bullish for the market) to neutral; however, the daily sentiment indicator is nearing “extreme optimism” (which would be short-term bearish for the [...]Read More >

October 9, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal "Facing up" to returns that will be less than the historical norm is the "single largest factor out there we have to deal with." – AQR’s Cliff Asness Valuation work seems to be showing up everywhere. Being the data geek I am, each month I like to take a look [...]Read More >

S&P 500 Index 1990 By Steve Blumenthal October 7, 2015 The market has rallied 100 points since last week.  We have reached a point of logical overhead resistance.  I share a few updates on our tactical strategies (continuing to pivot to bonds) and highlight an S&P 500 Index chart [...]Read More >

October 2, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal Investor Behavior – “You can bury your head in 10q’s and 8k’s and memorize a thousand facts about a company. You can become an expert on a given stock sector and establish relationships with all of the executives who run the show. You can build your own DCF [...]Read More >

S&P 500 Index 1884 By Steve Blumenthal September 30, 2015 With all of the market turmoil, the sell-off is quite normal by historical measures.  The Russell 2000 (small cap stocks) is down 16% from the high, the Nasdaq is down 13% from its high, the DJIA is down 12% and the S&P 500 [...]Read More >

September 25, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “This Fed, massively dominated by academic Keynesians, has demonstrated that the conditions for normalizing rates are far more stringent than many of us had been led to believe from the speeches of the FOMC members themselves. This is a Federal Reserve with [...]Read More >

S&P 500 Index 1948 By Steve Blumenthal September 23, 2015 Our CMG Managed High Yield Bond Program is back in a Sell signal.  One of the things I’ve learned over my 20+ years of trading HY is that the HY bond market tends to be a good forward leading indicator for the stock market.  I came [...]Read More >

September 18, 2015 By Steve Blumenthal “The effect of years of zero interest rate policies has been to progressively drive investors toward securities of greater and greater risk, in the belief that “There Is No Alternative” (TINA). In every other market cycle across history, once an “overvalued, [...]Read More >