May 5, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria.” – Sir John Templeton I presented at a recent advisor conference alongside a famous economist.  He told a story about an investment manager who told him, “You know… [...]Read More >

April 28, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “The hardest part in trying to limit losses is not necessarily timing the market, but imparting the wisdom of limiting losses upon your clients. To limit drawdowns advisors and their clients cannot fully embrace raging bull markets that are excessively [...]Read More >

April 21, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “The biggest mistake investors make is to believe that what happened in the recent past is likely to persist. They assume that something that was a good investment in the recent past is still a good investment. Typically, high past returns simply imply that an [...]Read More >

April 14, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “…the Fed has typically tightened too much and/or for too long. From this long history, a well-established pattern is identifiable. The economic growth rate along with inflation receded. A financial crisis was more likely than not.” – Van R. Hoisington and [...]Read More >

April 7, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “To refer to a personal taste of mine, I’m going to buy hamburgers the rest of my life. When hamburgers go down in price, we sing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ in the Buffett household. When hamburgers go up in price, we weep. For most people, it’s the same with [...]Read More >

March 31, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal I’m going to try to tie two related themes together today.  The first, and I have to admit I was surprised when I saw the research, is the incredible shrinking universe of stocks.  Think corporate share buybacks, mergers and acquisitions and fewer companies [...]Read More >

March 24, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “First, if the bubble were to collapse on its own, would the effect on the economy be exceedingly large? Second, is it unlikely that the Fed could mitigate the consequences? Third, is monetary policy the best tool to use to deflate a house-price bubble? My [...]Read More >

March 17, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “Time is like a river that will take you forward into encounters with reality that will require you to make decisions. You can’t stop the movement down this river, and you can’t avoid the encounters. You can only approach these encounters in the best way [...]Read More >

March 10, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “There have been 13 Fed rate hike cycles in the post-WWII era and 10 landed the economy in recession. Soft landings are rare and when they have occurred, they have come in the third year of the expansion, not the eighth.” - David Rosenberg, Gluskin Sheff + [...]Read More >

March 3, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “Big money is made in the stock market by being on the right side of the major moves. The idea is to get in harmony with the market. It's suicidal to fight trends. They have a higher probability of continuing than not.” Martin Zweig At the beginning of each [...]Read More >

February 24, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “You look at every bear market… they’ve always basically occurred because of an uptick in inflation and an uptick in interest rates.” - Paul Tudor Jones Citing an improving economy and the possibility of more spending and lower taxes from the Trump [...]Read More >

February 17, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “Perhaps the biggest risk facing investors this year and beyond is whether bond yields will suffer a sustained rise. We are increasingly worried that the bond market is undergoing a secular pivot from bullish to bearish, and that investors are facing an [...]Read More >

February 10, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “President Trump may be able to temporarily hold off the sweep of automation and globalization by cajoling companies to keep jobs at home, but bolstering inefficient and uncompetitive enterprises is likely to only temporarily stave off market forces,” he [...]Read More >

February 3, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “There’s only one reason a share goes to a bargain price: Because other people are selling. There is no other reason. To get a bargain price, you’ve got to look for where the public is most frightened and pessimistic.” “Looking for a good investment is [...]Read More >

January 27, 2017 By Steve Blumenthal “We tend to hang onto our views too long simply because we spent time and effort coming up with those views in the first place. This leads to confirmation bias and an anchoring to strongly held beliefs even if the evidence fails to support them anymore.” - [...]Read More >