More Cracks Appear
At the start of November we saw a couple of blastoff-type indicators flash green (like the Three Day Thrust rule), and that turned out to be the start of a powerful intermediate-term advance. During the next two-plus months, progress was relative there...
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“Legal Weed Stocks Dip Despite New Jersey Governor Signing Recreational Cannabis Bill Into Law”
That was the headline on one of my news sources yesterday morning, implying that the action of the stocks in light of that legalization event was somehow illogical. But as know...
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Simply Put: Very Impressive Action
Two weeks ago, the major indexes and some individual stocks began to flash abnormal action, a couple of key leaders were threatening to break down and some late-in-the-advance type of action (heavily shorted stocks going nuts) was occurring. Importantly, the...
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Unexpected Events Occur Frequently
One of the unique things about the market (and a big reason so many investors have trouble) is that it doesn’t follow the usual “bell curve” of probabilities that dominates the real world. For instance, given that the market’s average is...
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2021 Kicks Off With a Bang
A funny thing happened while I was preparing this issue yesterday. Not funny ha-ha. Funny odd.
I was updating my performance tables and noticed that the performance of the Marijuana Index year-to-date was exactly the same as its performance all...
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Taking Things on a Stock-by-Stock Basis
We believe one of the main reasons our system has proved durable is that it doesn’t focus on just one or two factors, but incorporates things from different angles. For instance, when selecting stocks, we’re not only looking charts...
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Happy New Year
It’s been a long, strange 12 months, but it’s also been a very prosperous period, at least for growth investors—with one day left in the year, the Model Portfolio is up around 60%, easily besting most major indexes. Happily, that builds our...
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The Point of Peak Perception?
It’s a truism of investing that stocks bottom when the news is terrible and pessimism and fear are the prevailing sentiments—but peak when the news is good and optimism and greed reign.
You have only to look back to March a..
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Into the Homestretch
We’re past the halfway point in December, which means many of us have other things on our minds, be it getting out the snow shovel (a foot of snow hit the ground here last night), buying last-minute gifts or perfecting your eggnog-based...
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Mostly Sunny, Chance of Showers
In the last issue, we wrote about the myriad crosscurrents that were still being seen—while the major indexes looked good, the day-to-day rotation was wild among sectors and themes, with news-driven moves the norm for a few weeks. But also...
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The Future is Full of Surprises
One of the oft-told tales of the California Gold Rush is that while most miners failed to strike it rich, the real money-makers were the people selling shovels—and of course that immigrant from Bavaria, Levi Strauss, who sold denim...
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Wild—but Positive—Action
The healthiest market environment is generally one where most participants are rowing in the same direction—the vast majority of stocks and sectors glide higher (with the occasional pullback or shakeout, of course) as investor perception of the future steadily improves. Even if broad...
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Believe What You See
There are usually a couple of times each year where the market really messes with people, catching the vast majority of investors off-guard. (Remember the old saw: The market does what it has to do to fool the most investors One...
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Investing in a World of Uncertainty
“You can only see as far as your headlights … but you can make the whole trip that way.” E.L. Doctorow
Short-term, the world is full of uncertainty today, with a major election around the corner and a pandemic to...
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Riding the Bucking Bronco
Investing in general, and growth stock investing in particular, tends to be very streaky—while many would love for a steady, low-stress increase in their portfolios, that’s not how the world usually works. Instead you get periods of time when the gushes...
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Steady Improvement
By the letter of the law, the big-cap indexes remain in the midst of a correction—the S&P 500 sits about 4% off its high, while the Nasdaq is more than 5% below its early-September peak, and many stocks and sectors are being around...
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Still Cautious
Seven weeks ago I started recommending selling marijuana stocks and taking profits, saying that they’d gone too high and that investment sentiment seemed equally high as well (a bad thing). Since then, the Marijuana Index is down 10% and the Alternative Harvest is...
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Bad News, Good News
Our last issue was titled “Burden of Proof is on the Bulls,” and since then, the buyers have failed to step up to the plate, leading to a worsening of the overall evidence—earlier this week, our Cabot Tides flipped to bearish...
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Burden of Proof is On the Bulls
At heart, we’re students of the market, which means one of the key tools we use is spotting the difference between normal, run-of-the-mill action and abnormal, noteworthy action, the latter of which is what usually causes us make...
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Has the “Re-Rotation” Begun?
When our last issue went to press, growth stocks were under pressure. It wasn’t an epic disaster, but there had clearly been a change in character, with the initial market leaders (those that burst to new highs in April or May)...
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