Latest Research

These once elite companies have continued to turn in good earnings growth. The problem had been that the prices had moved far too high. After a few years of declining prices, the valuations are once again looking very compelling.

Major Trend Index improved to Neutral in early April and clinging there now.  Are we seeing a delayed bear market rally?  Examining what could come next.

We’re back on form after last month’s praise of government economists... questioning the value of the GDP Deflator.

Waiting for the curtain to fall on Industrial Metals, we recap the “three acts” and throw in a time-tested contrarian indicator to boot.

It doesn’t seem too long ago when short sellers were vilified for bringing down viable public companies, and the appropriate punishment for short selling was deemed to be a public caning.

Former Morgan Stanley strategist Byron Wein—now at Pequot Capital—publishes an annual list of potential market and economic “surprises” that has become a must read for institutional investors. Along the same lines, Wired magazine listed ten potential threats to what it calls the “Long Boom”. (Warning: This list might make The Leuthold Group look cheerful).

Relief finally came to Wall Street, not in the form of rebate checks or rate cuts, but from the strongest monthly returns since December 2003.

Consumer confidence levels have sunk to five year lows. Could this be a bullish omen for the markets?

Demoralizing long term returns factor into why the investing public has avoided the U.S. stock market during the last several years — even during the bull market.

In the spirit of historical market research, we thought it would be a good time to revisit which industry groups perform best from bear market lows.

Even though government statistics do not yet indicate a declining quarter of real GDP growth, we believe we are, in fact, in the grip of a recession.

There is political pressure to keep inflation low, minimizing COLA (cost of living adjustments) and Social Security costs. Low inflation also helps to keep interest rates down, which keeps government interest payments as low as possible.

Is it time to buy Technology? This month's “Of Special Interest” examines the sector's merits and finds that while there are signs of improvement, it is too soon to make a big move here.

Market has so far performed pretty much as expected. Major Trend still Negative, but recent improvement is surprising. Bear market could be winding down.

A look at gold priced in dollars versus euros.

The moderate index level price moves from February month-end to March month-end didn’t give any indication of the wild swings that occurred during the days in between.

There’s much more to “the market” than the S&P 500. 

GS Scores in April put Regional Banks in Attractive zone for the first time since October 2006. Valuations show the Regional Banks to be relatively cheap, and Insiders are buying.

Attitudinal category now very positive reflecting excess bearishness which typically comes near market bottoms.

Jim Floyd tries to makes sense of earnings in the current recessionary environment.