Latest Research

This month Steve again lays out both the Bull and Bear cases.

Steve presents the transcript of his April 3rd interview with Barron's Senior Editor, Sandra Ward.

Stocks continued to move higher in the first quarter, with many of the broad market indexes finishing out Q1 near their cyclical highs.

Data from the last seven tightening cycles suggests that too way much attention is currently being given as to when the Fed will be finished tightening. The direction of the stock market after the last rate hike has much more to do with prevailing economic and stock market conditions.

At the market lows, the Tech insiders while not net buyers clearly slowed their aggressive selling.

In recent years cash acquisition activity has run highest when stock prices are high, and lowest when stock prices are down.

On a YTD basis, flow into domestic focused stock funds significantly trails the record-breaking amount of flow going into international and global equity funds— similar to what we saw for much of 2005.

Based on our 6-12 month yield targets, short end of the yield curve looking more attractive.

The traditional definition versus the new definition of an inversion...How real GDP has responded historically to past yield curve inversions….Effect of inversions on Financial stocks.

The persistent rise in short term rates could have a big impact on the consumer. The rising prime rate has boosted debt service costs substantially, and “Financial Death Traps” may be on the horizon.

For the month of February, the majority of broad stock market indexes ended roughly where they began.

Conventional wisdom states that inverted yield curves are bad for Financial groups. Doug Ramsey looks at the history of past inversions.

An examination of Financial groups with respect to insider selling/buying. At the extremes, this tool (which is employed in our GS Scores) works pretty well.

Capex spending on the rise. Eric Bjorgen segments the spending areas and theorizes about which groups will be the most significant beneficiaries of spending. Great idea generator for those looking for ways to play the rising capex spending.

Energy sector earnings growth has helped keep overall S&P earnings advancing at a relatively strong rate. Growth would be about 9% to 10% below reported growth if Energy stocks were excluded.

To us, the infatuation with foreign funds is looking pretty frothy and certainly raises a contrarian red flag.

It may be difficult for the economy to prolong its expansion, with the auto and housing sectors weakening and consumer spending a big question mark. 

An in-depth examination of performance relative to Growth stocks; what has been typical in terms of leadership duration; and how the economy and inflation may affect the current trend.

Metals stocks have already had a good strong run, and have been held in our portfolio for four years now. Despite the strong gains there is still significant upside when looking at inflation adjusted prices, and the strong demand/limited supply.

Although the performance hurdle had not been set very high, many of the stock market indexes posted gains in January that beat (or rivaled) the gains for the entire year of 2005.