Displaying items by tag: S&P 500

(New York)

How do you know when the market is bad? When the safest stocks are also the best performing. It sounds like an old market joke, but it couldn’t be more true right now. Stocks are down around 10% this month, the worst December since the Great Depression. A good sample of these low volatility stocks can be found in Invesco’s S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF (SPLV). That ETF has fallen just 7% from the market’s September peak, while the S&P 500 has fallen 16%. Looking at correlations, the majority of stocks with the best 90-day momentum are also those with the lowest volatility.

FINSUM: The market is playing defense, and with good reason.

(New York)

Are you looking for places to ride out the current storm in markets? It is a tough time to be doing so, as even traditional bastions of safety—utilities, healthcare, and consumer staples—have been deeply wounded lately. Here is one you probably haven’t thought of—Berkshire Hathaway’s stock. The captain of the Berkshire ship, Warren Buffett has long been a master of profiting in down markets, and with the company’s $100 bn in cash, the combination looks appealing. One CIO put it this way, saying “As a long-term Berkshire holder, this is the kind of environment that you hope for given all the cash … I love the risk-reward, embedded safety, and diversity of the earnings flows”.

FINSUM: Berkshire is not the kind of stock that is going to get hammered in down markets, and it would seem to have a lot of upside in such environments. Seems like a potentially good buy.

(New York)

Markets are ugly right now, but one of the important questions is whether the bottom is really going to fall out. Well, one measure suggests the market is steadier than it seems. Both the put-call ratio and the TRIN ration (ratio of advancing versus declining stocks) both suggest investors aren’t panicking. The put-call ratio is only at 1.04, or 104 puts for every 100 calls, a very modest reading. Additionally, the TRIN is only 1.27, not drastic.

FINSUM: One institutional investor made a good point about the market right now—that it might take some hard economic data to show the market that its fears are real, and thus set the stage for a recovery. In other words, the specter of a recession may be worse for investors than the downturn itself.

(Washington)

Yesterday was a big moment for Fed and the markets. Trump has come down hard on the Fed for its relentless hikes, and the market is in the midst of a very rough period. Additionally, labor figures and inflation data have started to slip. All of that meant the Fed had the option of backing off the pedal on hikes. They didn’t, raising rates another quarter point. The central bank did make the small concession of saying they only planned to hike twice next year instead of the four increases they made this year.

FINSUM: The housing market is bad, the stock market is terrible, credit markets are weak, and inflation is falling. Why is the Fed still hiking?

(New York)

Goldman Sachs has been sending some seriously mixed messages on stocks. Just a few days ago they published a bearish outlook for 2019. Now the bank’s investment management arm is taking the opposite stance, saying that equities are the place to be. Goldman thinks global growth will continue nicely in 2019, giving support to stocks. It does, however, favor emerging markets over developed equities. The bank still thinks US stocks look attractive after the recent selloff, however.

FINSUM: To be honest it annoys us when one institution puts out some many competing views, but then again, each of the divisions has its own interests. We are not as bullish on stocks as Goldman money management arm.