The Case for Small Caps

It’s difficult to express how much of a shocker the Fed’s statement on Wednesday afternoon was. Of course nobody was expecting a rate hike. At the same time, nobody was expecting the Fed to announce interest rate cuts, either… I expected that we’d be picking through the Fed’s choice of words about inflation and the […]

Vulture Capitalism and the Fed

It’s rant time! Because on Monday, a couple of private equity companies announced their intention to take Macy’s (NYSE: M) private. You know, to help it.  We all know the private equity playbook. Buy a struggling company, sell some assets, fire a bunch of people and call it synergy or productivity or whatever, create a […]

The Everything Rally

On Friday, we talked a little about what to expect from stocks for the rest of the year, and into January. I’m gonna reprint most of it so I don’t have to repeat anything: The S&P 500 is consolidating that November rally just below new yearly highs. That’s a pretty strong showing, because it’s totally […]

Lovesac and Santa

The first thing that caught my eye about this company was the name… Lovesac (NASDAQ: LOVE). How can you not be at least a little curious? It obviously takes some, um, guts to give your company a name like Lovesac. I figured a degree of confidence in the business model was at least likely, so […]

Amazon's $84 Billion Secret

In 2007, the company with the biggest R&D budget in the world was General Motors. In 2008, the title went to Nokia. 2009 and 2010 were the years of big pharma, Roche and then Merck spent the most on R&D.  Volkswagen took the lead for a couple years, starting in 2011. Then in 2016, tech […]

Two Thanksgivings

In 1939, America celebrated Thanksgiving twice. 23 states and the District of Columbia had their turkey dinners on Thursday, November 23. 22 states piled their plates a week later, November 30.  Maybe not surprisingly, the split went right down political party lines. Most of the 23 states that went with November 23 as Turkey Day […]

OPEC Mutiny

I’m still a little stunned about the results of yesterday’s OPEC+ meeting. Because the big takeaway is that Saudi Arabia has lost control of OPEC.  As a little background, oil prices have been falling ever since the brief spike after the Hamas attack on Israel. Now, the Saudis don’t like it when oil approaches $70 […]

Death of an ETF

I’ve never been a particular fan of ETFs. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with buying a group of stocks that target a particular sector or index… After all, S&P 500 Index Funds pretty much underpin America’s entire retirement savings system. And these funds have proven to be an effective way to grow your money […]

Bullish On Humanity

Good day,  I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving holiday!  Mine was a whirlwind – flew out of the Jacksonville airport on the 7 AM to Baltimore- Washington International on Wednesday. My daughter’s flight from New Orleans arrived shortly before mine. My son picked us up and we drove to Baltimore so they could […]

Drill, Baby, Drill is Dead

I’ve had this article in the hopper for a couple weeks. I started it after I watched the last GOP presidential debate back on November 8. I was fired up because every single one of the candidates offered up the exact same line about America’s energy situation.  Basically, some version of “drill, baby, drill.” Whether […]

The Blind Golfer

Melvin was 72 years old, blind in one eye and could smack the crap out of a golf ball. Probably 270-280 yards off the tee… It was maybe 4 years ago that my buddy Pete and I got paired up with Melvin and his friend, who’s name escapes me, for a round of golf at […]

CPI: To Core, or Not To Core

Despite all the recent commentary from the various Fed governors that they stand ready to do more to combat inflation, this morning’s CPI number confirms what the market already knows: the Fed is done hiking interest rates.  The CPI rose at a 3.2% annualized rate in October. And remember, that inflation number comes right on […]