Worst Year in 100 Years for 60/40 Portfolio

Submitted by aka.attrition

“2022 is an extreme year when it comes to the #correlation of #returns between #stocks and #bonds. Indeed, since 1926, stocks and bonds only had 3 years (1931, 1969 and 2022) of combined negative returns.” –  Stéphane Monier , Chief Investment Officer, Banque Lombard Odier

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“YTD annualized return for the 60/40 portfolio is the worst in 100 years.” – Bank of America Global Research.

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Buying Dollars for Dimes… Doug Casey on How to Pinpoint Market Bottoms

Via International Man

market bottoms

International Man: What are some signs you look for when a market has reached the bottom?

Doug Casey: The oldest saying in the market is “buy low, sell high.” But people usually do the opposite. It’s very easy to be a contrarian in theory, but amazingly hard in practice. Anyway, you only rarely get an absolute top or bottom in something. What’s important most of the time is relative value.

That said, let me predict the next absolute top in gold and bottom in the stock market. They could very well happen simultaneously. The signal will be when Slime or Newspeak (should either still exist at the time) run a cover showing a golden bear tearing apart the New York Stock Exchange. At that point, you’d want to sell anything to do with gold and buy common stocks.

Continue reading “Buying Dollars for Dimes… Doug Casey on How to Pinpoint Market Bottoms”

You’ll be surprised to see what investment has destroyed the S&P 500

Guest Post by Simon Black

The year was 1990, and the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse.  The Berlin Wall was still in the process of being destroyed, and East and West Germany were set to reunify later in the year.

Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February, and the South African government began talks to end Apartheid soon after.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August.

Ghost, Home Alone, and Pretty Woman were the top movies of the year. Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation was the top-selling album.

And the S&P 500 reached an all-time high of 360.65 in May.

Continue reading “You’ll be surprised to see what investment has destroyed the S&P 500”

The 20 Best-Performing Stocks Of The Decade

Via ZeroHedge

Hindsight is 20/20. It can be incredibly difficult to pick the “next big stock” in the moment, but, as Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross notes, looking back gives us clarity on where we could have reaped the highest rewards. While some of the decade’s chart-toppers – like Netflix and Amazon – are household names, other stocks may come as a surprise.

Today’s visualization reveals the best-performing stocks over the last 10 years, and shows how much an initial $100 investment would be worth today.

Continue reading “The 20 Best-Performing Stocks Of The Decade”

The single best investment for the next decade

Guest Post by Mark Hulbert

“For money you wouldn’t need for more than 10 years, which ONE of the following do you think would be the best way to invest it—stocks, bonds, real estate, cash, gold/metals, or bitcoin/cryptocurrency?”

That question was recently asked of more than a thousand investors in a recent Bankrate survey, and the winner—by a large margin—was real estate. For every two respondents who answered stocks there were more than three who said real estate is the way to go.

Are these investors onto something? Have financial planners been wrong all these years? For this column I mine the historical data for answers.

Continue reading “The single best investment for the next decade”

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“The corporate bond market has all kinds of problems. I think investors should use the strength of junk bonds that’s happened as a gift and get out of them. Corporate credit, as a percentage of GDP, has never been higher.

The leverage in the corporate economy is very bad, There’s been a lot of buybacks — borrow money at low rates, buy back stocks — which of course, it’s just turning the equity market into a CDO residual, an equity piece, that’s getting thinner and thinner, riskier and riskier.

I think investors need to go to strong balance sheets. Strong balance sheets are going to be the way to survive during the zigzag of 2019.”

Jeffrey Gundlach

“Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is leading a pack of bullish voices cheering for gold. The bank’s analysts led by Jeffrey Currie raised their price forecast for gold, predicting that over 12 months the metal will climb to $1,425 an ounce — a level not seen in more than five years. Bullion has benefited as rising geopolitical tensions fuel central bank purchases, while fears of a recession helped boost demand from investors seeking ‘defensive assets,’ they said.”

Bloomberg, Goldman Predicts Gold Prices to Climb to Highest Since 2013

When This Happens, Buy Stocks

Guest Post by Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Today will be an interesting day. After falling the last two days, stocks should bounce. And the futures market says they will.

But now, we will see what the speculators are really thinking.

Will they want to go away for a four-day holiday with the stocks they’re holding?

Or will they want to lighten up a little more… just in case?

Money Disappeared

The combined value of the FAANG stocks – the big tech companies Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet) – is down by about $1 trillion from its peak. That money disappeared over the last few days. Don’t try to get in touch; it left no forwarding address.

Continue reading “When This Happens, Buy Stocks”

Central Banks Are Using The Trade War To Hide Their Direct Influence On Stocks

Hat tip Mary Christine

Guest Post by Brandon Smith

There has been a lot of confusion lately in the mainstream economic media as well as in independent media circles as to the behavior of stock markets in the wake of the recently initiated global trade war. In particular, stocks suffered one of the longest runs of negative days in their history in June, only to then spike just after Donald Trump “officially” began trade war tariffs in July. The expectation by many was that the headlines would cause an immediate and continued downturn in equities markets, but this was not the case. Many analysts have been left bewildered.

This is an issue I have touched on multiple times since the beginning of this year, and it is something I predicted long before Trump’s election in 2016. But it is obvious that the schizophrenic nature of stocks needs to be addressed in a very concise, no-holds-barred fashion, because there are still far too many people who are looking at all the wrong causes and correlations.

First, let’s be clear: stock markets are NOT tracking the news headlines. The past month should have proved this if there was any previous doubt.

Continue reading “Central Banks Are Using The Trade War To Hide Their Direct Influence On Stocks”

DOES HOPE TRUMP REALITY?

The Fed’s balance sheet will not be growing unless we have another market crash. GDP barely grew in the 1st quarter. Stock valuations are at all-time highs. The auto industry has begun to implode. Corporate profits are falling. Retailers are declaring bankruptcies and closing stores like we’re in the midst of a depression. Wages for the average person are stagnant. Real household income is declining when using real inflation numbers. Hope can work for awhile but it eventually runs head on into reality. We are living in a hope driven, profoundly abnormal society. People don’t realize it, but danger is lurking just over the horizon.

“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

Red – The Shawshank Redemption

“Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.”

President Snow – Hunger Games

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

STOCKS ARE CHEAP

No bubble here. Trump will surely create a new paradigm with his yuge economic plans to make murica great again. World war will do wonders for corporate profits and drive the S&P 500 up another 50%. The future is so bright I gotta wear shades. Now buy some SNAP and Tesla on margin and get rich.


Time to Get Defensive

Guest Post by Mark Nestmann

I will be the first to admit it: I’m a lousy investor.

My first forays into the investment markets came in the early 1980s, when I saved up enough money to buy some stocks. Like so many other new and eager investors, I bought when prices were rising. And so on October 19, 1987 – otherwise known as “Black Monday” – I along with millions of other investors was caught up in the largest one-day crash of US markets ever. The S&P 500 lost 20.5% that day, with $500 billion of investor losses.

Instantly, my outlook went from euphoria to terror. I sold every stock I owned, at rock-bottom prices. On average, I lost about 30% – several thousand dollars.

Of course, that was precisely the wrong thing to do. In hindsight, the October 19 price collapse would have been a fantastic entry point to buy. But instead, like most investors, I panicked.

Continue reading “Time to Get Defensive”

The “Mystery” Of Who Is Pushing Stocks To All Time Highs Has Been Solved

Tyler Durden's picture

 

One conundrum stumping investors in recent months has been how, with investors pulling money out of equity funds (at last check for 17 consecutive weeks) at a pace that suggests a full-on flight to safety, as can be seen in the chart below which shows record fund outflows in the first half of the year – the fastest pace of withdrawals for any first half on record…

 

… are these same markets trading at all time highs?  We now have the answer.

Continue reading “The “Mystery” Of Who Is Pushing Stocks To All Time Highs Has Been Solved”

HALFWAY UPDATE

Half the year is over and all you will hear on CNBC and the rest of the captured corporate media is about the ongoing bull market in stocks. You won’t hear about the real bull market. Stocks haven’t gone anywhere in the last 20 months. Their QE created bull market ended in October 2014 when the liquidity spigot was shut off.

Even in this rigged market, with the Fed directly buying through their intermediaries, corporations buying back hundreds of billions of their own stock, and HFT machines programmed to buy by the Wall Street cabal, stocks have barely made any gains in the first six months.

The real bull market, which shall not be mentioned, is revealing the failure of central bankers around the world to debase their way to prosperity. If every country in the world attempts to debase their currency at the same time, there can be only one winner – precious metals. Look who’s winning YTD:

  • Silver – up 48%
  • Gold – up 27%
  • S&P 500 – up 4%
  • Dow – up 4%
  • Nasdaq – down 3%

All shall be revealed in the fullness of time. Gold and silver are revealing the failure of the Fed and their establishment puppeteers in their quest to sustain an unsustainable economic system.

 


Greenspan Admits The Fed’s Plan Was Always To Push Stocks Higher

Tyler Durden's picture


“We Frontloaded A Tremendous Market Rally” Former Fed President Admits, Warns “No Ammo Left”

Tyler Durden's picture

In perhaps the most shocking of mea culpas seen in modern financial history, former Dallas Fed head Richard Fisher unleashed some seriously uncomfortable truthiness during a 5-minute confessional interview on CNBC. While talking heads attempt to blame China for recent US market volatility, Fisher explains “It is not China,” it is The Fed that is at fault: “What The Fed did, and I was part of it, was front-loaded an enormous rally market rally in order to create a wealth effect… and an uncomfortable digestive period is likely now.” Simply put he concludes, there can’t be much more accomodation, “The Fed is a giant weapon that has no ammunition left.”

Must watch!!! A shocked Simon Hobbs (at 5:10) is a must-see… “Will The Fed come on and say ‘we’re sorry, we over-inflated the market’ when it crashes?”

Fisher appears to be undertaking  a major “cover-your-ass” episosde, proclaiming that he was against QE3 which is what has forced “valuations to be very richly priced.”

In my tenure at The Fed, every market participant was demanding we do more… “It was The Fed, The Fed, The Fed… in my opinion they got lazy.. and it is time to go back to fundamental analysis… and not just expect the tide to lift all boats… and as [The Fed] tide recedes we are going to see who is wearing a bathing suit and who is not”