FlashNotes

At the start of the year, I selected four ETFs that I believed would offer a positive return irrespective of the macroeconomic environment. We’re a quarter in, so it’s time to check in. To do so, we will compare the year-to-date (YTD) performance of each pick against the SPY (S&P 500 ETF) and update the…

Friday morning, the financial sector kicked off earnings with reports from J.P. Morgan (JPM), BlackRock (BLK), Wells Fargo (WFC), Citi Group (C), and PNC Financial (PNC). Although many other banks, including the regionals, have yet to report, three significant stories caught my attention. 1) The Net Interest Margin (NIM) Narrative Is Not Over As earnings…

The market has decided that March Payrolls will showcase a cooling labor market, providing the Fed with additional reason to pause, which would be bullish for stocks. All of this week’s economic reports have painted a picture of a cooling labor market: It appears that the bank scare has had a real impact on the…

The majority of my writing focuses on contextualizing complex market moves to assist in making investment decisions. While I occasionally discuss the sectors that I believe benefit from those market moves, I rarely mention individual stocks. However, recent volatility has caused unjust dislocations in certain companies’ stocks, creating attractive risk-reward scenarios only when defined entry…

Confused by today’s rally in equities? No worries. I attribute this relief rally to three factors: 1) A group of financial institutions – Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan – are in talks to deposit ~$20B in First Republic Bank (FRC).  2) After touching a new 52-week low at around $65.50, Crude…

As markets grapple with the implications of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), it is difficult to keep the emotion out of investing. Emotion – fear and hope alike – have no place in any investment strategy. Until regulators reach a more permanent resolution, we should expect increased volatility. To remove emotion from the equation, I defer…

Initial Thoughts Chat GPT has created significant excitement surrounding AI, causing associated stocks to skyrocket. Initially, I dismissed this as a typical buzzword bubble. However, earnings from Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom (AVGO) have led me to question my skepticism. Ambitious Statements From Conservative Management Jensen Huang, CEO of NVDA, remarked that AI is at an…

Shadows of 2022 The latter half of February felt a lot like 2022. If you told me what yields were going to do, I could tell you what stocks were going to do. Yields up; stocks down: nothing else matters, no matter how good or how bad. It was that simple.   Financial Markets 101: Yields…

A Shift In Emphasis Despite a vast number of companies reporting before and after each session, economic data dominated this week’s tape (2/13 – 2/17/23). The market is shifting its emphasis from the micro – company-specific developments – to the macro – economy-wide developments. While this shift occurs quarterly, it is worth noting because in…

When I woke up at 8:30AM to give Payrolls a cursory look, my initial thought was that the bear was about to reassert itself.  These numbers imply wage inflation was far from contained, and that the Fed will need to go higher for longer. However, a few bullish nuggets buried within the report put in…