Follow-ups and New Thoughts: 1) Emerging Markets are still exciting for the long run, but surging interest rates are not helpful for this asset class. Higher yields in the U.S. hurt EM in two ways – they raise the relative…

Emerging Market Asset Allocation It would be unthinkable to put together an investment portfolio today that did not include Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet.  Perhaps also Facebook, Tesla, and Netflix.  These companies have become very powerful through domination of at…

The Fed Not much to say about the U.S. stock market overall.  I’ve been reading a lot of analogies lately, so here is mine:  Imagine northern California, circa 1849.  Gold has been discovered, and a lot of people are getting…

Investors are herd creatures.  We can’t help it; 100,000 years of programming is hard to unlearn.  That said, what enabled our ancestors to survive on the African plains and later in medieval societies was the ability to quickly figure out…

Exactly one month ago (February 19, 2020), the S&P 500 made a high just above 3393 before closing at 3384.  We didn’t know it at the time, but that was the market top.  All of the major market averages were…