The “Buy and Hold” Philosophy

Here is a story from CNBC.com on September 23: “Buy-and-Hold Investing Makes A Return After Turbulent Year” http://www.cnbc.com/id/32970487 I am not a fan of the “Buy and Hold” philosophy, although I will concede that it worked (very) well, generally speaking, during the 20th Century. As far as the present and future is concerned, I wrote …

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Peril In The Markets? Part V

For this last post of this blog series, I will comment on the VIX. As seen below, if one looks casually at the VIX daily chart, there doesn’t seem to be much to be concerned about: Chart Courtesy of StockCharts.com   However, I would like to make a couple of observations.  First, as one can …

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Peril In The Markets? Part IV

The price action in the S&P500 since the March low at ~666 has struck me as being very “impulsive.”  This is certainly a cause for concern.  Also, there certainly has not been any significant “wall of worry” that one would expect given the fundamentals. The charts seen in this post are from Maurice Walker, http://thechartpatterntrader.com.  First, a …

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Peril In The Markets? Part II

I have included two charts of the Ten-Year Treasury yields below – one daily and one monthly.  The monthly is provided for a longer-term perspective. I would like to address the daily chart.  It seems odd that in an environment in which inflation is (purportedly) a growing concern the economy is supposedly recovering faster than …

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Peril In The Markets? Part I

The next few posts will contain some of my thoughts on the markets from a Technical Analysis perspective.   Typically I don’t comment about my observations from a technical perspective.  However, I believe we are at a very critical juncture here in the markets.   I am not aware of anyone discussing imminent peril in the markets right now, …

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P/E Ratios and Inflation / Deflation

I recently came across an interesting chart titled “Relationship Of Inflation and Price/Earnings Ratios (1900-2008).”  It is from Crestmont Research and can be found at this link: http://www.crestmontresearch.com/pdfs/Stock%20Inflation%20&%20PE.pdf It shows the effect of inflation and deflation (as defined by the CPI) on the P/E Ratio. I think that it is worth looking at for a variety …

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Is The Stock Market Rally a ‘Validation’?

As seen in the Fortune story of June 15 titled “Economy in ‘early stages of repair’”: “The stock market’s rally serves as “broad validation” of the Obama administration’s financial rescue efforts, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said Monday.” While ostensibly this is correct, and commonly-held theory states that a stock market rally would precede an economic …

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