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Casey Clarke

Ask Cadence: How will current and future geopolitical issues affect the markets?

By Blog

It’s rational to assume that negative developments like social unrest, violence, and wars would roil the markets, but that’s not necessarily how things have played out historically. To the degree that investors feel confidence in markets rising, and the profitability of certain sectors of the market, financial assets can weather more societal turbulence than we’d think. The real issue for markets, especially from already lofty valuations at the end of a lengthy expansionary cycle, are those two factors just mentioned – confidence and corporate profitability. It’s really not until those two things are disturbed enough that markets go down and…

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Ask Cadence: What’s the latest on the economy? Is it growing or shrinking? I hear mixed messages.

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The economy, when looked at through a number of activity and production-based data points other than just GDP, decelerated substantially from its peak in 2021, seems to have troughed last year, and has risen modestly since then. We can say, in looking at our index of economic activity below, that although overall activity doesn’t seem to be weakening meaningfully in recent months, it’s anything but robust. Our index puts us right around the flatline, reflecting stagnation. What’s important to note, however, is that the popular definition for recession is when unemployment rises to match the underlying economic weakness. On this…

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Market Risk in One Chart

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There is no such thing as a “market” crystal ball, or a perfect indicator, measure, or data point, but if we were to pick one tool from our “market conditions toolbox” to give us a sense of potentially imminent risk present in the stock market and broader financial system, it would probably be the Hindenburg Omen metric. We spoke about this briefly in our May Cadence Clips newsletter, but given the importance of it coupled with the fact that we’ve tacked on more than ten additional Omen days since then, we figured we’d bring it back into consciousness. Popularized by…

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Market Update – “Investing” is Winning

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If you’ve ever wondered why financial media doesn’t talk more about things other than stocks and bonds, it’s generally because it doesn’t serve the business model that allows them to survive, which is another way of saying, there isn’t as much money in it. If risk-adjusted opportunity was most important, or those things that could benefit the viewer most, we’d be hearing a lot more about gold, silver, and other natural resource investments, especially given their performance so far this year. The chart below tells a pretty interesting story – the major stock market indexes are up about 11% (SPY…

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Market Topping Conditions

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One of the data points we follow to help us gain insight into the current condition of the stock market is called the Hindenburg Omen count. Originally created by James Miekka, its primary criteria is for at least 2.2% of stocks trading in the stock market to be both making new highs and new lows on the same days. Those days are tallied and looked at cumulatively to identify periods of divergence within a particular stock market index. The idea is that when you get disagreement within the stock market, it could mark a potential turning point. Below, is our…

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Investor or Speculator – Part II

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If you think about the last time we had widespread social strife and turmoil in the United States in tandem with expensive financial markets, your recollection will probably take you back to the sixties. Between anti-war protests, the civil rights movement, entitlement reform, and a re-tooling of criminal justice policies and laws, there was plenty of fodder for calm, dispassionate chats with friends and family. It’s probably no coincidence that this swell of activity came toward the end of a post-World War II economic expansion that brought economic comfort to many and stock markets to rather lofty heights. What followed,…

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Investor or Speculator – Which Are You?

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Speculative manias are incredibly difficult to navigate without injury. For every millionaire produced by the technology bubble of the late 1990’s, there are countless stories of people losing their life savings or worse. Fast-moving markets that are well beyond any reasonable assessment of fair value can reverse course without warning, reason, or sympathy for the investors who don’t have the good fortune to exit the game before the music stops. This is the problem with speculation: because, like moths to a flame, we’re attracted to those assets that are rapidly going up in price and garnering enthusiastic praise, there is…

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The “Risk-Free” Domino

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We’ve long scoffed at the term “risk-free” when referring to U.S. government bonds as there have been countless times when they’ve fluctuated in value well beyond what most would consider “risk-free”. Volatility tends to show up in anything that’s traded freely, in markets, by humans. However, the greater than 40% decline in long-dated U.S. government bond prices since the summer of 2020 has completely obliterated any remaining notion of U.S. sovereign debt being devoid of risk. There are really important lessons and implications to this bond implosion. First, the lessons: Lesson #1 No investment is risk-free. Anything that trades on…

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Smart People Thinking the Same Way

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The only thing worse than a group of nitwits sharing silly ideas is a group of smart people all thinking the same way. The dullards are quickly discovered as such, but the smart people tend to command an undiscerning following. What’s also evident is that individual thinking tends to be more intelligent than intelligent people thinking together. The reason for this is groupthink. The assumption that because someone is intelligent, their thinking is sound and it’s this assumption that short-circuits others’ thinking. In this way, groups of highly intelligent people can give village idiots a good run for their money,…

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Sea Change

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It’s hard to grasp the significance of a situation that plays out one day at a time over years. Little changes happen periodically and intermittently that get us to a place that eventually looks and feels very different. But, because we were part of those changes along the way, we have to work to shake off the familiarity of the world around us and remember the one that existed before. And, if we reach the edges of our lived experiences, we may lean on historical record to paint an even broader, more objective picture. There are only a limited number…

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