Macro Minute

The other day, I came across this article by Ted Seides in which he discusses the phenomenon of the “magnificent seven” companies (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), Amazon, Nvidia, and Tesla) and their significant influence on the US stock market. Seides explores the idea that these companies have become a central consideration for portfolio […]

I thought I would take a minute and give a lay of the land on current conditions*. This will be chart heavy. Inflation is the dominant factor still because it has been driving Federal Reserve policy decisions. This chart shows CPI for the last 20 years. We can see that we have gone from basically […]

Let’s talk rates for a minute.  I am writing this on August 3rd, 2023.  Yields on longer dated maturities of treasuries have moved higher this week.  I would like to give you my belief as to the main reason.  The headline that is grabbing attention is that Fitch downgraded the US from AAA to AA+.  […]

Today I want to do an investor profile.  I want to examine Peter Lynch. Peter ran the Fidelity Magellan fund from 1977 to 1990.  Over that time, he had annualized returns of 29% doubling up the return of the S&P 500.  What makes this all the more interesting is that Fidelity did a study of the […]

I recently stumbled upon some great charts from @MnkeDaniel on Twitter. I have said, and heard it said, for years that every time in history is full of reasons not to invest. We look back and think, “Man, it would have been easy to make a ton of money back then!” because we know now […]

Today, I would like to introduce you to Morgan Housel, an author, writer, and partner at The Collaborative Fund. Morgan’s first book, The Psychology of Money, is one of my favorite finance books in recent years. He is also set to release his second book, Same as Ever, in November. Recently, I had the opportunity […]

Today, I would like to discuss another behavioral bias that affects us as investors, leading to less than desired outcomes. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky introduced Prospect Theory, also known as loss aversion. What they observed is that people feel losses about twice as much as they do gains.  This causes some quirky human behaviors. […]

Today’s topic that I want to cover is around market and economic trends. While I will have more charts and observations covering economic trends week to week on the Macro Minute, I want to give a broad overview of how I think about this. First off, I have to say that you should have a […]

This week I would like to start discussing behavioral tendencies that prevent investors from achieving their goals. Investors often times act irrational and react to emotions over logic. Emotional behavior can negatively impact the long-term success of an investor. Let’s start with overconfidence. Overconfidence is when someone is more confident in one’s ability or judgement […]

I have a couple of cool charts to talk about today. The first chart I want to go over tells the story of what has driving stock market returns this year. We have a scenario of seven companies driving all of the performance in the most widely used index for the US stock market. This […]