Are Stocks Oversold Enough to Rally?
There is an old saying that describes market behavior: “Stair-steps up, elevators down.” In other words, when stocks are rising, they tend to do so in a slow and steady manner. But declines and corrections tend to be much sharper and swifter. So far, October 2018 is turning into Exhibit A for this dictum. The […]
Boutique of the Week: JAG Capital Management
October 2018 — Missouri-based JAG Capital Management looks for stocks that exhibit superior growth, strong fundamentals and long-term capital appreciation. Read more about JAG here: https://citywireusa.com/professional-buyer/news/boutique-of-the-week-jag-capital-management/a1156790
Have You Recently Suffered from Recency Bias?
As an investor, does the recent volatility feel especially bad to you? If so, this may be an example of Recency Bias, which is a behavioral anomaly hard-wired into all of us over thousands of generations of evolution. Recency Bias is the tendency of people to think that the trends we have observed in the […]
Norm Conley Talks JAG’s Large Cap Growth Fund with Ticker Magazine
This article originally appeared in Ticker Magazine on October 16, 2018. Norm Conley, JAG’s CEO and CIO, was interviewed. Q: What is the history of the fund? Could you give us some background information? A: JAG Capital Management, based in St. Louis, has assets under management and advisement of about $1.3 billion in total. JAG Large Cap […]
Inflation Nation
The level of inflation has been a subject of debate over the last several months. We prefer to focus on year over year changes in CPI to get a better feel of what is truly happening to prices. As you can see above, Headline CPI has steadily increased from 0.2% in August of 2015 to […]
3rd Quarter 2018: Lapping Lehman
Investment performance is often measured in convenient slices of time. For example, most experienced investors are familiar with mutual fund advertisements detailing a fund’s trailing 1-,3-, 5-, and 10-year performance. Of those periods, the last one – the immediate past decade of average annualized returns – tends to carry a lot of psychic weight for […]
Bullish Signals in Industrials and Healthcare
A little over two months ago, we noted how poorly the Industrials sector was performing. We noted that tariff threats, a strong dollar, and rising input costs were headwinds. However, after hitting a 2,344-day relative strength low versus the Russell 1000 Growth Index in mid-July, Industrials seem to be making a stand. In fact, Industrials […]
Cautionary Signals from the “New” Communications Sector?
Here’s our first look at the relative strength of the newly-reconstituted Communications Services sector compared to the Russell 1000 Growth Index. No longer the exclusive domain of traditional telecom companies like AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ), Communications Services now includes massive former Technology constituents like Facebook (FB) and Alphabet (GOOGL), as well as media players […]
How Does a Momentum Manager Measure Risk?
Risk taken by asset managers can be assessed in a number of ways. Comparing a manager’s portfolio beta to that of their relevant index is a longstanding first step in considering how risky a collection of stocks may be. More sophisticated risk assessments include a review of component factors that explain systematic risks. Unfortunately, neither […]
Emerging Bullish Signs in Semiconductor Equipment Stocks
Semiconductors have changed the world in innumerable ways over the last fifty years, and some chip stocks have been incredible wealth creators for their investors. But the semiconductor industry – like many other manufacturing-based industries – is very cyclical and prone to extended “booms” and “bust” periods for investors. Successfully navigating cyclical inflection points can […]