This morning the US Federal Reserve has thrown the kitchen sink at the markets – they have cut interest rates to zero (0 to 0.25%) and announced $700bn in money printing. Market sentiment and individual opinions about the market are bi-polar at the moment. Someone told me at the weekend (after the 13% bounce on…
I (Marcus) wrote on Saturday that “As the market floats in space, happy go lucky, we have to ponder where the gravitational pull is going to come from, the as yet unclear 2020 development that brings it back down to earth, because, as my accountant, a not unintelligent man, said to me last year, and…
I wrote an article at the beginning of last week called the “Anatomy of the Bounce” which included a look at the stocks that had fallen the most and were (presumably) likely to bounce the most on a relief rally. At the time the ASX 200 (ASX: XJO) had dropped 13.23% from top to bottom…
Paul Volcker was the Federal Reserve chairman before Greenspan. He was appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1979 and served as the US central bank’s chairman until 1987. Volcker was the man who, in an inflation obsessed era (the 1980’s), worked out that reacting to a rise in inflation didn’t work, and that central banks had to…
G20 met at the weekend. The headlines included – “Heads of ECB, BOJ, Fed and Eurozone meet at G20. The Bank of Japan has lessons to offer on dangers of low inflation” There is a potentially interesting development at G20. The usual uselessness of overpaid bureaucrats on a junket appears momentarily to have given way…
This is a chart from the Australian Listed Investment Company Cadence Capital (CODE CDA) – the table is a little out of date but they make the point that out of around 2000 Australian stocks only 700 are profitable and that out of that 700 stocks they consider only around 35 are “good” stocks and…
Let me make the Australian stock market simple for you. There are over 2000 stocks most of which don’t make a profit. But you don’t need to worry about most of the Australian listed stocks and if you are like most investors one of your best ‘quality’ filters, as brainless as it might be, is…
Four teenagers, 4 adults and two ‘geriatrics’ in two campervans for two weeks sounds like a recipe for disaster but the problems came not from the travelers but from other directions. Our middle son invited us to join him and his family on a trip to New Zealand. Our youngest son and his family joined…
Things to watch out for in the reporting season There have been a number of serious headwinds for corporate Australia, some of which are only just becoming apparent. This week we saw the new vehicle sales coming in far weaker than expected and showing no sign of the trickledown wealth effects of a housing boom.…
