S&P 500: Tipping Point?

13 February 2018 In my 2018 Investment Strategy blog entitled "Aging Rally or More to Play For?", I indicated that while the US (and global) equity market rally was aging in calendar terms, the factors traditionally signalling the end of the cycle were not yet evident.  Nevertheless, I suggested that the US market would experience [...]

State Of the Union: Jam Today, Cuts Tomorrow

23 January 2018 On 30 January, President Trump will deliver his first State of the Union speech.  To be sure, the state of the US economy is healthy  (I will leave it to others to assess the state of the Union). Indeed, GDP has  advanced at over a 3% clip during the past nine months.  [...]

2018 Strategy in Pictures: Aging Rally or More to Play For?

15 December 2017 Looking into 2018, one is is reminded of the old stock market admonition that "bulls make money and bears make money, but pigs are slaughtered".  In other words, let's not be greedy: the returns of the past year are highly unlikely to be repeated.  In an effort  to free up your time [...]

US Tax Reform: Panacea or a Risk too Far?

2 December 2017 In a swanky Washington restaurant in 1974, economist Arthur Laffer presented Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (future VP and US Secretary of Defence) a doodle on the back of a napkin.  What appeared was a diagram of the now infamous “Laffer Curve”.  The graph depicts the relationship between tax rates and tax [...]