By Shah Gilani, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning • @ShahGilani_TW - • Print | Email
Earlier this week the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting held few surprises.Instead, we got another 75 basis points hike on interest rates and no forward guidance on when they’ll taper their hiking regime.
For the full story on why we're not out of the woods yet, click here.
By Shah Gilani, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning • @ShahGilani_TW - • Print | Email
The Fed is about to crash the stock market, but you can cash in with this move.
By Money Morning Staff Reports, Money Morning - • Print | Email
If you look at Zoom (NASDAQ: ZM) and Shopify (NYSE: SHOP), you might think we’re in a bubble.
These “stay-at-home stocks make it look like 1999 all over again.
ZM is up 494% year to date.
SHOP is up 179%.
And the S&P keeps chugging along with a 65% return since the COVID-19 crash in March.
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Let’s see if there’s anything to this stock market bubble thing…
By Money Morning Staff Reports, Money Morning - • Print | Email
Investors who bought the S&P 500 at rock-bottom this year have a whopping 65% gain to show for it.
That’s a lot for nine months.
The S&P 500’s last 65% gain took about five years, from late 2015 to early 2020.
And we know what happened in early 2020… As COVID-19 and other calamities threaten world economies, some investors fear we might be looking down the barrel of another stock market crash.
In the event of a market crash, however, we know what to do.
The name of the game is to always be prepared.
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By Mike Stenger, Associate Editor, Money Morning - • Print | Email
We remember late-February well.
The S&P 500 lost more than 30% between then and March.
Closing down the U.S.
economy had a tumultuous effect on investor confidence.
But the current market is taking hits from more than one direction.
Let's talk about why stocks are down today, then what you can do to protect yourself.
By Money Morning Staff Reports, Money Morning - • Print | Email
The coronavirus crash wiped out 35% of the market's value this spring.
But with stocks back at all-time highs and the pandemic still crippling the economy, investors are concerned a second stock market crash could be on its way.
We want our readers to be fully informed about the market and its risks, so we're going to look at the evidence.
While we can't predict the future, one of the best tools we have can help us tell if the stock market is overheated.
And it's showing stocks are more overvalued than they've been since 1971…
By William Patalon III, Executive Editor, Money Morning - • Print | Email
Virtually everyone has heard of Zoom Video Communications Inc. – the came-out-of-nowhere winner of the coronavirus pandemic.
With its work-from-anywhere software, Zoom has changed the way we look at our jobs.
And that promises to change the American workplace and the U.S. economy moving forward.
Well, there's also another innovator out there – a tech firm that promises to have a bigger-and-longer-lasting impact on a different sector – the $1.7 trillion U.S. healthcare market.
This company – which I'm referring to as the "Zoom of Healthcare" – could be one of the biggest winners of the COVID-19 pandemic.
By David Zeiler, Associate Editor, Money Morning • @DavidGZeiler - • Print | Email
In the financial markets, a black swan event is something that strikes unexpectedly and has a widespread, severe impact.
It's little wonder, then, that the media keeps referring to the coronavirus crisis as a black swan event.
But what investors want to know now is how long this will last and when might the market start to recover.
We found some important clues by looking at one particular black swan event from the past...
By Money Morning Staff Reports, Money Morning - • Print | Email
Nothing is safe during "global risk-off" events.
During extreme times of panic, cash is king.
Not even gold (down 3.5% yesterday) was safe.
You see, gold typically decouples and becomes inversely correlated during periods of stress.
Historically, it's a great long-term hedge, but in times like this, it can drop significantly in the short term too.
For perspective, take a look at what happened from the market tops in October 2007 to the depths of March 2009.
In that time, the S&P 500 dropped like a rock – down 56.1%.
So, what happens to stocks over the next 18 months is the big question on investors' minds.
Are we in the early stages of another recession?
This chart might have the answer...
By Shah Gilani, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning • @ShahGilani_TW - • Print | Email
Monday's stock market declines weren't unexpected, though the extent of losses was shocking.
Investors had been selling stocks for the previous two weeks on coronavirus fears, starting immediately after U.S. benchmark indexes made record highs on Feb. 12, 2020.
A "dead cat bounce" last week didn't fool seasoned traders, who saw huge inflows into U.S. Treasuries last week as a warning sign there was more equity selling to come.
As COVID-19 hotspots cropped up across the globe and infections rose along with fatalities in U.S. cities and states over the weekend, right on cue, sell orders flooded brokerages before markets even opened Monday morning.
So many sell orders in fact, markets couldn't open. Instantaneous and extraordinary selling knocked stocks "down limit," or 7%, at the open, triggering a "circuit breaker" halt to trading for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, exchanges let stocks trade again, and they fell another 1% before buyers, probably computer-driven algorithms, started buying beaten-down names like Microsoft and Amazon.
But buying volume was thin all day, and sellers more often overwhelmed attempts to lift stocks higher.
Stocks closed 144 points off their session lows of 2,158, ending down 2,013.76 points to 23,851.02. That's a 7.79% drop in one day and a 19.3% drop since Feb. 12.
Most evident in yesterday's carnage were the market's worst enemies: fear and panic. That tells me something about what I'm watching today… Full Story
