I pity the passive investor in this market. Stuck with a single focus on "buying the market", they have never been given the chance to make anything but a single bet. As shown below, stocks have rarely, if ever, been this uncorrelated with each other. Just when stock correlations have plummeted, they are missing out on an investing lifetime opportunity by owning an index dominated by a group of tech stocks that are suddenly underperforming. Stock picking as a strategy has ret

There are cracks appearing in the U.S. economy. When you turn on the CNBC or Bloomberg financial channels, you get the same story on oil prices. They continue to use the oil futures markets to describe the costs to consumers of energy. But you don't put crude oil into your car - it's gasoline and diesel that run your car. And I'm sorry, EV fans - less than 2% of miles driven in the U.S. are fuelled by electrons. Trump's on-again, off-again war in the Middle East is causing m

Phew, that was close. Fed officials are seldom as blunt as Christopher Waller was when yesterday he was quoted as saying that rates would have to rise in inflation came in hotter that expected in today's CPI report. Thankfully, it didn't. But you cans see the level of angst in capital markets in the internal correction that was playing out recently. The US2Yr bond yield touched 18 month highs yesterday on the report of Fed hawkish commentary from Chris Waller and stocks gyrat

Back in January, which seems like a lifetime ago now, I made some 'stick your neck out' predictions for the year ahead. Some were better than others, and some were a bit of a layup. Auston Mathews - I'm looking at you. This exercise shows the folly of predicting the future. The random walk aspect of financial markets remains undefeated as a model for risk assets. But despite that, we try anyway. Let's look at the results on my half-year report card: Samsung is a better phone/