Bullish and Bearish Bellwethers [Note to Readers: in the wake of GameStop’s Reddit-fueled roller coaster ride, the post below is getting renewed attention. To would-be market timers, though, here’s a heads up: the post appeared almost 5 years ago, when the Nasdaq — which contains many high-flying tech stocks — closed at 4,476. Its close...Read More
Looking for Signs of a Market Top Once upon a time, a sure-fire yellow (or red!) flag for frothy home prices was Realtors buying homes for themselves, either as investments, or to fix up and flip. See, “Insider Buying & the Housing Market: Why Realtors are a CONTRARIAN Indicator.” The logic: agents were most bullish...Read More
Bullish and Bearish Bellwethers Just before the 1929 crash, Joseph Kennedy (father of President John F.) was supposed to have dumped all his stocks because a Wall Street shoeshine boy started giving him stock tips. Kennedy reasoned that, if even shoeshine boys were playing the market, there was no remaining, untapped demand to support stock...Read More
Parallels With Subprime Mortgage Melt-Down “The U.S. economy’s output is roughly $18.4 trillion per year. Total exports to China are very roughly $120 billion per year. That’s a lot of hamburgers, but it’s roughly seven-tenths of one percent of the U.S. economy. If our exports to China fell by 20 percent — a large number — that...Read More
The Timing Factor More than people would like to admit, there’s an element of luck involved in real estate. The variables include: •Whether your buying and/or selling coincides with housing market peaks or troughs (if you’re doing both, it matters much less). •What prevailing interest rates are — and what they’re doing just before you...Read More
New Lender Refrain: “These Rates Won’t WILL Last!” or, Three Buyer Worries With home prices now rebounding in many markets nationally, prospective Buyers these days usually have two main worries: 1) that prices will rise (further), making a purchase unaffordable — or at least more expensive; and 2) that interest rates will rise . ....Read More