Auour Insights

The Quarter in Review

The quote used in our 1st quarter report was “It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.”  We have been investing in accordance with that quote and maintaining a near fully invested stance yet conscious of the growing optimism witnessed in the world markets. 

Global markets, especially equity markets, have continued rising with little performance difference between the major equity classes.  Emerging markets have continued their rebound this year and now match, looking back over the past 12 months, the equally impressive performance of smaller US companies.  Growth companies have continued

We are strong believers in Peter Lynch’s quote, “Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections than has been lost in corrections themselves.” Because fearmongering market pundits profess that a correction is always near, we, therefore, continue to rely on Lynch’s statement.

There is no doubt that headlines these days are bad.  North Korea becoming more emboldened in its desire to wreak havoc on the world as they defend their reign.  The US government breaking new records for partisanship.  Civility becoming second to rage in our own communities as extreme elements take to

We are very excited and honored to be one of only two tactical ETF strategists on the new Cetera Platform.  Please follow the link below for the press release.

Link

We are ones to look both ways even when crossing a one-way street.  It is ingrained in us to watch for the unexpected. We’re believers in the saying, “It’s the punch you do not see that knocks you out.”

Although we stand in a near fully invested stance at the time of this writing, we are always looking for signals that will change our positioning.  Catching our attention at this moment are China’s wealth management products (WMPs). In our last commentary, we briefly highlighted that WMPs may be a potential pain point for the world’s financial markets.  We said that the

“Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.” – Wikipedia

The S&P 500 index, a proxy for the US equity market, has risen 6% in the first ten weeks of 2017 and almost 30% from the February lows one year ago.  Throughout the run-up, investment pundits have expressed concern that the market was richly valued, citing the historical highs in one measure of equity market valuation.

There are ample reasons to be cautious, but valuation is not high on