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Trade Wars, Fed Rate Cuts, Negative Interest Rates, Yield Curve Inversion, Trump Impeachment, Brexit, and Recession! Did I cover all the monsters in the room? Both advisors and clients all know the same information due to the internet and easier access to information. This has made sentiment poor and both advisors and clients have reacted by lowering equity allocations. Is this the fuel that keeps the market afloat?

From this Christmas Eve miracle, the U.S. Fed embarked on a series of interest rate and quantitative tightening walk backs. Not to be outdone, the European Central Bank, which just ended its credit infusions to its banking system, started walking back its plans to tighten monetary conditions by discussing more easing. To complete the coordination, China stepped in with massive liquidity credit injections to its state-owned corporations.

I loved playing pinball at the arcade. If you could coax the ball to go where you needed, it was called “nudging,” but too much and the “Tilt” light came on.

We believe that for the market to be back in an up- trend and out of a high-risk environment, we need to see a couple strong days in the market that put the RCI Indicator above 80. That would suggest to us that institutions feel comfortable enough with the market to be engaged again. Good earnings guidance will give cover to the risk-on trade being back in style. I believe we will find out by the end of October what kind of market we are in. For now, J2 Capital is holding higher-than-normal levels of cash across our models, waiting to see what the market’s next move is.

The market is currently confusing, messy, and not optimal for risk-taking. Intuitional program trading is beating up those trying to play the wiggles. We have done well managing the recent volatility by being early to sell down to cash. We want to be careful to not overthink things and get caught up in chasing markets up and down daily. A better investment environment will present itself but it’s not now.

We believe that given the euphoric rise with no pullback along with exuberant enthusiasm raises risks in the short term higher than we have seen in years. A pause would be healthy. Straight line advances in a 30-degree upward angle almost never stick no matter how good things are. Should stocks not pause, we would expect to see many months of gains given back very quickly.

A New Growth Stock Super-cycle Upon Us?

Markets move higher but momentum is stalling.

3rd qtr Quarter 2017 Market Update from portfolio manager John Benedict of J2 Capital Management Troy, MI. We discuss what happened in the quarter and what we see happening next.