Blast off! Stock markets are setting records, with tech stocks leading the charge once again. “Don’t fight the Fed” should now encompass “don’t fight the Treasury, fiscal stimulus, vaccinations and investor demand for ‘real’ (after inflation) returns.” The Wall Street Journal reports that the “S&P 500 rose 14.3% from Election Day through Inauguration Day, its best performance on record for that period.” (The Wall Street Journal “Stocks Climb To Records, Led By Tech Sector” 1/21/21) In retros...
Jan 23, 2021•26 min•Season 17Ep. 30
COVID-19 has affected just about every aspect of our professional and personal lives, including the state of our finances. Whether you or a loved one are among the more than 20 million Americans who lost their jobs in the spring of 2020 in the depths of the lockdowns, or one of the millions of Americans who saw their retirement portfolios plunge in the shortest bear market on record in February and March, (and if you stayed invested have benefitted from the markets rebound), or if you or a loved...
Jan 16, 2021•26 min•Season 17Ep. 29
We have a special treat for you. Robert Shiller, a Nobel Prize-winning economist , a pioneer in the field of behavioral finance, long-time Yale professor, financial innovator, and prolific author. Shiller is also the co-creator of the widely cited gauge of U.S. housing prices, the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, and creator of the cyclically adjusted PE ratio known as the Cape Ratio which is a price-earnings ratio for the S&P 500 based on average inflation-adjusted earnings from the previous ...
Jan 09, 2021•26 min•Season 17Ep. 28
This week, in part 2 he will share his fifty years of economic perspective on the extraordinary events of 2020 and how the pandemic has changed the economy and markets. It will be a fascinating conversation with one of the best business cycle analysts of our era. Every year at around this time we sit down for an in-depth interview with legendary economist Ed Hyman. Hyman has been voted Wall Street’s number one economist in Institutional Investor magazine’s prestigious annual survey of institutio...
Dec 19, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 25
It's an annual tradition on WEALTHTRACK to sit down for a rare in-depth interview with Ed Hyman, Wall Street’s number one-ranked economist for an unrivaled forty years! Hyman is a Wall Street legend. His ability to gather reams of economic data, including proprietary information from many sources including his weekly company surveys of industries ranging from retailers to restaurants, to homebuilders, truckers, and even Christmas tree vendors gives him an ability to take the current pulse of the...
Dec 12, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 25
According to Medicare benefits expert, Dr. Katy Votava COVID-19 has altered several aspects of Medicare coverage and procedures. She will tell us what’s different and how to take advantage of the changes. She will also help us meet the deadline for Medicare’s annual enrollment period which ends on December 7th and allows medicare beneficiaries to evaluate their Medicare Advantage Plans and part D, prescription drug plans, and shift to different providers if it makes sense. Votava is a Medicare e...
Nov 28, 2020•19 min•Season 17Ep. 22
Can investing be simple? Can we stop worrying about what’s happening on Wall Street, in Washington, with Fed policy, inflation, corporate earnings, and numerous other headline-making concerns? Can we just get on with our lives and still invest successfully? According to this week’s guest, the answer is yes, and we shouldn’t even care what the market is doing. What should we care about? How should we invest? That is the focus of this week’s exclusive WEALTHTRACK interview. Our guest is Charles El...
Nov 21, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 21
It’s been a roller coaster of emotions for investors this week. Our focus is China. China of course is where COVID-19 originated in late 2019. It felt the impact first. It shut down vast swathes of its economy in response and it is now coming out of it, first. All indications are that the world’s second-largest economy, by some measures occasionally the largest, is making a comeback. It looks like an impressive one. The International Monetary Fund is predicting China’s economy will expand 1.9% t...
Nov 14, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 20
What a week! The widely predicted blue wave of Democrats sweeping into the White House, taking over the Senate majority, and increasing their dominance in Congress has failed to materialize. As far as the stock market is concerned, a divided government is a plus because not a lot will change in the way of tax policy and regulations. Investor optimism is not shared by Federal Reserve officials who expressed ongoing concern about the economy and the recent uptick in COVID-19 cases in today’s Feder...
Nov 07, 2020•24 min•Season 17Ep. 19
One of the most striking financial characteristics of the pandemic experience has been the seeming disconnect between the economy and the stock market. The economy was severely damaged by the lockdown of business and sheltering in place policies put in effect earlier this year, but until this week the market has been rising with more stocks The unemployment rate which had fallen to 3.5% last year, the lowest level since 1969, skyrocketed with the lockdowns, reaching 14.7% in April, a level not s...
Oct 30, 2020•30 min•Season 17Ep. 18
COVID-19 reminded us that life-changing “Black Swan” events don’t just happen once in a century. They are an ongoing reality. In the last twenty years, we have lived through 9/11, the global financial crisis, and now a global pandemic with the unintended consequence of rolling economic lockdowns. On an investment level, all of these events have delivered a sharp hit to financial markets from which they have recovered. Such is the resilience and strength of the U.S. capital markets and the underl...
Oct 24, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 17
Are we in the midst of a new economic expansion and secular bull market? Those are the signals from ClearBridge Investments’ Recovery Dashboard. Investment Strategist Jeff Schulze takes us through the indicators flashing green. WEALTHTRACK #1716A published on October 21, 2020. More info: https://wealthtrack.com/new-economic-expansion/
Oct 22, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 16
One extraordinary characteristic of this pandemic period has been stock market performance. A recent Wall Street Journal headline captures it perfectly: “Turbocharged stocks blast off.” In its third-quarter market’s review, the Journal points out that “more stocks skyrocketed at least 400% in the first three quarters of the year than in any comparable period since 2000.” This is not a tide that is lifting all boats, anything but. The overwhelming majority of the winners are tech or biotech-relat...
Oct 16, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 16
How surprised have you been by the market’s supercharged recovery from the March lows and the economy’s rebound from the COVID trough? By any measure, the snapback has been extraordinary. The shortest bear market in U.S. history, a mere 33 weeks from late February to late March, and a much faster recovery than expected. As this week’s guest, Nancy Lazar told clients recently: “In the last expansion it took almost 9 years (until 2018) for unemployment to fall to 4.0%. Today the Fed expects (more ...
Oct 09, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 15
“Don’t fight the Fed” has become an accepted Wall Street adage. It’s a phrase coined by Martin Zweig, a legendary technical analyst, and investor who predicted the 1987 market crash to the day and was the author of the 1970 investment classic Winning On Wall Street . Zweig wrote that “ The monetary climate - primarily the trend in interest rates and Federal Reserve policy - is the dominant factor in determining the stock market’s major direction . ” Fast forward 50 years and “ Don’t fight the Fe...
Oct 03, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 14
How do you successfully take over and run a legendary fund with a 60-year track record of excellence? We are about to find out this week in a rare interview with a fund manager who is doing just that. The fund is the T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund. The small-cap growth fund has 34 billion dollars in assets and carries a Five-Star, Silver Analyst rating from Morningstar. Prior to taking over the fund, Spencer established his own record of excellence with the T. Rowe Price Global Technology Fund ...
Sep 25, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 13
COVID-19 has thrown a monkey wrench into many retirement plans as millions of Americans were thrown out of work and many were forced to tap into retirement accounts to pay the bills. The experience has made Social Security benefits even more valuable to potential and current retirees. According to Social Security expert Mary Beth Franklin, they account for half or more of total income for 50% of married couples and 70% of unmarried individuals. They are the only source of guaranteed income for l...
Sep 18, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 12
COVID-19 has affected just about every aspect of our lives: our jobs, our health, our family and social interactions, children’s education, and leisure time. But what has it done to retirement prospects? Not surprisingly, it has hurt them. According to a survey of American workers with qualified retirement savings accounts, “...almost half (49%) had experienced a reduction in work income through job loss, or decrease in hours and/or a pay cut”. Also, “...workers who lost their jobs or experience...
Sep 11, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 11
All The Reasons To Be Bullish - This Week on WEALTHTRACK Remember the discussions about the shape of the economic recovery? Would it be a “V”, a “W”, or maybe even a hockey stick? The jury might still be out about the economy, but as far as the markets are concerned there is no question. V’s abound. The top five S&P 500 companies by market capitalization - Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google’s parent Alphabet, and Facebook - all but the last topping a trillion in market value, are sharply highe...
Sep 10, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 10
One of the biggest issues to emerge from the pandemic is income inequality. It has become even more pronounced as millions of low-income workers lose their jobs and the much smaller number of high-income workers keep theirs and benefit from a powerful bull market. This week’s guest is on a crusade to change this dynamic, by giving opportunities to lower-income individuals and their families to achieve economic success. He is Great Value Investor and Financial Thought Leader Joel Greenblatt. He h...
Aug 07, 2020•27 min•Season 17Ep. 6
We are in a rolling economic crisis right now, subject to the vagaries of the advance or retreat of the COVID-19 virus. It is an ever-changing scenario with stark winners and losers. The economy contracted at an annualized rate of 32.9% in the second quarter, the sharpest decline in the 70 plus years of GDP tracking. After several weeks of improvement, jobless claims for first-time unemployment benefits rose for the second week in a row. 17 million Americans are now collecting unemployment benef...
Aug 01, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 5
Safe haven investments are hard to find these days, which is why we need them more than ever. We are faced with risks we haven’t experienced in living memory. A truly global and spreading pandemic, rolling government lockdowns, unprecedented involvement in securities markets by the Federal Reserve and other central banks, and massive stimulus from governments with payments to individuals and businesses. Normally when corporate and government debt soars to record levels bond markets get nervous, ...
Jul 25, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 4
There are a few moments in one’s lifetime when the geopolitical and economic backdrop truly changes. COVID-19 and its aftermath are one of those moments. I call it “The Pandemic Pivot”. The combined shocks of a highly contagious and in some cases deadly virus, global economic shutdown, rising populism, and global unrest are upending the old world order and introducing new disruptive dynamics yet to be fully realized. In the meantime each of us has to live our lives, do our work and plan and inve...
Jul 18, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 3
Part Two: We are living in extraordinary times. We are calling it the Pandemic Pivot: the changes that have occurred or accelerated because of COVID-19 and the dramatic response to it, from economic shutdown to massive life support. The stock market performance has been largely driven by a small group of well-known mega-cap tech stocks which explains the NASDAQ and S&P 500’s stellar performance and the lagging broader markets. Apple, Microsoft, Google’s parent Alphabet, Amazon, and Facebook ...
Jul 10, 2020•26 min•Season 17Ep. 2
We are marking the start of this season with the introduction of a new series. What we are calling the “Pandemic Pivot” - the rapid economic, market, and geopolitical shifts we are experiencing during the global health crisis. Through lockdowns and re-openings, the changes have been dramatic and swift. The huge, largely government-induced shutdown of global commerce ended the record-breaking economic recovery and the bull market in the U.S. The massive monetary and fiscal stimulus in response le...
Jul 04, 2020•29 min•Season 17Ep. 7
One of the striking financial characteristics of this pandemic stricken world has been the extreme divergence between the sickening economic reality on the ground and the out of this world exuberance in the stock market, which started long before now when businesses are slowly and sporadically being allowed to reopen. This week’s guest’s interpretation of the data is the polar opposite. He has widely followed economist, David Rosenberg, President, Chief Economist and Strategist at Rosenberg Rese...
Jun 20, 2020•26 min•Season 16Ep. 51
In the first of a two-part interview, Influential economist David Rosenberg explains why “nothing is normal” after the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a picture that Rosenberg has been painting ever since the pandemic hit. And well before that he was deeply concerned about the economy’s weakness and the stock market’s vulnerability. Dave Rosenberg is President, Chief Economist and Strategist at his independent economic consulting firm Rosenberg Research & Associates which he launched early this y...
Jun 12, 2020•26 min•Season 16Ep. 50
The impact of past pandemics on the U.S. economy and markets has important lessons for today says financial historian Richard Sylla, as does the record growth in both monetary and fiscal stimulus. More info: https://wealthtrack.com/the-financial-impact-of-past-pandemics-has-important-lessons-for-today-says-historian-richard-sylla/ Reading List: “Pandemics and Epidemics: Financial and Economic Effects” : https://www.moaf.org/publications-collections/financial-history-magazine/133/_res/id=Attachme...
Jun 06, 2020•32 min•Season 16Ep. 49
Central banks and governments around the world are pulling out all the stops to replace income lost from COVID-19 shutdowns, including as we have seen in the United States direct payments to individuals. We are devoting a WEALTHTRACK podcast this week to “Helicopter Money”, a concept coined by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman who theorized that as a last resort in a deflationary depression the government could drop dollar bills from a helicopter for people to pick up and spend to “s...
Jun 02, 2020•36 min•Season 16Ep. 48
Can investing be simple? With the 20/20 vision of hindsight it sure looks that way. Had investors just decided to stay in the U.S., invest in growth stocks, especially mega-cap tech stocks they would have hit the trifecta over the last decade or more. Has the COVID-19 pandemic changed that formula for success? It has not. If anything it seems to have accelerated and accentuated it. The extended FAANG family known by the acronym FAANGM for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google’s parent Alphabe...
May 26, 2020•26 min•Season 16Ep. 47
