Post the strong first half move in the overall stock market, we have been trading sideways.  The S&P 500 has gone net? Nowhere in a sloppy and choppy manner since Wednesday July 19th, which for trading nerds was the day volatility options and futures expired for July. As this was written the SP500 has been flat for 2 months.  As the OHFG investment team warned clients and prospects in early summer videos, we were set to enter a sloppy, choppy sideways at best, pullback at worst, time frame.  Call it a trading range, call it a general consolidation, call it a lull.  A good swing stock trader will call it heaven or goldilocks, buying selloffs and selling rallies, and a bad trader will call it a nightmare getting chopped up selling lows or breakdowns and buying false breakouts or highs. Investors the fact is we can back up a little more in time, into mid-June and we have now seen very little appreciation in the S&P 500.  On Thursday June 15th the cash S&P 500 was at 4425.  Almost exactly 3 months later, the overall S&P500 sits within 2% of that level.  I must remind investors this was only 3 days after hedge fund billionaire, and market guru to many CNBC viewers, Ray Dalio, having missed almost +20% off the October 2022 lows said it was time to buy stocks. Here’s the daily chart of the S&P500 for the last 18 months. The bad news?  We expect another 4 weeks of the same.  Sloppy markets with a downward bias. The good news? Well, that’s our title for this week’s episode, the summer chop ages, but investors, it’s still too early to be “REAL”ly bearish.  Before we press onward, please take a moment to click on both the subscribe and notification bells so you will be alerted when our investment team uploads our latest content.  Or better yet, give our OHFG team a call at 877-896-0040 to speak to our team and set up an initial consultation with an OHFG advisor to…

  We’re taking a short break from our regular Stock Talk Content to share a clip from an upcoming webinar that will be available to stream soon – Join Chris Perras and Charles Scavone as they discuss why you’ll need Active Fund Management for your retirement in future years as markets trend towards volatility.   Normal Stock Talk Content will resume next week! #stocktalk #stockmarketnews #retirementlife   ✉️ Sign up for our newsletter to be notified of when our Webinar on Building Investment Portfolios becomes available here https://click2retire.com/yt-newsletter   ➡️ Do you need a Retirement Success Plan that goes beyond allocating funds to truly fit your needs? We can help you create a retirement life plan customized for your retirement vision and legacy. Call us at (877) 404-0177 or fill out this form for a free consultation: https://click2retire.com/Connect   💭 Got questions or specific topics you’d like Chris to explore in future videos? Leave a comment below, and we may feature it in an upcoming episode. Your feedback is invaluable to us!   🎥 Subscribe to our channel for more content like this! https://click2retire.com/st-subscribe Stock Talk is a weekly podcast dedicated to discussing the Oak Harvest Financial Group Investment Team’s perspective on what’s happening in the market. Hosted by Chief Investment Officer Chris Perras, each episode brings you our views on stocks, the market, and the economy — with a little education thrown in for good measure. Listen each week and help stay connected to your money!   About Chris Perras, CFA®, CLU®, ChFC®, Chief Investment Officer As CIO, Chris is the lead investment strategist and director of research at Oak Harvest Financial Group. Chris develops the firm’s core market outlook, putting his decades of experience and expertise to work for our clients. He hosts Oak Harvest’s podcast, “Stock Talk,” available on the website with new episodes each week. He completed his undergraduate studies at Georgia Tech, and went on to obtain an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Driven by a desire to maximize his knowledge and skill set,…

We’re skipping this week of Stock Talk due to our team being busy at work with the switch from TD Ameritrade to Schwab. Check out this quick message from Chris as he shares a training he recently did with Troy Sharpe and Charles Scavone on Interest Rates and how they could potentially affect your retirement. 🍿 Watch that training here: https://youtube.com/live/DQo4niCtFX0?feature=share ➡️ Do you need a Retirement Success Plan that goes beyond allocating funds to truly fit your needs? We can help you create a retirement life plan customized for your retirement vision and legacy. Call us at (877) 404-0177 or fill out this form for a free consultation: https://click2retire.com/Connect 💭 Got questions or specific topics you’d like Chris to explore in future videos? Leave a comment below, and we may feature it in an upcoming episode. Your feedback is invaluable to us! 🎥 Subscribe to our channel for more content like this! https://click2retire.com/st-subscribe ✉️ Sign up to receive our monthly retirement email series here https://click2retire.com/yt-newsletter About Chris Perras, CFA®, CLU®, ChFC®, Chief Investment Officer As CIO, Chris is the lead investment strategist and director of research at Oak Harvest Financial Group. Chris develops the firm’s core market outlook, putting his decades of experience and expertise to work for our clients. He hosts Oak Harvest’s podcast, “Stock Talk,” available on the website with new episodes each week. He completed his undergraduate studies at Georgia Tech, and went on to obtain an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Driven by a desire to maximize his knowledge and skill set, he acquired a plethora of financial planning and investment management qualifications, becoming a Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU®), a Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC®), and a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA®). Important disclosures: Content of Oak Harvest podcasts expresses the views of the speaker and is for informational purposes only. Oak Harvest believes that any data, articles, or information cited are reliable at the time of creation, but does not warrant any information contained herein to be correct, complete, accurate, or timely. The views and…

It’s 106-110 degrees in Houston as I write this week’s episode which will be posted at the beginning of the long Labor Day weekend.  Clearly, summer in the Southwest is far from over, in fact it usually doesn’t cool off for good here in Houston until after Halloween, so why would I ever think of writing about what the risks are for winter in the markets this year and first half of 2024?  Because that’s what a good portfolio manager does, they worry about what could happen in the future, size up the probabilities if it is happening, and take action or more often than not, inaction. The title of this week’s episode, “looming 4th quarter risks”.  Before we press onward, please take a moment to click on both the subscribe and notification bells so you will be alerted when our investment team uploads our latest content.  Or better yet, give our OHFG team a call at 877-896-0040 to speak to our team and set up an initial consultation with an OHFG advisor to discuss your personal financial situation. Post the strong first half move, we have entered what has become our anticipated sloppy, choppy sideways behavior.  Call it a trading range, call it a general consolidation, call it a lull.  A good swing trader will call it heaven or goldilocks as we have now seen no net price appreciation in the S&P 500 since mid-June.  More precisely, we’ve seen little to no net appreciation since the Thursday June 15th option expiration cash closing high of 4425 in the S&P 500.  I have to remind investors this was only 3 days after hedge fund billionaire, and market guru to many CNBC viewers, Ray Dalio, having missed almost +20% off the October 2022 lows said it was time to buy stocks. Here’s the daily chart of the S&P500 for the last 18 months. We got oversold late Friday August 19th just as many bears emerged once again from their caves preaching “crash forthcoming” calls for the umpteenth time the last few years,…

Summer seasonality in the US stock market is historically a real “thing”.  We’ve discussed it many times in the last 5 years.  We started previewing summer seasonality for 2023 as far back as 3q22, when we were discussing the upcoming likely strength in the markets for 4q22-1h23 due to the 3rd year election cycle dynamics.  Back then the rational reasons seemed to be inflation would decline fast symmetrically to its 2021 rise and the Fed would slow the pace of interest rate increases.  We had already been through an economic and recessionary stock decline in 1h22 in our book so the strong rally seemed the easier path.   And what happened? The rally came when and where it was supposed to and even stretched a bit higher than our forecast for a couple of weeks in July. With that, it should come as no surprise to investors that the stock markets have consolidated and sold off since July 19-20th, which was the week of July option expiration about 5 weeks ago.  The title of this week’s episode, Summer stocks, trade that range.  Before we press onward, please take a moment to click on both the subscribe and notification bells so you will be alerted when our investment team uploads our latest content.  Or better yet, give our OHFG team a call at 877-896-0040 to speak to our team and set up an initial consultation with an OHFG advisor to discuss your personal financial situation. Post the strong first half move, we have entered what should be 3 or 4 months of some negative monthly returns, and higher volatility at worst, or sloppy, choppy sideways behavior, a general consolidation, and “net” little to no price appreciation in the S&P 500 at best.  Since the July 27th intraday peak of 4607.07 on cash Sp500, the SP500 has fallen back a little more than -5%.  Had you been perfect selling that top.  Which of course no one is.  The tech heavy NASDAQ composite peaked at 14446.55 on? July 19th which was Wednesday volatility…

Summer seasonality in the US stock market is historically a real “thing”.  The data confirms it.  With that, it should come as no surprise to invesors that the stock markets have consolidated and sold off since July 19-20th, which was the week of July option expiration 4 weeks ago. The title of this week’s episode, Summer stall or AI bubble?.  Before we press onward, please take a moment to click on both the subscribe and notification bells so you will be alerted when our investment team uploads our latest content.  Or better yet, give our OHFG team a call at 877-896-0040 to speak to our team and set up an initial consultation with an OHFG advisor to discuss your personal financial situation. The June and July rally in the SP500 returned a spectacular 9.8% with July’s 3.1% return almost double the average July of +1.7%.  Once again, here’ a table of the monthly seasonality of the S&P500 during Presidential Cylce year 3.  This data is complied by Steve Suttmeier’s group at Merrill. Post the 1h move, we have have entered what should be 3 or 4 months of some negative monthly returns, and higher volatility at worst, or sloppy, choppy sideways behavior, a general consolidation, and “net” little to no price appreciation in the S&P 500 at best.  Since the July 27th intraday peak of 4607.07 on cash Sp500, the SP500 has fallen back a little more than -3%.  Had you been perfect selling that top.  Which of course no one is.  The tech heavy NASDAQ composite peaked at 14446.55 on? July 19th which was Wednesday volatility expiration. As of this writing and filming the NASDAQ has declined a little more than -5.5% had you been a prefect seller. Here are the daily charts of the SP500 and Nasdaq.  The S&P 500 had fallen to the 50-day MVA as of this video shoot and the NASDAQ had just broken below it. SP500 daily: NSADAQ Composite Index daily: Do these charts mean you should “blow everything out” of your portfolio? Do you…

  Over the last 5 years, our OHFG investment team has discussed stock market cycles and seasonality on multiple occasions.  Why? Because much of public market investing is repeated human behavior.  It is a real-world lesson in behavioral finance as humans, in mass, tend to be creatures of habit repeating behaviors time and time again.  This has led to the saying, “history may not always repeat, but it often rhymes”. Historically, we try to publish these pieces on cycles and seasonality in front of these time periods; when we see opportunities to exhale, not get FOMO, and wait on better tactical opportunities, or on other occasions, like into the 4q 2020, pre-2020 Presidential election, to accelerate your stock buys when volatility is high and the markets are down or as Charles would say, acting squirrely. Summer Seasonality is a Real Thing Summer seasonality in the US stock market is historically a real “thing”.  The data confirms it.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise to investors as such.  As we’ve discussed in prior-videos, America is a consumer led economy with well over 70% of our GDP dependent on consumers and their consumption of goods and services.  This compares to less than 30% of our economy driven by the manufacturing and shipment of those goods and services. What happens during the Summer? Our consumption slows as we go on late summer vacations and prepare for the upcoming school year.  Because of the seasonality in our consumption habits, it bleeds into corporate earnings, GDP statistics and historically monthly stock returns. Which brings me to the title of this week’s episode, Summer Stock Seasonality, It’ A real Thing.  Before we press onward, please take a moment to click on both the subscribe and notification bells so you will be alerted when our investment team uploads our latest content.  Or better yet, give our OHFG team a call at 877-896-0040 to speak to our team and set up an initial consultation with an OHFG advisor to discuss your personal financial situation. We discussed first our…

Fear sells.  It creates emotion and keeps TV viewers from changing channels.  It keeps digital social media consumers from clicking away to other social networks.  It keeps many investment “newsletter” writers in business selling $99/year subscriptions. And it keeps many retail investors frozen in their tracks, out of the markets, or selling stocks when they should be buying.  The data doesn’t lie.  Selling fear is a great business. Which brings me to the title of this week’s episode, titled Fear Sells.  Before we press onward, please take a moment to click on both the subscribe and notification bells so you will be alerted when our investment team uploads our latest content.  Or better yet, give our OHFG team a call at 877-896-0040 to speak to our team and set up an initial consultation with an OHFG advisor to discuss your personal financial situation. Here’s a summary of the year to date returns of a few major equity asset classes year to date. As of this writing, the SP500 has gained a total return of a bit over 20%. The NASDAQ composite almost 37% YTD. The top 100 Nasdaq market cap stocks as represented by the QQQ ETF was up 44% year to date and the Dow Jones industrial index up over 8% including dividends.  Even the normally boring Japan Nikkei is up 27% year to date.  While our team entered 2023 bullish on the markets, 1st half 2023 returns, and on growth stocks, and very bullish on where we finish 2023, we have underestimated the FOMO that has entered the markets over the last 4 weeks in July.  Ever since the herd flipped to the notion that we first discussed 10+ months ago, that inflation is symmetrically declining, and ever since the S&P exceeded 4300/50, we have seen FOMO set in for both retail and institutional investors.  We currently are pulling forward some of the 2h23 return our team has forecast. That being said, if you turn on the TV, browse a financial “news” site or read a newsletter, just…

Everyone wants to “bet” on the winning horse at the racetrack. Everyone wants to make the winning bet in the casino or maybe one day win the Lottery.  Some gamblers will even go so far as putting their entire “winnings on one number on the roulette wheel on their way out of the casino in an attempt to make their trip life changing.  The vast, vast majority of the time, these gamblers are sorely disappointed as the odds at the casino, racetracks, and lotteries are stacked against the bettor or the gambler, particularly over the long term.  It’s just math and statistics playing out. Thankfully, investing in the public equity markets in the US over long-term horizons measured in years, not hours, days or weeks, investors enjoy the exact opposite results of gambling.  What do I mean?  I mean the odds of being successful and having a positive outcome increases over time horizons in equities as your volatility in return profile decreases. Still many investors, who have recently chosen to let an outside RIA, Registered Investment Advisor, like Oak Harvest manage their savings or retirement savings, are new to looking at portfolios constructed by outside portfolio managers.  Our advisors often get the question, why do you own XYZ stock when ZYX is working.  Or why don’t I own more tech stocks when they are working or say energy stocks when they are working.  Or from an asset class standpoint, we often hear statements like “I want more growth in my portfolio” or “I want more income in my portfolio.”  As if the equity markets can give you what you ask for on command. Which brings me to the title of this week’s episode, titled “Rotation Nation vs. Disciplined diversification”.  Before we press onward, please take a moment to click on both the subscribe and notification bells so you will be alerted when our investment team uploads our latest content.  Or better yet, give our OHFG team a call at 877-896-0040 to speak to our team and set up an initial…

No Stock Talk this week – It’s Earnings Reporting Week! Watch Chris Perras’ update here: