Hey, I’m Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer with Oak Harvest Financial Group here in Houston Texas. We usually just release a weekend update on Mondays, but given last week’s volatility laden sessions, coupled with our recently released 1st half 2022 outlook, I thought I would combine all this week’s material into one short video release. Let’s call this a Monday mash-up, much like the markets action last week. Equity markets were broadly down last week with the S&P500 down 1.2%, now placing it about -3.5% off its closing November 5th high of 4697.5.  If one were perfect, and listeners no one is, not even widely respected hedge fund billionaires, from the November 22nd intraday peak of 4744 to the trough intraday low last week, the S&P 500 fell 5.25%. If you were perfect, which no one is. The real weakness in the markets over that period has come in the areas of growth at any price software and reopening stocks, think of Zoom and Peloton, and energy and material names. What are the attributable causes being thrown around for the recent weaknesses in stocks? Well, they appear to be 3-fold. First, the markets are trying to reconcile a potential growth hit from any Omicron Covid variant related supply and demand disruptions it may cause. Secondly, and more importantly in my eyes, the markets are struggling with the recent comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and other Fed members, growing realization that monetary policy might be behind the curve, and they might have to taper QE more quickly and begin raising rates sooner than expected. And third, with the markets suddenly volatile, in an otherwise calm time, many institutional investors and retail ETF investors are scrambling to net out their tax positions for year end, recognizing some tax losses in year-to-date losers and harvesting gains in some winners. Recall listeners, we released a YouTube video on November 5th, with the S&P500 making new all-time highs, titled “2 signs of increased volatility ahead, Getting Jiggy with it”.  In this podcast we…

Note : Post our production and this release of our 1h22 outlook, two significant events have occurred that look to have pulled forward the period of increased volatility in the markets the OHFG team has been speaking into yearend 2021: 1) the emergence of the Omicron variant of the Covid virus at Thanksgiving and 2) the discussion of a sooner Federal Reserve tapering of the balance sheet which was slated to begin in late January 2022.  At this time, the investment teams outlook for the 1h2022 remains unchanged, and optimistically, the markets are just pulling forward the period of higher volatility and market weakness our team was forecasting by 2 months which in turn should pull forward the clearing skies on the other side of these events in 2022. Our current view continues to be: the markets experience two to three months of high volatility, the S&P 500 lows should be around 4450~ on the S&P500, and then we return to bull market optimism. I am Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group, we are an investment management and retirement planning advisor located in Houston Texas. Welcome to our November 26 YouTube, stock talk “keeping you connected to your money”.  This week we cover out first half 2022 outlook and throw an early wildcard estimate for year end too. Before we continue, please take a moment to hit that subscribe button and the notification bell, so that you’ll be notified when we upload new content. First, a quick reminder that our second half 2020 market outlook was titled “Election worries breed investment opportunities.  This was followed by two 2021 market outlooks for the first and second halves.  They are posted for all those to see on our website at OAKHARVESTFG.com.  I will not recite them in their entirely as we think the titles speak for themselves.   For the first half of 2021, our title was “You ain’t seen nothing yet-one buy in the 1st quarter” and our second half outlook was titled “Let the Good times roll”. …

I am Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group, we are an investment management and retirement planning advisor located in Houston Texas. Welcome to our November 26 YouTube, stock talk “keeping you connected to your money”. For the better part of 18 months, a number of equity strategists and bearish tilting financial commentators on TV and in newsletters have parroted the same mantra.  The stock market is “expensive”, overpriced and approaching a top.  I heard that into the summer of 2020 as we began to recover from the initial wave of Covid.  The S&P500 was around 3400 back then.  I hear the exact same thing again into and out of the Presidential election in November of 2020.  The S&P 500 was about 3500 into the election and closed the year around 3750. The same group of commentators were parroting how the Delta covid virus wave 2 would stop consumer spending in the USA and the stock market would drop 10-20% because of it, just this past July 4th.  That was with the S&P 500 up to 4350, which at the time was a bit over 15.5% year to date. The last 3 or 4 months the same group of individuals have been on TV stating that even though they have been wrong for 12-15 months and missed the last 30-40% up moves, that they are totally confident that stocks are even more overvalued, and we are surely due for a -10% or more correction.  They never once say those words that I long to hear as an investor or viewer.  I have been wrong.  No, they are always “just early” even if by a decade or more. As in the case of the forecast by “legendary” investor Jeremy Grantham of GMO, who first predicted in mid-2010 and every year since, that we were and are in a bubble, overvalued by every metric he uses and the markets would drop 30% plus.  So far Mr. Grantham has yet to be wrong, he is just 11 years and 315%…

I am Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group, we are an investment management and retirement planning advisor located in Houston Texas. Welcome to our November 19 YouTube, stock talk “keeping you connected to your money”.   Two weeks ago, our podcast previewed a short-term period into mid-November, highlighting potential higher stock market volatility caused by fast moves in interest rate markets. We based this analysis on the real-time indicators we use, none of which have anything to do with government economic data. And so far, we have indeed seen a pickup in volatility, and a fast dip down in the overall markets. Please, go and subscribe to the Oak harvest YouTube channel if you are interested in our original content.   Last week, we recapped our early, 4th quarter 2020, ignore the political, pre-presidential swirl, this is how early bull markets look, its time to get more aggressive, call we made by way of our podcasts.  Viewers new to our podcasts, can google “Oak Harvest, Waiting No More – This is how Early Bull markets look”.  This was a podcast released on Friday Oct 30th, 2020 – pre-presidential election.  We followed up this podcast with a few others in November of 2020 titled Early Bull markets, Buy the dips, Making sense of it all and another titled “Santa shops early” on Nov 20th.   I mention this now, because, while our team is still very positive on the remainder of 2021 and early 2022, for reasons we have repeated every dip along the way this year, we appear to have entered or appear to be entering the “silly season” in this stock market cycle. And in our opinion, that is ok. Our investment team has seen this stuff before.   As always, we are here for our clients. I have been working in the investment management industry for about 25 years now.  Most of the time as a generalist, portfolio manager or analyst, allocating investors’ money across multiple sectors and industries.   And on several occasions,…

I am Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group, we are an investment management and retirement planning advisor located in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our November 12 Stock Talk “keeping you connected to your money”.   This week we are going to go backwards in time, and we are going to cover some of the material we did in late October 2020.  That was almost exactly a year ago and viewers might remember our country was in the midst of all the political swirl, and non-stop commentary on TV about the dire consequences of the 2020 elections, regardless of outcome.  Regardless of who won the presidency or who won control of Congress I’m doing this now, because it seems timely with the midterm elections now a year away, and with Jerome Powell’s re-nomination for Federal Reserve Chairmen still a question mark to some.   I’m doing it to try to show, how little, who is running this country out of Washington DC matters to the overall stock markets, while who is running the Federal Reserve does matter. This week’s title is “Politically Incorrect thinking, for your investments”. Most of this material is recycled from our Friday, October 30th, 2020, podcast titled, “Waiting No More! This is how early Bull markets look”.  This is not revisionist history.  All of this material is on our website. Here’s what we said back then in front of the election. Reading once again from that script… “Since mid-August, For the past three months, we have tried to educate our clients and listeners as to the normalcy of pre-presidential election volatility. Well, this focus appears to have been justified as the markets have now pulled back to basically flat year to date with a big jump in realized volatility the past 2 weeks.  For the past four weeks, we have stressed that this increase in short term volatility is what breeds higher investment return opportunities, if one can control one’s emotions and biases.  That the period of higher implied volatility is when long term investors…

Chris Perras: Hey, I’m Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group. We’re an investment management, retirement planning advisor located here in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our November 5th Stock Talk, Keeping You Connected to Your Money. This week, we’re going to cover just two topics, both related to volatility. One shorter-term and one longer-term. Viewers, neither of these indicators are directly equity-related, but they have been, in the past, great warning indicators of increased future volatility in stocks. One is a very good near-term warning indicator, usually helpful for two to four-week periods. The second is farther off early warning tool. What’s most interesting is that both these indicators are good to use into the bond markets first, and then those views usually foreshadow movements in equity markets over time. Right now, in the words of actor and rapper, Will Smith, both are showing a period of getting jiggy with it, which is layman’s terms is code for more volatility coming down the line. We’ve discussed both tools in the past two years on separate podcast segments but both tools now are coming into view at roughly the same time. Here it goes. The first is the MOVE Index. We’ve discussed this index multiple times over the last few years, usually around periods of very fast and gut-wrenching but brief downdrafts in equity prices. The MOVE Index is the US long-term treasury markets equivalent of the VIX Index. It’s a calculation of shorter-term treasury bond market volatility while the spot VIX is the same for short-term equity volatility. Remember, these are math calculations, not tradeable indexes. Right now the MOVE Index is trading at level near 70 to 80. This is near its highest level since the COVID panic in March of 2020 and before that way back in September of 2019. What this is saying is that treasury investors are worried about the shorter-term risk around Fed action through the next, say, 30 days. If I look at a month or two, this doesn’t really bother…

  Chris Perras: I am Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group, we are an investment and retirement planning advisor located in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our October 29th Stock Talk Podcast “keeping you connected to your money”.     This week we are going to cover three topics.  They are inflation, interest rates, and the yield curve.  Now listeners, I want you to know up front, I am going to do this from only one perspective.  That is the perspective of a money manager, and how these factors may or may not affect an investment portfolio. I will not be covering how these factors might affect a retirement plan, or an overall financial plan.  That is a future video topic for Troy and the financial planning side.   This week’s podcast title, “Inflation, interest rates, and the yield curve…and what they mean for your investments.   First off, viewers, if you are getting your economic calls of hyper inflation from social media CEO’s living in foreign countries, please reconsider your sources.     Yes, inflation has had a substantial uptick the last 15 months.  However, I have to ask, how much has this affected you, your savings, you’re spending and your investments the last 12-15 months?  I’ve probably talked to over 100 clients, prospects, neighbors and family members on this topic the past 12 months.  Their concerns have largely shifted from paper goods pricing, like toilet paper and paper towels, to meat pricing and availability.  The BQQ and grilling crowd in Texas like myself are distraught over brisket and baby back ribs pricing.   And finally, now, everyone’s latest worry, largely because it’s the headline on TV, is energy pricing.  Now my contacts all have great arguments about their own real-time data points for their concerns.  I do not want to minimize their feelings on these things.     However, what I have done and what I want to continue to try to do is minimize their concerns that these things are big things to the economy or that they…

On this week’s episode of Stock Talk, join Chris for a review of “4 early warnings signs” that we monitor for future tops and corrections in the equity markets.   Chris Perras: I’m Chris Perras, chief investment officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group. We’re an investment management and retirement planning advisor located here in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our October 22nd Stock Talk podcast, keeping you connected to your money. Well, last week in our first YouTube video with Oak Harvest investment series, I covered four of the real-time data series that have led strong S&P 500 rallies this cycle. There might be more market-based data series that help you. I welcome your thoughts, but these are the four things we covered. First, the euro-yen currency pair. Second, Bitcoin pricing. Third, future volatility pricing. Fourth, retail investor sentiment. These four series are just a few of the ones our teams uses here at Oak Harvest. You heard that right. We don’t pay much attention to most of the government-released economic data. We find that it is generally stale, unreliably revised, and not predictive, either the economy or the markets. People often ask our team, “Chris, James, Troy, what is your crystal ball thing?” They asked this question with a jokingly tone. Some advisors on TV say, “Hey, I don’t have a crystal ball.” However, I believe that all investors need some sort of crystal ball. By crystal ball, I mean forecasting tools, I mean the ability to have an informed, educated view of what might be coming in the future for the markets in the economy if you’re going to invest in equities actively. Remember, it will never be a perfect vision of the future, but investing in equities is all about the future. The future is inherently uncertain, but the future of equities is about the future of their revenue growth, their future earnings growth, and future dividends. While no one’s crystal ball or forecasting tools are perfect, you should have some consistent tools to help you develop an…

On this week’s episode of Stock Talk, join Oak Harvest for an “indicator rundown,” as we discuss our view of where we think the market is going into the end of 2021. Chris Perras: Hey, I’m Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group. We’re an investment management, a retirement planning advisor located in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our October 15th Stock Talk Podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. Well, longtime listeners will know that I try to use this podcast to foreshadow what we think will be happening in the markets, in the economy, in the upcoming months, and in the quarters ahead. In April of 2020, in the midst of the initial wave of COVID, the investment team here at Oak Harvest did our research, looked at the relevant data to talk about pent-up demand in the second half of 2020 and car buying and home buying. We even referred to it as the Roaring ’20s because investing in equities is all about the future. It’s about future growth. It’s about future earnings. It’s about future dividends and future cash flows. You need to have an informed opinion to make decisions on the path for an uncertain future, which brings me to this week’s podcast title, Things That Lead. Short of trading on inside information or knowing where everyone’s option positions are sitting, as a market maker, the rest of us, investors, have to make educated decisions based on imperfect information. That’s hard. Right now, we’re exiting the normally wobbly third-quarter period that I call the dead zone. Very little company-specific information is out there. Few stock buybacks are happening. The news networks are almost littered daily with alarmist headlines. The last couple of weeks, debt ceilings, inflation, stagflation, port congestion, Chinese real estate issue, energy price spikes, I keep up with all the fears and issues that are on TV. They come so fast. As much as we’ve discussed this period called the dead zone last year, again this year, new investors seem to…