Chris Perras of Oak Harvest Financial Group, a wealth management and financial advisor in Houston, Texas, shares his perspective on the markets and the “summer stall.” He also looks at how the stock market reacts to marketplace realities before economic data is released. Resources Find more information and help on our YouTube Channel. Check out these helpful podcasts by Chris Perras, CFA®, here.   Chris Perras: Hey, Happy Friday. I’m Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group. We are a wealth management and financial advisor here in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our May 14th weekly Stock Talk Podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. Well, so it begins. A mere week after hearing calls of how Goldilocks in both the economy and stock markets and how “Sell in May and go away” was a thing of the past at new all-time highs in the S&P above 4,200, what happened was spot volatility where the VIX index rose from a low of around 17.5 to almost 29 on Wednesday. What happened to the S&P 500? Well, it dropped from a closing high of 4,232 last week, to an intra week low of about 4,055 on Thursday. That’s a little over 4% peak to trough in about five days. As would normally happen in a bull market, well, we V-bottomed yesterday morning, Thursday morning, and promptly have rallied over 100 S&P points on short-covering, and Friday that’s today, payday, back to near 4,125, 4,135 on the S&P 500. Well, what was the rationale and excuse de jure for this week’s increase in volatility? Well, it was a short-term spike in a few government readings on, yes, you guessed it, inflation. To computer algorithms and trend-following hedge fund momentum investors, the true detail behind these readings are meaningless. It doesn’t matter to the computers that over half of the increase in inflation number on Wednesday was used car pricing and airline ticket prices. Well, how much of our economy and spending are around those two things? Listeners, next to none,…

Stock Talk School: Hear insights into the inflationary forces that are underway, including higher home buying and rental costs ahead. A big federal footprint from the tax and spend agenda pursued by Democrats is having an impact. Chief Investment Officer Chris Perras for Oak Harvest Financial Group, wealth management and financial advisor in Houston, Texas, shares his perspective. Chris Perras: Happy Friday. I’m Chris Perras, chief investment officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group. We are an investment management and retirement planning consultant here in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our May 7th weekly Stock Talk podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. We’re sitting in the normal post-tax day, second-quarter slop and chop of a normal first year presidential term, and one of those waiting to go slow periods. Having prepared our listeners weeks ago for this time period and given more of this slop and chop is likely to continue through the rest of the second quarter, I wanted to take this podcast to focus on a few longer-term economic and stock market issues. Time and time again, over the past 9 to 12 months, I’ve been asked by clients and prospects, “Chris, if you aren’t worried about politics in Washington, DC, if you aren’t worried about COVID or aren’t worried about higher taxes and their effect on the stock markets, what worries do you have?” This podcast is directed at this topic. This week’s title, Big Government, Unintended or Intended Consequences. You tell me. The democratic agenda of tax and spend has been laid out in its entirety the last two months with president Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress proposing three gargantuan spending programs. A small portion of these programs are true infrastructure as most of us think about it. While most of the new spending bills are supplemental income and expanded benefit programs, largely under the disguise of much needed infrastructure spending. President Joe Biden’s $4 trillion economic vision for the US rests with democratic lawmakers who will try to navigate a narrowly divided Congress. With his $1.9…

Since March 2020, our song remains the same: It’s a bull market until proven otherwise. Chief Investment Officer Chris Perras for Oak Harvest Financial Group, a wealth management, financial advisor and investment management firm in Houston, Texas, shares insights into the relationship between rising corporate and personal taxes, and the direction of the markets. Chris also shares our view of the direction of the markets from now through the end of 2021… Chris Perras: Hey, happy Friday. I’m Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group. We are an investment management and retirement planning consultant in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our April 30th weekly Stock Talk Podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. Well, we’ve spent the last three or four weeks in our podcast discussing the normalcy in the markets and the upcoming seasonality in both the economy and the financial markets. We’ve tried to provide real data to help our clients and listeners better understand that while the period May through October has historically been the weakest six-month period for the S&P 500, that selling out and trying to get back in is almost always one, impossible, and two, fruitless. The facts are that historically, particularly during bull market moves like the ones that we’ve been in since April of last year, while you net miss nothing if you sell tax day and come back around Labor Day, the best long-term strategy and returns are generated by making minor tactical shifts during the summer weakness to keep one’s portfolio largely invested. With our game plan for the summer months having been laid out, I want to focus this week’s podcast on a topic we first addressed nearly a year ago, very early in the 2020 presidential election race. What’s that topic? That topic’s taxes. The question keeps coming up. What do higher corporate and individual tax rates mean to equity markets in my portfolio? The quick answer to this question is the same one that we gave our listeners over a year ago. They are not…

Stock Talk: More “Normal” Patterns. Did algorithms used by ETFs and index funds drive up the market last week? Chief Investment Officer Chris Perras for Oak Harvest Financial Group, a wealth management and financial advisor in Houston, Texas, shares insights on recent action in the markets. Chris also looks ahead to this summer and the second half of 2021… Chris Perras: Hey, good afternoon. I’m Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group. We are investment management as well as a retirement and financial planning consultant in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our April 23rd weekly Stock Talk Podcast: Keeping you connected to your money. I took a few vacation days off last week, and James McFarland, our Senior Portfolio Manager, brought you a podcast episode on what happened in the first quarter, and what we expect for the second quarter. I wanted to do a follow-up piece on our ongoing thoughts for the next two to three months. This podcast title, The 3’s: Spring and Early Summer Seasonality — More Normal Patterns and Rotations. While I was out of the office, the S&P 500 accelerated up last week, closing the week at a new all-time high of around 4185. The main reason given on the financial channels for last week’s move up was a strong retail economic data. Listeners, I find this argument fanciful. Why? Because at the same time the data came out, long-term interest rates rallied. They did not sell off as one would expect if the move was based on strong data driving the market. No, I attribute the April 15th and 16th move up in the S&P 500 to something much more normal. April 15th was a payday. Yes, your 401k dollars went from your employer to Vanguard or BlackRock or whomever manages your company’s 401k plan, and those companies took your money and they bought stocks on Thursdays. They bought stocks, and they bought bonds, regardless of their prices. Why? Because that’s what the index fund and the ETFs do. Listeners, the S&P 500…

James McFarland, Senior Portfolio Manager for Oak Harvest Financial Group, wealth management and financial advisor in Houston, Texas, takes a look back at the first Quarter of 2021, what happened in the markets, and what it could mean for the rest of the year. James McFarland: Hey, everyone. This is James McFarland, Senior Portfolio Manager here at Oak Harvest Financial Group in Houston, Texas. It’s been a long time since you’ve heard from me, but I’m happy to be back with you, and to welcome you to the April 16th episode of Stock Talk: Keeping you connected to your money. In today’s episode, we’re going to take a look back at the first quarter of 2021, what did well, what didn’t, what were the drivers, and what does it mean for the rest of the year. We’ll touch on the answers to these questions as we go along. Now as you probably know by now, we’ve been and remained bullish on the stock market for 2021. Looking back in history, we see several strong similarities between our current market environment and in those of 2013 and 2017, in particular. Both were post-election years and both produced strong returns for investors, about 38%, in fact, measured from election day to the market peak the following year. The S&P is currently up about 10% in 2021, and we do think there is plenty of room left to run. Talking about 2021, it’s now April. We’ve just entered the second quarter of the year, so that does make it a good time to just take a look back and see what has happened throughout the first quarter of the year. Q1, despite being relatively choppy, was loaded with upside economic catalysts. Businesses are reopening, COVID death and hospitalizations are trending lower as people now have the option to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, with nearly 100 million Americans receiving at least one dose of one of the available vaccines. We’ve started to see recoveries in some of the most badly hurt industries like restaurants,…

Chief Investment Officer Chris Perras for Oak Harvest Financial Group, a wealth management and financial advisor in Houston, Texas, discusses volatility and a potential upcoming early-summer pullback in the markets… Speaker 1: Hey there. I’m Chris Paris, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group. We are a wealth management and financial advisor in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our April 9th weekly Stock Talk Podcast: Keeping You Connected With Your Money. Well, the S&P 500 continues to reaccelerate to make new all-time highs, hitting almost 4100 yesterday. We previewed this likely reacceleration in the markets being led by technology. Well back in January. This week’s podcast is going to address, in more detail, the topic of our fifth myth of last week’s podcast. That topic is one of volatility. At the end of this podcast, we’ll once again preview the timing window for the coming summer pullback in the markets. The topic of stock market volatility is one of my favorite topics to discuss because so many people on TV talk about it but so few people understand it. It’s like in the movie The Princess Bride which I’ve talked about in the past when actor Mandy Potemkin’s character, Inigo Montoya, responds to Vizzini’s inconceivable line. He responds to this line with his own quote, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.” When most strategists and advisors I hear on TV discuss volatility as high and even extreme, they say they expect it to stay that way. Well, the first two parts of that statement are categorically false and the third, we believe, will continue to be incorrect through the first quarter of next year excluding one brief bout of increased volatility early this summer. You may have a negative connotation of the word volatility, and it might be for a good reason, but what is volatility really? It is most often used when things are bad or expected to be more turbulent sooner rather than later. It is an emotional…

Stock Talk School:  Busting myths. Chris Perras for this April 2, 2021, edition of Stock Talk! Chris: Hey, good afternoon. I am Chris Perras, chief investment officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group here in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our April 2nd weekly Stock Talk podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. Well, the S&P 500 continues to reaccelerate to more new all-time highs, much to the dismay of dune state predictors, interest rate naysayers, and inflation warriors. This week’s podcast title is Unprecedented Times Myth Busters. I’m going to cover a few of the myths that many financial news channels keep promoting to catch viewers’ attention, but they only serve as disinformation, and they serve to drive many investors to continue to stay out of the markets even during the ongoing bull market. Myth number one, we are in unprecedented times for stocks. This statement of unprecedented times and stocks is categorically false. The markets represented by the S&P 500 have mirrored most of the same recoveries the markets have had since 2008, 2009. Now, yes, this is largely due to federal reserve monetary action, but listeners, it counts. These aren’t false profits as in gains as many of the false prophets as in soothsayers writing financial newsletters would want you to believe. The federal reserve policy response due to the COVID virus outbreak was magnitudes larger than previous responses this cycle, but it should have been, given to this was an event-driven recession, and we literally shut down the country for three to five months. Now, myth number two, markets would tank 20% to 30% if Joe Biden won the presidency or the Democrats had a blue wave in Congress because that would move our country more towards socialism. Well, obviously that didn’t happen, just as it didn’t happen when liberal democratic Barack Obama was elected in 2008, and then re-elected again in 2012. The S&P 500 is up about 20% from the start of November when president Biden was elected. With about 7.5% of that total return coming…

Join Chris Perras for the 3/26/2021 episode of Stock Talk! Chris Perras: Good afternoon. I’m Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group here in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our March 26th, weekly Stock Talk Podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. The S&P 500 continues to do its normal late first-quarter dead zone churn with the day-to-day macro topics taking spotlight over stock fundamentals in the future. One day, people are worried about interest rates. The next day, they’re worried about inflation. The day after that, it’s the new virus variant, and yesterday or the day before, I think it was the Democratic-controlled Congress plan for future spending and what tax rates will be. I’m going to spend this week completely away from these topics and for the third time in three years, address the digital economy. This week’s podcast title; Digital widgets, Bitcoin, NFTs, and the Metaverse. At Oak Harvest, our primary clients and prospects are retirees and pre-retirees. Call it the demographic 55 years old and up, and for what it’s worth, I happen to be 55 years old myself. Many of our target audience are still getting a lot of their news and information flow from the TV, the radio, or maybe post-COVID, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but believe it or not, a few of you still read physical books and newsletters, myself included. These physical mediums of information distribution, broadcast TV, books, newspapers, radio, and even phone calls are becoming generationally obsolete. Why do I say that? Well, because the invention of the semiconductor in the 1970s and its mass adoption over the past 40 years has transformed our society largely from an analog and physical world that humans can touch and feel into a digital and cloud-based one that is based on ones and zeros. Now, listeners, we may not like this trend and we may long for the good old days when we were younger, pre-connected devices everywhere in our life. Back when we used to carry cash in our wallets,…

Join Chris Perras for the 3/19/2021 edition of Stock Talk! Chris Perras: Good morning. I’m Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group, here in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our March 19th Stock Talk podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. Post yesterday’s afternoon sell-off, the S&P 500 sits around 3,915 or about 2% off its all-time high, hit earlier this week. The technology-heavy NASDAQ, which has more sensitivity to higher long-term interest rates calculations, is down a little over 7.5% off the highs that it reached in mid-February. Did you sell in late February because of all the noise of the upcoming headlines of inflation or higher interest rates? I hope not. This week’s podcast is titled, ‘Bull markets: The federal reserve, All the Right Moves So Far’ starring Jerome Powell, not Tom Cruise. A forewarning to my frequent listeners, there will be some repetition of data that we’ve shared over the last three to four months showing how normal this cycle has been and refuting the talk of unprecedented times in the economy or the stock markets because the pattern in the economy in the markets has been pretty standard during early expansionary periods, the last 13 years. Those periods are most similar to both 2013 and 2017, both of which were first Presidential term years. The data of what has happened the last 12 to 13 years during rising long-term interest rates in the Treasury Market, not caused by the federal reserve raising rates and tightening monetary policy at the short-end of the Treasury Market, tells a story much different than the TV newscasters. Late this week, with the March federal reserve meeting in the books, Chairman Powell released their Fed statement and hosted his usual question and answer session. Since the words left his mouth, earlier this week, there’s been almost non-stop drone on TV financial networks and by long-term stock bears that the federal reserve is already behind the curve and they don’t see inflation picking up, and that they are acting in…

Join Chris Perras for the 3/12/2021 edition of Stock Talk! Chris Perras: Good morning. I’m Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group here in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our March 12th, weekly Stock Talk Podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. Well, did you blank? Did you listen to and focus on the daily pontifications by bond managers, economists, and TV analysts about the 4% drop in the S&P 500 and the 10% drop in the NASDAQ? It took it back to flat year today. Did you sell because of all the noise of the coming headwinds of inflation? Man, I hope not. Did you keep yourself from buying additional shares in companies that you liked because they were red for a few weeks, and the professionals on TV that you’ve never met said, stay away from technology or stay away from high growth stocks in favor of value stocks? Well, this week’s podcast title is an ode to one of my favorite songs by the British rock band, ‘The Who’. This week’s title is It’s a Bull Market for Stocks. Says who? Says, David Tepper, don’t get fooled again. I’ve been saying now for about six months, you can’t be short stocks in 2021 after the first week in March. We shook out the short term and nervous investors focused too much on the gyrations of the bond market, the TV commentator, and the newsletters dire forecast of 10% to 20% corrections and warnings of bubbles in every asset class. The data of what has happened in the last 12 years during rising long-term interest rates in the treasury market not caused by the federal reserve, raising short-term rates and tightening monetary policy is very much a different story than the on TV. All others were almost hysterically decrying the return of inflation and how bad it would be for the markets. We were out trying to explain to listeners that not all rising long-term interest rates environments are bad for equities. In fact, equities are one…