Join Chris Perras for the 3/5/2021 episode of Stock Talk! Chris: Hey, good morning. I’m Chris Perras, chief investment officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group here in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our March 5th weekly Stock Talk podcast: keeping you connected to your money. After foreshadowing the recent S&P 500 market pullback to around 3,800 back in late January, and both figuratively and literally taking some chips off the table, and now having spent the last few weeks of February discussing interest rates, and their two components, and its the rotational effect on equities in the markets, rotational meaning money flowing from groups to groups, space-time computer algorithms, I’m offering up this week’s title as an ode to one of my favorite sporting events each and every year. The college Basketball National Championship tournament of 68 teams happens the second half of March into early April. This week’s podcast title is “They call it March Madness for a Reason”. Be sure to listen to this whole podcast, as I plan on circling back to two prior topics I’ve discussed in past podcasts. I’ll close the loop on one and preview next week’s podcast topic, which I think is going to be a must listen to. Accompanying the recent rapid rise in long-term interest rates has come about a short-term increase in equity volatility, particularly in the ultra-high growth sectors of the market which rely primarily on the terminal value of their businesses 10, 20, even 30 years out for their valuations. We foreshadowed this rise in both inflation, first, due to federal reserve QE programs and real growth, next, led by government fiscal spending since the early second quarter of last year. We’ve discussed it more than the velocity of these bond market moves is what disrupt markets rather than the overall rate increase. What happens is those volatility increases in the bond market bleed over into stocks. We’ve called this collateral damage. To draw from the bond charts now is, as we’ve discussed for about the past two weeks,…

Join Chris Perras for the 2/26/2021 edition of Stock Talk! Chris Perras: Hey, good morning. I’m Chris Perras, a chief investment officer of Oak Harvest Financial Group here in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our February 26th weekly Stock talk podcast: keeping you connected to your money. We took last week off unexpectedly due to the Texas winter storm causing widespread power outages throughout our great state. I hope that everyone has got their houses turned around and is getting back to normal after that event. Was not a lot of fun. I almost titled this week’s podcast February made me shiver after the line in Don McLean’s classic, The Day the Music Died. However, this week I offer up more detail and my thoughts on what happened this week and the title is Collateral Damage, higher long-term interest rates, inflation, real growth, and the opportunity it’s creating. The TV networks have been littered this week with the topic of higher long-term interest rates and more specifically the concern over higher inflation. It’s the new hot macro topic du jour on the financial news channels. As long-term interest rates have steadily risen over the last nine months, at the same time, most asset prices, including commodities have accelerated higher. That includes copper, lumber, even oil. I love this topic. I’ve said that the last three weeks. Why? Because it doesn’t take guessing at its answer. This cycle has the answer in it. Clients can log on to our web portal and see a brief presentation I put together on this topic. I’ve discussed a lot of these charts the last three years at Oak Harvest. Interest rates have two components. There’s the expected inflation component, and there is the expected real growth component. When you add them together, you get the actual yield you see on a treasury bond you’re looking at. As of yesterday, the 10-year Treasury bond was about 1.52%. The inflation component was 2.14% and the real growth component was actually a -0.62%. To me, what’s most interesting…

Is inflation returning? Chris Perras looks at the economy in this 2/19/2021 edition of Stock Talk!

Stock Talk School: Anatomy of Today’s Student Loan Debt and Other Failed Socialist Policies. CIO Chris Perras takes a break from his usual stock market commentary to tackle a real-time example of how well-intentioned but ill-conceived policies can cause financial harm. Chris Perras: Hey there, my name is Chris Perras. I’m the Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group in Houston, Texas. Welcome to the February 14th, 2020 edition of our weekly Stock Talk Podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. As of this recording, the stock markets are sitting near 3,375 on the S&P 500. That’s near an all-time high. This will be the first podcast of the year that I want to digress from my normal stock market and economic commentary. I’ve done this in the past during times when we really don’t have a lot new to talk about when things in the market played out as we thought. I do this in order to address topics such as politics and their effect on stocks or to educate my listeners as to the drivers of total stock market returns. Today, I want to address an ongoing topic in the financial press and one currently running around political circles. This topic, I’m going to title The Anatomy of More Failed Socialist Policies, Today’s Student Loan Debt Crisis. Why do I want to do this now? Mainly because this topic is a real-time example of how badly ill-conceived socialist economic principles and policies can spiral out of control and costs both its direct participants, as well as those innocent bystanders horrible financial harm. According to The Wall Street Journal, borrowers currently owe more than 1.5 trillion with a T, in student loans. Over two million borrowers have defaulted on their loans since 2013. The federal government, never known for its accuracy and forecasting budgets, under former President Obama forecasted big profits from the direct student lending market. Now those government agencies are saying taxpayers will lose at least $31.5 billion over the next 10 years. According to a…

Join Chris Perras for the 2/12/2021 edition of Stock Talk! Chris Perras: Good morning. I’m Chris Paris Chief Investment Officer at Goff Carver’s Financial Group in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our February 12 weekly Stock Talk podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. This week’s podcast is a long-titled address addressing an issue that now seems to be on top of the mind for a lot of investors in most of the financial news networks. The topic is, Is Inflation Returning, and If So, Will it Be a Problem this Year? The title of this podcast, Inflation Worries, That’s So 2020. 2021 is about Real Growth Accelerating. With the election in the rearview mirror for most people, the most common question we’ve been getting the last three or four weeks here at Oak harvest from our clients and prospects is what about inflation? This seems to be the new hot macro topic de jure on the financial news channels as long-term interest rates have steadily risen over the past nine months at the same time that most asset prices, including commodities, have accelerated higher. That includes copper, lumber, and even oil. Listeners, I love this topic. Why? Because it doesn’t take guessing at its answer this cycle to answer it. What do I mean? Clients can log on and view the three charts on interest rates along with this podcast on our web portal. This podcast is dedicated to dissecting interest rates, and its two components that most investors can now follow in real-time for free on many financial data websites. You don’t have to guess, you don’t have to go make up some esoteric or nebulous reason about what’s going on. Best of all, you don’t have to wait for the late and nearly irrelevant government data. You can follow exactly what the market is thinking and seeing right now and in future months with your own eyes. An obscured by the opinions of some money managers on TV that you’ve never met. Here we go. A quick economics…

Join Chris Perras for the 2/5/2021 edition of Stock Talk! Chris Perras: Good morning. I’m Chris Perras, Chief Investment Officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our Friday, February 5th, weekly Stock Talk Podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. This week’s podcast is titled; Crystal Ball -Seeing the Future, Market Foreshadowing. For the past 9 to 12 months, we have repeatedly gotten the question, how come the stock market is doing so well when the economy is so bad? First, since about April of last year, the team here at Oak Harvest has tried to stress that the financial markets and stock markets move well in advance of the data hitting the tapes and on financial news TV. The markets, as well as individual stocks, tend to move on incremental momentum. They ask themselves, are things getting better or worse? Believe it, or not many times less bad than being horrible or a disaster can actually be better in investors’ eyes than good but not excellent or great anymore. I bring this up because a few listeners have asked me the last two weeks, Chris, you mentioned two weeks ago that you were taking some chips off the table and paring back a number of semiconductor companies that have been great winners over the last 12 to 24 months. The TV news channels are out in force with stories of demand exceeding capacity and that there are semiconductors shortages everywhere and that their business is great. The answer is, yes, business is great there. It’s so great the companies are most likely double ordering and pulling forward demand from the first quarter, 2021, and the second quarter. With this, semiconductor stocks have anticipated this and the valuations have skyrocketed the last nine months in the groups. The current upturn in semiconductors started around February 2nd to around February 10th in 2019. You go ahead and add two years to that and what do you get? Yes, you get this week. While almost every semiconductor company…

Join Chris Perras for the 1/29/2021 edition of Stock Talk! Chris Perras: Hey. Happy Friday. My name is Chris Perras. I’m the chief investment officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group here in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our January 29th weekly Stock Talk podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. This week’s podcast is titled February Downshifting, Taking Some Chips off the Table. Now admittingly, I started writing this podcast on Tuesday earlier in the week, but the market’s near all-time highs and 99% of the markets calm and uneventful. Since then, what we’ve seen is some wild swings since Wednesday through today for reasons we will discuss later. We previewed this time period now for almost six months. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the time period in mid-first quarter 2021 post earnings reports since the pre-presidential election last year and the beginning of the fourth-quarter rally that started on October 28th, 30th. The team at Oak Harvest has been discussing a normally turbulent period that would most likely start sometime in between very late January and February 3rd, next week, and lasting through most of February, possibly into mid to late March during the first quarter dead zone. A number of reasons we’ve seen that this is most likely time for some decent seesawing and increased volatility, let me name a few. The calendar is flipped to a new year and had you been lucky or skilled enough to buy the COVID-19 bottom in mid-March, late last year, you are now approaching a one-year holding period, which is an incentive by way of long-term capital gains rates to finally start taking some profits if you’re an investor rather than a short-term trader. Number two, fundamentally, I see evidence of double ordering throughout many supply chains as many customers are loath to miss a sale. What do they do? They place multiple orders throughout their supply chain, hoping that each order is partially filled. This is particularly likely going on and of note throughout the semiconductor supply chain….

Join Chris Perras for the 1/22/2021 episode of Stock Talk! Chris Perras: Good morning. I’m Chris Perras, chief investment officer at Oak Harvest Financial Group in Houston, Texas. Welcome to our January 22nd weekly Stock Talk podcast: Keeping You Connected to Your Money. With the elections now firmly behind us, markets making you all-time highs almost daily, and many speculative names having moved parabolically upward the last four weeks, the investment team at Oak Harvest has gotten some calls and emails the past two weeks from clients and prospects asking, one, if we’ve changed our minds, strategies, or outlook for the economy and the stock market for 2021 and, two, what Biden’s agenda might mean from a market perspective. This week’s podcast is titled Conventional Wisdom, It’s Comfortable, but is it Profitable? I’m not going to break out the down and dirty data for this one. I’m not going to go all the way back to the 1920s and 1930 analogies like I’ve heard endlessly on TV from a number of retired and semi-retired billionaire hedge fund managers the last three years. I’m going to stick to the time period since the Great Recession in 2008, 2009, because that’s the cycle we’re in. Think back to the early 2009 time period during President Obama’s first presidential term. Into his election, and throughout the first years of his presidency, the conventional wisdom and conventional investment trading recommendations were that investors should buy guns and ammo companies like Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger. That would benefit because national gun control was coming. I’m not kidding. I remember this. I was getting calls on this almost daily. We had unemployment rates around 10%, and I was getting these kinds of calls as investment advice. These names spiked higher in the fourth quarter of 2008 and very early 2009 in advance of President Obama’s inauguration. Then, they traded sideways for the next four years of the Obama first presidential term, and the S&P 500 almost doubled. So much for conventional wisdom being right….

Join Chris Perras for the 1/15/2021 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 January 15th, weekly Stock Talk Podcast: Keeping you connected to your money. Halfway through January, most markets remain strongly bid, and many stocks are moving up exponentially as FOMO, which listeners know by now is fear of missing out, has kicked in for many investors post the November election. Over the past six months, we have previewed this time period, and just this kind of market move as a likely outcome for early 2021, with this in mind, this podcast is entitled Game Planning 101: Plan your trades, trade your plan. Before I get to our weekly podcast topic, I’m going to apologize to any listeners who might have taken issue with some of the content or wording in my last week’s podcast, which was entitled America’s Strong, bent not broken. Same as the markets. Much as we have tried to do the past nine months, my comments were meant to deemphasize the significance of politics, and who is running the show in Washington DC on our overall economy and the financial markets. The keyword there is “overall market”. Last week’s podcast was merely meant to highlight just that fact as most financial markets shook off when does Wednesday afternoons events at our capital within hours, and subsequently. the overall markets have continued their march higher. Here we sit, near market weekly new all-time highs in mid-January, which we’ve talked about for the past few podcasts is a very normal bull market. In fact, this week’s inter-week trading pattern from Monday through now has mimicked the same pattern six out of the last seven weeks post-election. What’s that pattern? That pattern is down Mondays and Tuesdays, which I imagine is many skittish investors spending the weekend reflecting on the prior week’s news events, and deciding they wanted to sell some equities. What they do is, they get on…

Join Chris Perras for the 1/8/2021 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 first weekly Stock Talk podcast for 2021, Keeping You Connected to Your Money. I was going to do the full version of our first half 2021 outlook, but given this week’s political events in both Georgia and Washington DC, I’m going to focus this week’s podcast on those current events. The title of this week’s podcast is American strong, bent not broken, same as the stock markets. I’m going to try to stay away from political biases here and focus my attention on the things that matter to investors. Earlier in the week, some investors were fearful of the return of a Democratic blue wave caused by the Senate races in Georgia. The investment team at Oak Harvest covered this outcome numerous times in the months preceding the elections last year. We covered it. We covered what it would and would not mean for the markets. As we discussed back then numerous times in podcasts and in written materials, stocks have done equally as well under both divided government and single-party control, particularly when that single-party control is one, when the majority is held by a very narrow margin as it is right now. I received a few texts the night of the Georgia Senate runoffs earlier in the week from friends of mine who live in Georgia. As the results were coming in in favor of Democratic candidates, these friends of mine who leaned very, very conservative were texting me predicting market collapses and turmoil in the streets. What happened to the equity markets the next morning when they opened, on Wednesday? Instead of going down, they went straight up and made new all-time highs. The bond market sold off. What groups led the stock market higher Wednesday? Financials, construction names, energy stocks, exactly the groups one would expect under a Biden-led administration. To me what’s really…