Ned’s Notes

'The goal is inflation exceeds the 2% mark and stays there for some time.' proclaimed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome "Jay" Powell in a recent 60 Minutes interview. (more…)

The Drill Is Gone Exxon: From Blue Chip Back to Dinosaur? Apple Slices itself into Smaller Pieces Oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil, once the largest company in the world, is out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). Dow Jones officially booted Exxon from among the 30 “blue chip” companies that comprise the venerable index…

But Some Do Incredibly Well In a series of studies Professor Hendrik Bessembinder of Arizona State University has looked at the lifetime returns of every publicly listed US stock going back to 1926, covering over 26,000 companies. Although his findings are remarkable they are also dense. NN has synthesized the high points: A tiny fraction…

Anomaly or Trend? Long term US Treasury bonds, meaning those with 20 or more years until maturity, have turned in some eye-popping numbers in 2020. Despite seeming only slightly more daring than burying cash in the back yard, they have performed better than most other investments in what has so far been a dismal year.…

Cash is literally too dirty for the modern world One way businesses and governments are fighting against the spread of disease is discouraging the use of cash for transactions. Research suggests that paper money is even better at spreading COVID-19 than human hands. Apparently sweat glands in the human body break down the virus more…

Don't Mind the Recent Past But always watch the Fed Although most barely noticed, 2019 was a remarkably good year for US stocks. The S&P 500, a proxy for the US stock market, returned 31.5%, including dividends, about triple its long-term average. That was better than all other major asset classes, including bonds, real estate, foreign…

Investment Black Holes Don't let a Supernova take out your portfolio When the Hong King Stock Exchange closed for business on Wednesday, November 19th, a marble mining company named ArtGo Holdings Ltd, was the best performing stock of 2019 in the entire world (excluding smaller companies with market caps <$1B). An unlikely superstar, ArtGo’s stock had zoomed…

Famous for Being Wrong Is Technology Really Inflation's Kryptonite? The above is a now infamous BusinessWeek magazine cover from August 1979. While stocks did indeed have a rough go of it after "The Death of Equities" edition hit the racks, a few years later they found a bottom... Read More

Inverted Yield Curve Mania Strikes Again! Three Reasons to Take it in Stride (NOTE: This is a partial repeat of an earlier NN on the Inverted Yield Curve) The stock market dropped 800 points (-3%) on Wednesday, August 14th (also my birthday), its worst day of 2019. The big move down was in response to something Ned's Notes…