Why Stocks Are Dropping

It’s kinda common for investors to think that if the U.S. economy is doing well, then the stock market should be doing well, too. After all, better economic growth means people and corporations are spending money, which means rising profits and stock prices, right?  Well, yes and no.  The whole investing game is predicated on […]

EV IPO Worth More than GM?

So we’ve got the S&P 500 falling below its 50-day moving average – which is a significant indication that the medium-term trend has changed. We’ve got Fed officials ramping up the “more rate hikes” rhetoric. We’ve got a Chinese economy that appears to be melting down. We’ve got weakening housing and manufacturing data… And all […]

Next Level Branding

By the time I graduated high school in 1983(!), I’d been playing punk rock shows for nearly two years. My band — Graven Image — played on the same bill with some of the best punk bands, like Minor Threat, Dave Grohl’s DC punk band Scream and Bad Brains. Amazingly enough, there’s even video (me […]

China's Economic Problem

China is becoming a problem.  It’s not the military posturing, even though I’m sure we’re all aware of China’s confrontational military operations lately. It continues to threaten its South China Sea neighbors like Taiwan and the Philippines.  And that joint military exercise it conducted with Russia that encroached on Alaska’s Aleutian Islands really had me […]

What's Ahead for Disney (NYSE: DIS)

Ever since sports betting was legalized in 2018, I’ve wondered what Disney’s (NYSE: DIS) plan would be. After all, it owns the ESPN network, and there’s probably no better platform for sports betting than ESPN… The question, of course, is how would Disney embrace the degenerate gambling crowd without tarnishing its family-friendly image? (Dear Degenerate […]

Welcome Back!

Sometimes you don’t know how much you need something until it’s right there in front of you. That was my family vacation at Fernandina Beach last week… I hadn’t seen my kids since March. And the whole extended family – 11 in total – hadn’t been together in two years. I powered down the laptop, […]

Lost and Found

After a couple years of pandemic-related sadness and isolation, my family’s annual beach week is once again happening. My son, stepdaughter and I were the first ones to make it to our Fernandina Beach rental on Saturday. My brother, his wife and their two kids arrived about an hour later. My cousin and his wife […]

The Target on Tesla’s Back

I’ve warned before that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) could be particularly vulnerable to China’s capricious policies and would make a pretty good target if China really decided to retaliate against U.S. restrictions on China’s access to high-end semiconductors. Tesla makes more than half its cars in China, and gets around half its revenue from sales in […]

The Rearview Mirror

There’s no point in trying to hide the fact. You’ve seen the charts I post from time to time. And you’ve read my thoughts on moving averages and support/resistance levels.  And of course, who can forget the trend lines, arrows and circles I’ve artfully added to charts to point out events of interest.  Technical analysis […]

China is Watching

My dog Maxie had a boyfriend named Ace. They played together twice a day for nearly a year at this field just above Baltimore’s waterfront Fells Point neighborhood. Ace was a very handsome Samoyed-looking dog, though his mom swore he wasn’t a Sammy… Ace’s mom and I would chat while Maxie and Ace wrestled and […]

Does Congress Really Support Our Troops?

If you paid attention to the earnings headlines yesterday morning, you might’ve thought I had a couple screws loose. The financial media was blaring headlines like “Lockheed Martin Beats Estimates, Raises Outlook…” before the market opened on Tuesday, July 18… And didn’t I just pan defense stocks on Monday…? Why, yes. Yes, I did. But […]

The Case Against Defense Stocks

Last week, the U.S. said it would send “cluster bombs” to Ukraine for its fight against Russia. There was a pretty significant backlash to the announcement, because cluster bombs leave a pretty nasty legacy… A cluster bomb is one big bomb that’s filled with as many as 2,000 smaller bombs. The idea is that the […]