It certainly could be, but the odds do not favor it. Statistically speaking, it is far more likely that a run-of-the-mill correction is now underway and working its way through each sector of the market, to varying degrees of severity. Counter-trend rallies are sharp and short (think Wednesday), which is fairly characteristic of a defined…

The sell-off continues as JPMorgan announces a rare miss, futures down more than five handles and looking listless. This despite the fact that Wells Fargo was able to beat. Wells is basically a GSE at this point. They’re doing a third of the nation’s mortgages, a ton of boring branch banking and then a whole…

Howard Marks (Oaktree) is on the short-list of every serious investor’s must-read list and this month’s new memo demonstrates exactly why. In it, Marks talks about the choice that all investors must make at the outset – to be extraordinary and run the risk of massive failure, or to be ordinary and merely get by…

This is a bit of a coming out party for my colleague and friend Michael Batnick. Michael is Ritholtz Wealth Management’s director of research and he’s been working with Barry and I since the fall of 2012. Much of what we do as an investment firm would be impossible if not for his work and…

The first quarter of this year has definitely frustrated just about everyone. The sectors that large cap mutual fund managers were overweight (like Consumer Disc) were the big under-performers while the sectors no one wanted anything to do with (Utilities, anyone?) absolutely kicked ass. Merrill’s Equity and Quant Strategy team tells that less than a…

Hot Trend Alert: IPOs aren’t cool anymore. Stuffed-to-the-gills investors literally cannot eat another bite, and yet the dishes continue to come flying out of the kitchen at Chez Wall Street. Early-stage investors see that the getting is now as good as it will ever be and private equity sponsors are racing to dump assets into…

My friend Peter Boockvar illustrates an incredible example of what he calls the “power of central banks” on the eve of Greece’s first public debt auction in years: It was July 26th 2012 when ECB President Mario Draghi said “Within our mandate the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro…

The major glaring similarity between the S&P 500 today and at its last major peak in late 2007 is that, at both moments in time, the PE multiple is 15.2. Not that this necessarily means anything, there’ve been plenty of other instances throughout history where we’ve had a market trading at or above that level…