Printable Version   From Bear to Bull in a Week   Another wild week. The sharpest, fastest bear market in history – the S&P 500 was down -35.2% from its closing high on February 19 to the intraday low on Monday – was followed by the sharpest, fastest move back into bull market territory in history, as the index rallied +20% from that point through yesterday’s close. Both Tuesday and the past three days were…
Continue reading >>

Printable Version   Where to Begin?   Most importantly, all of us at Gemmer hope you and your family are healthy and doing as well as can be expected. Everyone here is working hard during this ‘shelter in place’ period and our backup plan to work remotely is functioning better than we could have expected. We were fully operational day 1!   Secondly, you may see trade confirms coming through in the coming days. We…
Continue reading >>

Printable Version   V, U, or L scenario?   What a crazy week. What can you say about a week that saw the following daily S&P 500 returns: Monday +4.6%, Tuesday -2.8%, Wednesday +4.2%, Thursday -3.4%, and Friday -1.7%? And after all this the S&P finished up +0.6% for the week. Who’d of thought?   Normally we’d get into today’s strong payrolls report and how the economy had built up a decent head of steam…
Continue reading >>

Printable VersionMarkets Grapple with the Coronavirus   There’s an old saying that markets take the escalator up and the elevator down. That sure was the case this week. Selling pressure was intense all week as investors grappled with the implications of the coronavirus spreading beyond China’s boarders. The S&P officially hit correction territory with a decline of more than 10% from the high. As you can see below, this is the eighth correction of more…
Continue reading >>

Printable Version    Gauging the Economic Fallout   Up until Thursday the markets remained pretty buoyant in expectation that the Coronavirus infection rate had peaked. This seemed to change on Thursday and Friday as attention turned away from infections towards the economic fallout.   The change of tone could be detected after Japan reported a miserable fourth quarter GDP number. Growth in the fourth quarter fell at an annual rate of -6.3% (chart below) after…
Continue reading >>

Printable Version   Infection Rates Seem to be Slowing   As you would expect the coronavirus situation was the headline story all week. The situation continues to evolve, but it is pretty clear that simply counting the number of infections is far from simple. Is China fully disclosing the number infected? If infection rates have plateaued, why are roughly 400mm people in China under some form or quarantine? Investors were also thrown off balance on…
Continue reading >>