Market Monitor

With another big shake-up week in college football there was some big movement in the inaugural college football playoff rankings yesterday.

Anyone who reads our stuff regularly knows we usually lean right, politically. This is not a gloat session.

Al Roker, Today Show's weatherman, says that he's doing pretty well if he's right one in three times.  What a coincidence that Major League Baseball regards hitters with a .333 batting average among the best in that sport, too.  So what do you predict the weather will be like this winter?

In case you missed it there were big midterm election results the other day that saw a huge victory for the GOP on both a national and state level all over the country. The key victory was retaking the Senate, which will put Mitch McConnell in charge of the upper chamber of Congress.

Don’t forget to set your clocks back Saturday night as daylight savings time ends, in what our opinion, is turning into a ridiculous bi-annual routine with the majority of the year spent in DST anyway.

We started the week off in the Guide by mentioning a few useful macroeconomic metrics in sector and stock picking. 

Over the past month, stock markets worldwide have been in a tailspin.  Meanwhile, the dollar continues to strengthen, which would have a dampening effect on the growth of exports by large cap US companies.   Weakening economies in Europe and Asia are further exacerbating future demand for US products in general.  Fortunately, the Fed's accommodative efforts to keep interest rates low, have continued to support our economy.  The low interest rate environment has also enabled cash-rich large cap businesses to acquire/merge smaller ones that have minimum exposure to overseas markets.  So, unfolding developments could strongly favor small cap stocks in the U.S. in the months ahead.

We hope for everyone’s sake that this week is not as ‘adventuresome’ as last week.

The Kansas City Royals, the epitome of a small market MLB team, have made the World Series for the first time in 29 years.

The blood bath continued yesterday on Wall Street but we believe there is a bottom once oil prices stabilize.