“Charlatans are recognizable in that they will give you positive advice, and only positive advice, exploiting our gullibility and sucker-proneness… Yet in practice it is the negative that’s used by the pros, those selected by evolution… people become rich by not going bust (particularly when others do).”

…if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck… or in this case, a bear. A bear market that is…

The FED has painted itself (and our country) into a corner. Either they tighten (raise rates) monetary policy into a slowing economy (GDP and CPI) which will make a recession worse, probably leading to massive unemployment and social unrest. Or, they act to save the stock market by easing monetary policy (cutting rates or printing money to buy more bonds) and leading to ever higher inflation.

All I can say is this: don’t count on the FED to deliver magical outcomes.

At Elevate, we aren’t afraid to take some money out of the market when we hit a predefined stop loss. It is vital to define how much you are willing to lose on a position before you enter it. When the market starts to drop and money is being lost, humans become emotional and make poor decisions. But that is where the opportunity lies…

Despite the strong two-day rally to finish the month, January was the worst start to the year for the Nasdaq (down 19% peak to trough) since 2008. And if not for that two-day rally, it would have been the worst start for the Nasdaq ever – and ever, as they say, is a very long time. As a result, you might have thought that the decline would have made some progress in normalizing valuations, but you would have been wrong…

Predictions are something we do for fun around here. That is not how we manage money. We follow strict rules and react to the market we are in, not the market we hope for. And doing so has served us well over the long term…

I wonder if Chairman (of the Federal Reserve Bank) Jerome Powell, reads my commentary. It wasn’t long after last month’s note that Mr. Powell changed his tune on inflation being “transitory” and shifted his stance toward “tapering” the central bank’s bond purchasing program faster than planned…

…prices were spiraling upward, almost out of control.
A vicious cycle was underway: Because prices had been rising rapidly in the recent past, workers demanded ever-higher wages.
As the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve was the agency best positioned to try to end that demoralizing cycle, but it would exact a cost…

As we have grown accustomed to during “down months,” our strategies both outperformed the S&P 500 index, even though we too finished the month down slightly.
This is nothing to get excited about…

Aside from pandemics and mandates, September is historically the worst month of the year for the stock market. The following chart from our friends at Sentimentrader makes visualizing the tendency for poor returns this time of year as obvious as I have ever seen…

The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), or, Fannie Mae, is about to open their mortgage loan approvals to folks with poor credit scores, but good history of paying their rent over the past 12 months…

Since my last letter, we have covered 2,803 miles and logged around 50 hours of “windshield time” on our way from Eagle, CO, to Gulfport, FL, by way of Hinckley, MN… and so, that is the primary reason for my tardiness with this letter…

On February 28th, 2019, I was traveling home from Belize (with my beautiful wife) via Southwest Airlines (LUV). When we landed in Houston to make our connecting flight, the flight attendant revealed a “secret” to all the passengers on the airplane…

We built Elevate on the simple idea that we would always tell you, dear reader, exactly what we would want to know if our roles were reversed. And then, see what happens from there…

Last month when I wrote to you the Nasdaq was in the midst of a proper correction with the technology index down nearly 11%, and many of the best performing constituents over the prior year down much more than that…

Since peaking on February 16th, the S&P 500 was down about 5.7% at its lows on Thursday. The NASDAQ was down 12% over the same period and is fully in correction territory (down more than 10%.)…

By now, I think most of you have an idea of what went on related to shares of GameStop (GME) stock over the past few weeks…

I am pleased to report that 2020 was a very successful year of growth for our firm and your investment account values.

We have beat the market on both the upside, and the downside – a testament to our process which is highly disciplined. Our goal with the Appreciation Strategy is to match the market on the upside – so, I am extremely pleased with these results…

At Elevate, we take our cues from prices, not from our politicians or newscasters. We let the market tell us when things have changed, we don’t try to predict when regimes will change - which is basically just guessing anyway….