ASYMMETRY® Observations
ASYMMETRY® Observations are Mike Shell’s observations of all things asymmetry, asymmetric risk/reward, asymmetric payoffs, and asymmetric investment returns.
Original thinking on markets, risk, and asymmetric investing — delivered the moment it publishes.
Read the latest.
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What Does a Volatility Contraction Mean?
Volatility is how fast and wide prices spread out. What is it? The Cboe Volatility Index® (VIX® ) is considered by many to be the world’s barometer of expected stock market volatility.…
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Something I’ve Learned Trading Relative Strength Since the 1990s
When I started studying tactical trading for investment portfolio management going on thirty years ago, one of my favorite books was New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems by J. Welles Wilder…
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This is Where Trend Analysis and Options Positioning Gets Interesting
Up until now, the trend S&P 500 index has failed to break above the 4200 level. I highlighted 4200 in yellow on the chart to point out the SPX has…
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Mega-cap Tech Stocks Market Share of the S&P 500 is Now 22%, but can it Hold?
Mega-cap tech ( AAPL MSFT AMZN GOOGL META ) market share of the S&P 500 is now 22%, but this chart from Goldman Sachs suggests the top 4 stocks in…
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Mega-cap Technology Outperformance and Earnings Growth
Mega-cap tech ( $AAPL $MSFT $AMZN $GOOGL $META ) outperformance and earnings growth show that mega-cap tech has outperformed the S&P 500 by 28pp in 2023. But as we show…
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Here’s how the Stock Market Performed after Fed Interest Rate Hiking Cycles
Fed fund futures imply the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is done with rising rates. They may not be, but. The S&P 500 gained an average of 16% in…
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The Market Telling Us How to Invest Our Money for Asymmetric Investment Returns
Sometimes the markets tell us how to invest our money for asymmetric investment returns. It isn’t so much short-term rates are an indicator or precursor to a stock market decline,…
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Where are we in the Economic Cycle?
According to our friends at Goldman Sachs, decomposing the economic cycle into four stages, we are in the slowdown phase, just before recession.
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How did the stock market perform during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis?
S&P 500 fell 17% during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis. Stocks with greatest sales exposure to US federal spending (highlighted in yellow) plunged by 25%. The VIX expanded to 48.
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Regional Banking Sector is an Outlier Downtrend
The regional banking sector remains under selling pressure. We use the KBW Nasdaq Regional Banking Index to represent the sector. The Index includes 50 stocks and is compiled, maintained and calculated by…
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Investor Sentiment: The Market Climbs a Wall of Worry
The most famous investor sentiment quote is likely one from the Oracle of Omaha: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” – Warren Buffett I’ve been…
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When the trends change direction, I change my direction, what do you do?
When the trends change direction, I change my direction. What do you do? That’s my version of the famous quote often attributed to John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change,…