Will We Ever Again Trust Wall Street?

February 8, 2010

The WSJ asks Will We Ever Again Trust Wall Street? I suppose that it is only natural to pose such a question after the poor performance of equities over the past decade. However, it is worth pointing out the equity returns following another period when investors were similarly disillusioned with Wall Street.

In 1952, two full decades after the Great Crash hit bottom, only 19% of wealthy Americans regarded stocks as the wisest investment choice, according to a Federal Reserve survey. Most investors thus sat out the great bull market of the 1950s, when stocks gained 19.4% annually.


Weekly RS Recap

February 8, 2010

The table below shows the performance of a universe of mid and large cap U.S. equities, broken down by relative strength decile and quartile and then compared to the universe return. Those at the top of the ranks are those stocks which have the best intermediate-term relative strength. Relative strength strategies buy securities that have strong intermediate-term relative strength and hold them as long as they remain strong.

Last week’s performance (2/1/10 – 2/5/10) is as follows:

High RS stocks held up better than the universe last week.