Perry Kaufman

From the view of alternative investments, bonds have had the best returns for the past 40 years. Well almost. There are periods, some recent, where bond prices have gone down anticipating higher rates that never came. When we think of buying a bond funds, any of a large number of ETFs, the elephant in the […]

The Presidential Cycle 2016 and 2017 Once upon a time, the 4-year Presidential Cycle was reasonably predictable. In the year of the election, the incumbents would try to boost the economy, which was reflected in the stock market, and everyone would be happy. In the year after the election the President was able to implement

We all know that we can’t predict a price shock, at least not many of them, and not which direction prices will go. If we could, it wouldn’t be a shock and we’d all be rich. But there are different kinds of prices shocks and different opportunities. The British vote to leave the EC is

Entering at the Right Time of Day Can Double your Long-Term Profits We’ve all heard a lot about averaging down, scaling in, waiting for a pullback, and other clever methods for entering a position. Most active investors, those who follow a medium to long-term trend, wouldn’t think that whether you enter on open following a signal,

Sector Rotation has been a successful investment strategy for decades. It is simply trading those sectors that have performed the best recently. It relies on what the analysts call “persistence,” the ability for a sector, or any stock price, to continue doing what it was doing before – going up, down, or nowhere at all.

Seasonality in commodities is one of the great patterns for capturing profits. Think of it as a gift from Nature. It does require that you compare the current price patterns against the price history to decide if the commodity is acting correctly according to the season patterns. One obstacle in taking advantage of seasonality is

It seems that the big traders have the advantage. They can capture lots of small profits with high-frequency trading, pairs trading, merger arb, or countless bond arbitrage trades based on the yield curve. But there are some opportunities still there for low-frequency, less intense traders. One game still played is taking advantage of the way

Why don’t we see algorithmic systems that use volume? It seems that all of them use price, sometimes as spreads as in pairs trading, sometimes the term structure of futures, often Eurodollar rates or crude oil. But rarely does volume enter into the decision except when selecting the most liquid equities or futures contacts. Yet

Politics being what it is, looking at the four-year cycle of returns for the stock market makes sense. It is in the incumbent party’s interest to try to make visible improvements in the quality of life, national affairs in general, or some specific issue that pleases the public as an election approaches. At least that’s

There is no doubt that ETFs are a good way to invest. They reduce your exposure to the ups and downs of a single stock and avoid having to choose which stock in a sector is going to be the best next year. It turns out there is an easy way to get the same