KC O'Rourke

Moving and shaking in portfolio management the past 24hrs. Some rotation out of growth (Nasdaq now 4.2% below its former all-time high), and into year-to-date underperformers including staples led by Walmart numbers yesterday and into China exposed names ahead of the big NVDA news tonight. With most already involved in large cap tech (over half of the GVIP ETF is weighted in TMT), investors are rightfully anxious of the momentum trade showing any signs of unwinding (and really, a pull-back wit…

A simple search of the top trending topics in the world right now include gorilla mind, blinkit, gellyball, padel rackets, numerade, malatang, magnacut, figma fonts, and pickleball shoes.. As a racquet sports enthusiast I have heard of two of these items. As well, when commentating on markets, a few things also trending for this year include the S&P500, Nasdaq composite, momentum trades, the Stoxx 600, DAX & CAC indices to name a few. They have all achieved bullish price trends with new highs c…

We got an electric drum set for my two kids. Expectations just a little above the ocean floor was a nice setup when my son (7) busted out a John Bonham riff the other night that brought me straight back to my 80’s childhood. Did it sound great, definitely not – but it sure blew me away. As we know, contentment results from situations or outcomes that exceed our expectations.. So with President’s day holiday keeping the stock & bond markets shut in the US, very few earnings (gets going again tom…

I watched my six year old play in a chess tournament with the grammar school across the street (only in places like London can you get a rival school at such a young age, this alone is quite amazing). Small tables separated by age, three six year olds talking to their three opponents, as my stomach was in knots on the side wall. Wins & losses aside, most notable when we got home was that the score was irrelevant, the idea that they could play chess at all was what mattered to them. They were pl…

Don’t take our weekends from us…. A broadening out of the rally on the surface is good, allows for more companies to share in the higher stock prices, and we are seeing it with the Russell 2k taking the reins from the Nasdaq & SPX (up 4.7% in 2 days is the second best relative performance this year) which seems reasonable. Unless you are of the mind that seasonality rules, and the Mag7 will/should not go down the last part of this 4th quarter. I just wonder how this market will respond to a li…

Rebalances, Rotations, Rolling stones and all… The S&P hasn’t had a daily move in either direction of more than half a percent for 6 days now, so let’s take a closer look under the hood….. Markets continue to rotate in the direction that the peak in yields is behind us – with the most obvious leader being US tech marking all-time high this week – but under the surface in Europe it’s very interesting to follow the flows.. We are seeing (and we would agree with, in this environment), a strong bia…

Well that happened fast… It has been so ingrained in us that inflation is the root of all evil and that central banks will do as much as they can to keep it from overgrowing, and yet, we wake up today with significantly cooler prices for the month in Australia (4.9% CPI vs. 5.2% expected), in Spain (3.2% against consensus rise to 3.7%), the UK November BRC shop price index falling to 4.3% from 5.2% in Oct, and most exciting Germany (CPI drops from 3.0% to 2.3% in Nov, vs 2.6% exp and some regio…

We all need leadership.. 7 Mega-tech companies have proven very reliable, carrying Nasdaq to hefty 10.8% gains mtd – and with yields making fresh lows as I type/send this and the US$ on 10 week lows, we have reasons to believe… Here in Europe, we depend more significantly on China to drive our shares, but with the China Exposed Basket only 1% above its recent November relative LOW – a breakdown of trust may soon be confirmed (we are looking squarely at 12m relative lows from Burberry, Kering,…