The small cap index was bettered by the major indexes on Friday which managed a close in the green on Friday. The S&P500 was down for the week, snapping a weekly winning streak that started back in November… hmmm.
How was your first week of 2024? Mine could have been a bit better. That earache I was complaining about turned out to be that popular virus that everyone likes to chat about. I recuperated in my home office, still managing to work at least 10 hours a day in my PJs and slippers. With Eloise the Cavapoo Pup keeping my lap warm, I managed to be quite productive, despite the brain fog, congestion, and coughing. It took laser focus, but I was on a mission. Wouldn’t you know it, I made it to other side, once again. I persisted.
So here I am, week two, still congested but ready to tackle the world in work clothes… and shoes. I am optimistic. I am optimistic, despite last week’s market performance. Sure, it would have been nice to have a 10-week winning streak for the S&P500, but alas, we will have to mark that down as a 9-week winning streak. It would also have been nice to say that the first week of the year was a winning one, but alas, it was not. So why then, am I optimistic?
You see, many believe that the stock market is completely random. I am hoping that you are shaking your head from left to right at this point. We know it is not completely random. There are all sorts of things that influence stock market behavior. Good things should make stocks go up and vice versa. Now, without getting too far into the weeds, we know that my last sentence is not strictly true. If it were, we would all be wildly wealthy. We could just buy every time we witnessed some good news and sell on bad news. Come on, I know you have tried that… and failed. Don’t worry, you aren’t alone. There are many reasons for that strategy failing, which I won’t get into this morning.
Forget about the news, for a moment. What if you just looked at the market like a coin flip. Each day it can either go up or it can go down. You know that the probability of a coin landing on heads is 0.5 on each flip (50%, but technically in the world of stats we write it a P = 0.5). Why am I talking about this? Well, because over the past few weeks, I have heard with my own ears, some very smart people saying things like “after so many consecutive positive weeks, it is likely that the next week will be a down week… just like coin tosses, or a roulette wheel in Vegas.” OUCH!! That is a common misconception, my friends. You see, coin tosses are memoryless. That is a new word for your dictionary. In statistics, it means that probability distribution of a future event is independent of past observations. Just because your last coin flip was tails, it doesn’t mean that the next flip is more likely to be heads. No, the probability is still just 0.5. Even if you flipped 20 tails in a row, the probability of the next flip being heads is still just 0.5. That is to say, an individual coin flip has no memory of what happened prior. The concept of “memorylessness” is an important one, but surprisingly, not fresh in the memory of all the folks who stand around roulette wheels in Las Vegas writing down spin results. If you’ve tried it and have been successful, you were… um, lucky. Similarly with coin tosses, card flips, dice rolls, or whatever… you were lucky. If you took your winnings and never returned to the game, you were smart… still lucky, and you would not last long as a statistician.
Now, here is the good news I have been promising you. First, the stock market is NOT a coin toss. Indeed, statistically speaking, it is not memoryless. There is lots of evidence that trends and momentum do have statistical significance on future events. A lot of that has to do with psychology… and a bunch of other things that I won’t get into this morning. Second, while it may sometimes appear that the market’s responses to obvious stimuli is random, it is really not random. In most cases, investors just get the timing wrong. Either they are too late to act, or they were too early to abandon their idea. The first is very common as information travels at the speed of light these days, and the quant hedge fund bots act on news before you can read and act on it. But the second reason, abandoning too early, that is one that you can get better at. Let’s go back to stats for a minute. Remember that coin toss and flipping many tails in a row before you flip heads? You see, if you flip a coin many, many times and look at the distribution of the results, it will show that indeed, 50% of the time, heads came up, and 50% of the time, tails came up. It is uniform distribution. Now, we already have established that the stock market is NOT random, and NOT discrete, and independent. We also have read in so many disclosures that past performance does not translate into future performance. However, if we take a very high-level look at the historical performance of the stock market… as a guide… we can see that the historical performance is positive, on average. Those returns are not uniformly distributed, however. They have what we call fat tails. Meaning, every so often, though not highly probable, bad things can happen. Bank failures, pandemics… INFLATION. Those can cause the market to throw some painful losers. Kind of like betting on heads after 20 tail flips… and losing when the 21st flip comes up tails. There is no way to win that game without luck. But you can win in the markets! Why, because it is not random, and even if it were, the mean, or expected value is greater than zero. You can improve your odds of success by doing your homework and being consistent. But one of the biggest factors on your side is time. Not giving up and staying focused gives you that statistical edge. So, stay focused, keep at it, surround yourself with knowledge and knowledgeable people, and you will increase your probability for success. Long term success… which is what we want, isn’t it?
WHAT’S FLIPPING IN THE MARKET THIS MORNING
The Boeing Company (BA) shares descended rapidly, down by -8.15% in the premarket after the weekend’s news that the door of one of its 737s blew out midflight over Oregon prompting a grounding of 737 Max airliners. This after a recent run in the stock as its prospects have been on the increase. The stock has outperformed its peers in the last 12 months, returning +16.9% vs +3.6% returns for the Aerospace and Defense sub-industry. The company will announce earnings later this month. Potential average analyst target upside: +9.3%.
Enphase Energy (ENPH) shares are higher by +2.48% in the premarket after Wells Fargo raised its rating to OVERWEIGHT from EQUALWEIGHT. The stock has had its struggles in the past few years after a strong showing in 2022. The past year was tough for the stock giving up some -50.6%, but it has shown some recent strength in the few months of 2023. Of the analysts that cover the stock, 51% have BUY recommendations, while only -2.6% recommend selling the stock. Potential average analyst target upside: +3.6%.
FRIDAY’S MARKETS
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