C.J. Lawrence Weekly – The Battle Between Rising Interest Rates and Corporate Earnings Growth is On…CJL Market Monitor at Neutral

The C.J. Lawrence Market Monitor was created in the early 1980s to measure the relative attractiveness of the stock market versus bonds, and to test the internal technical health of the stock market. Over the Monitor’s 38-year history, it has been a useful asset allocation tool. While not develope...
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C.J. Lawrence Weekly Market Comment – Growth Remains Attractive…Comparisons to the “Nifty Fifty” and Internet Bubble Periods Miss the Mark

The sell-off in technology shares at the end of July spurred in a chorus of money managers to suggest that the growth dam had finally broken and to forecast that the performance gap between growth stocks and value stocks would close. Several market pundits cited “excessive” valuations on growth ...
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C.J. Lawrence Weekly Market Comment – Healthy Corporate Fundamentals and Stalled Bond Yields Keep the CJL Market Monitor in BUY Territory

The Market Monitor’s current reading is “BUY”, with a numerical score of +1, the lowest reading in BUY territory, on a scale of -6 to +6. As the Fed has lifted the Fed Funds target rate, the year-over-year interest rate rate-of-change models have weighed on the Monitor score. But despite ri...
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C.J. Lawrence Weekly Market Comment – New S&P Sector Construct Could Create Volatility this Summer (Repost from March 12, 2018)

As we mentioned last week, we will not be publishing a new WMC this week. However, since discussion of the S&P 500 sector reconstitution is heating up, we thought we’d resend the piece we wrote about the topic back in March. Why should you care? The new sector structure has meaningful implicat...
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C.J. Lawrence Weekly – Support for Consumer Discretionary Stocks…U.S. Household Net Worth Exceeds $100 Trillion for First Time

It’s not surprising that U.S. Consumer Confidence is high.  U.S. household net worth eclipsed $100 trillion for the first time in 1Q18, according to the Federal Reserve Board’s quarterly Flow of Funds report.   The two categories that have the greatest impact on household balance sheets are p...
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From Pre-School to Pre-Med, the CJL College Planning Center Helps You Navigate the Path from College Savings to College Selection

American Family Spending on Youth Activities Soars While Education Savings Lags Today’s American families are spending record amounts of time and resources on their kids’ activities, and parents are pulling out all the stops to enable and encourage their children’s success.  Research conducte...
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C.J. Lawrence Weekly – Tight Capacity Utilization Bodes Well for Select Machinery, Building Products, and Construction Equipment Stocks

Among the economic data released last week, both Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization came in well ahead of economists’ expectations. The Industrial Production reading, a measure of total U.S. factories, mines, and utilities output, rose 1.1% from the prior month, and 4.4% from last year...
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