Click here to read the PDF: The Quarterly Q2 2024
With this commentary, we plan to communicate with you every month about our thoughts on the markets, some snapshots of metrics, a section on behavioral investing and finally an update on MacNicol & Associates Asset Management (MAAM). We hope you enjoy this information, and it allows you to better understand what we see going on in the marketplace.
“Don’t try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It can’t be done except by liars.”
– Bernard Baruch
Cut the bull…then…get out of its way…
James Royal, Ph.D., recently compiled a list of the best performing stocks thus far in 2024. We certainly hope the name of the company that makes graphics processing units for the artificial intelligence industry is one that just rolls off your tongue by this point. The other names on Royal’s list, quite frankly, are not ones we would expect you to know. With July officially marking the beginning of the second half of the year, we felt it would be helpful to share Royal’s list with you while at the same time pointing out the Bernard Baruch quote festooned to the beginning of this edition of The Quarterly. Baruch was an American financial wizard who, after mopping the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with lesser investors, took his winnings to Washington where he started managing some real money. Baruch impressed President Woodrow Wilson so much that he was appointed the head of America’s economic mobilization fund in World War I as chairman of the War Industries Board.
We will come back to Baruch in a moment. For the time being let’s take a moment to absorb Royal’s list. Absorb because returns [well] into the double digits are uncommon in stocks, never mind triple digits. And it is returns such as these that keep stock indices – especially those weighted by market capitalization – going up. For example, the MSCI World Index closed off the quarter with its 5th consecutive weekly gain as we began working on this commentary for you. Earlier this year, Japan’s NIKKEI 225 index finally reached a new all-time high [of 42,200] and in so doing eclipsed a level last reached in late 1989. And that graphics processing unit company? Well, its own valuation hit 2.5x the GDP…of Poland.
