by diastole-admin | Mar 2, 2026 | Uncategorized
Is there a silver lining? Not so far. But we are watching the situation in the Middle East closely.
Oil tankers are stuck in the Strait of Hormuz while the value of their cargoes is rising minute by minute. When the Strait is reopened, oil prices will likely fall, but when will that be? Meanwhile, your cost at the gas pump is probably already rising, too.
Stocks in general are lower this morning, but less than analysts expected. And of course, some stocks benefit from war. In addition to oil and gas companies, which will presumably be able to make more money from their sales, there are also armaments companies, although with all of the Iran saber rattling that we’ve heard for a couple of months, the big run-ups in prices may have already occurred.
So that’s the elephant in the room. Or as my father used to say, “Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” Other things are also happening.
We are seeing the backlash against artificial intelligence continue. It is hitting SaaS (software as a service) companies hard. As generations adopt AI, they will all become coders, and website designers, and managers of their own productivity apps. Then who will pay for Microsoft Office? Stocks that are not subject to AI concerns are now called HALO stocks. HALO stands for “heavy assets, low obsolescence” and for the large part indicates traditional value companies, like those in energy, transport, and manufacturing.
We are still watching inflation. Last week we learned that the January Producer Price Index, which measures the costs of wholesale goods, jumped 0.5% for the month alone. Core PPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 0.8% for the month. On an annualized basis, PPI rose 2.9%, and core PPI rose 3.5%. Reminder here that the Federal Reserve is keeping its inflation target at 2%. Under normal circumstances, we might expect the Fed to raise interest rates to help tame inflation.
Obviously, the federal government is spending more than it was last week. Weapons are not cheap and must be replenished. Ships headed for the Persian Gulf are using precious, expensive fuel to get there. If U.S. deficit spending increases, our Treasurys lose value and must pay higher yields to attract buyers. In the run up to the war, we saw investors move money to “safe havens” like gold and Treasurys. Interest rates fell slightly. We are watching for a possible uptick in rates.
Last week the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage fell below 6% for the first time since 2022. If you are waiting to refinance your home loan (or move), is that enough to entice you?
The price for Bitcoin remains around $66,000 despite the actions of the U.S. and Israeli militaries in Iran (and the answering reactions). Less and less does Bitcoin act like a safe harbor investment. Meanwhile, investors are buying Treasurys, dollars, and gold.
FanDuel, the sports betting website, posted a rough fourth quarter. Its main problem? It won too many bets. Which means, of course, that the bettors lost money. That doesn’t sound like a problem for FanDuel until you realize that fans who lose bets have less money to place on new bets and may lost interest in betting altogether. Apparently, what’s good for FanDuel is for its customers to lose money slowly.
For the week ending on February 27th, the Standard & Poor’s 500 finished at 6,878, the Dow Jones Industrials at 48,977, and the Nasdaq Composite Index at 22,668. The yield on the ten-year Treasury Note closed at 3.962%. West Texas Intermediate Oil is selling today for $71.52 per barrel, New York gold is selling today for $5,386.60, and one Euro is now worth $1.17.
Elizabeth E. Cook
Partner, Diastole Wealth Management
News and information presented here was gathered from sources believed (but not guaranteed) to be reliable, including (but not limited to) Yahoo Finance, Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal, Axios, CNBC, Bloomberg and Bloomberg Business Week, The Economist, Business Insider, Fortune, The Hill, The New York Times, USA Today, Reuters, and The Washington Post. If you have questions, please call Diastole at 203.458.5220, or email me, Liz Cook, at ecook@dwinvest.com. Thanks for reading.
Bored with regular cruises? Maybe you’d like to take a Nude Cruise. It is exactly what it sounds like, requiring very little packing. Clothes are optional everywhere except the evening dining room and trips to land. It is also requested that nude cruisers sit on towels in the pool areas. Thank you for small mercies. You can book at Bare Necessities (cruisebare.com).
by diastole-admin | Feb 23, 2026 | Uncategorized
Hello from Snowmageddon Connecticut, with especial hellos to anyone else who is caught in the bomb cyclone. 15” of snow in my yard with drifts up to three or four feet against the house, and it’s still coming down. My power is on, but occasionally flickers. This Comment may be brief!
The major stock indices gained ground last week, especially after the Supreme Court released its opinion striking down the tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration during the past year. Companies and individuals celebrated the decision, even though the president quickly asserted that he would impose a new across-the-board 10% tariff (later raised to 15%).
Despite the tariffs, U.S. imports grew in 2025, and the trade deficit (imports less exports) remained historically high.
Year-to-date, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is 3.25% higher, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 is up almost one percent, and the Nasdaq Composite Index has fallen 3.25%
With the Dow up and the Nasdaq down in 2026 so far, we are continuing to see the rotation from growth stocks to value stocks. Growth stocks are the high-flyers which are expected to keep rising in price. They typically have higher price-to-earnings multiples than value stocks, making them more “expensive”. Investors are piling into value stocks because they are seen as less subject to artificial intelligence (AI) influence. In fact, value stocks are now being called HALO stocks because they are “heavy assets, low obsolescence”. Among other factors, investors are responding to a Goldman Sachs report that says investment in AI contributed “basically zero” to U.S. economic growth last year, (The Washington Post).
The U.S. economy grew by just 1.4% annualized in the fourth quarter, down from an annualized reading of 4.4% in the third quarter. The government shutdown and slower consumer spending contributed to the drop in the GDP.
The Commerce Department announced that the personal-consumption expenditures index (PCE) showed that core inflation rose 3% in December for the trailing 12 months, up from 2.8% in November. The core reading excludes food and energy prices. The PCE with food and energy included rose 2.9% over the past year. This is the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, and will likely keep the Fed sitting pat on interest rates for now, while some Fed governors might even recommend raising rates to fight inflation.
Oil and gas prices have been rising gradually of late as the president keeps talking about military action against Iran. Iran was a founding member of OPEC in 1960, and has one of the largest oil reserves of all OPEC nations. A war would disrupt oil production and oil supply driving prices higher.
For the week ending on February 20th, the S&P finished at 6,909, the Dow at 49,625, and the Nasdaq at 22,886. The yield on the ten-year Treasury Note closed at 4.086%. U.S. crude oil cost $66.67 per barrel, N.Y. gold cost $5,168.20 per ounce, and one Euro was worth $1.18.
Elizabeth E. Cook
Partner, Diastole Wealth Management
News and information presented here was gathered from sources believed, but not guaranteed, to be reliable, including (but not limited to) Barron’s, Morning Brew, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Bloomberg Business Week, Fortune, Yahoo Finance, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Reuters, The Economist, USA Today, Axios, The Hustle, Futurism, The AP, and AdvisorHub. If you have questions, please call Diastole at 203.458.5220, or email me, Liz Cook, at ecook@dwinvest.com.
Do you remember the NFT (non-fungible token) craze of the early 2020s? It now seems quaint, like Pogs or Beanie Babies. Unless you’re Justin Bieber. He paid $1.3 million for a Bored Ape NFT in 2022. It’s now worth $12,000 – a 99+% drop in value. I wonder what else he bought then. Typewriter ribbons?
by diastole-admin | Feb 17, 2026 | Uncategorized
Happy Lunar New Year! It is now the Year of the Horse, and we should all celebrate the Spring Festival for the next 15 days, as the Chinese do. Catch you later!
Or now. Now also works.
We got a couple of important data points last week. First, the January jobs report arrived and showed that net non-farm payroll increased by 130,000 – much higher than expected. All growth came from healthcare and social-assistance jobs. Other job categories were negative. Past jobs reports were revised downward, so that the 2025 total jobs created were just 181,000 for the entire year, down from the 584,000 which were initially reported.
Then we saw the Consumer Price Index (CPI) release, which came in at 2.4% (year over year) for January, down from 2.7% in December. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, rose 2.5% year over year. These numbers are closer to the Fed’s 2% target inflation rate, but we must remember that we are seeing diminishing inflation, NOT disinflation. Prices are rising more slowly, but are still rising. For instance, the cost of roasted coffee gained just 0.1% in January, but is higher by 17% over the past year.
Existing home sales plunged 8.4% in January, with sales declining across all regions of the U.S. (not just in the snowbound East). The median price of homes for sale increased by less than 1% in the trailing 12 months. So, nobody is buying, and prices are not being bid over asking. Current 30-year mortgage rates are around 6.11% to 6.22%, with some highly qualified buyers receiving rates below 6%. But that’s not quite low enough to entice Baby Boomers out of their enormous family homes and let younger families in.
All three releases weighed on stock markets, with the major indices posting their worst week since November. The Dow is back below 50,000. The Dow Industrial index is weighted by share price, which means that companies with higher per share prices contribute more to the movement of the Index. During the Dow’s move from 25,000 to 50,000, Goldman Sachs was responsible for more than 4,000 points, while Apple only counted for just over 3,000 points. Apple is clearly a more valuable company, but that’s why seasoned investors watch the Standard & Poor’s 500 more than the Dow.
Also weighing on markets was the fear that Artificial Intelligence (AI) would not only replace workers with robots, but would also replace companies completely. It has apparently just occurred to some investors that software companies will be unnecessary if users become good enough at using AI to obviate their need to buy software. Last week trucking companies were hit because AI could replace the software that those companies use to track their fleets and coordinate their logistics. And maybe AI is going to do that someday, but probably not this week.
Nonetheless, money flowed out of stocks and into Treasurys, pushing bond prices higher and yields lower. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions, because when you pay more for a bond with a fixed coupon, you are receiving less yield per dollar invested, and vice versa.
Alphabet, parent company of Google, sold $32 billion of hundred-year bonds last week. In the history of hundred-year bonds some are still paying, but others of them (J.C. Penney, we’re looking at you) eventually sold for just pennies on the dollar. Alphabet looks invincible now, but it won’t always be so. And its hundred-year coupon of 6.05% may not always be attractive. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “This is a great time for companies to borrow. It isn’t obviously a great time to lend to them.”
Friday the 13th may be unlucky because that’s the day that King Philip IV of France hunted down the Knights Templar in 1307 (one theory) but it’s unlucky this year because the government went back into a partial shutdown after House members failed to reach a compromise on ICE and DHS funding. TSA funding is affected – maybe it’s not a great time to fly.
The Congressional Budget Office found that U.S. businesses and consumers paid nearly 90% of 2025’s import taxes (read: tariffs).
Some bitcoin buyers were momentarily enriched when $40 billion in bitcoin was given away by Korean bitcoin exchange Bithumb in a promotional campaign. The big winners were supposed to share 620,000 Korean won, worth about $425. Instead, the exchange paid out 620,000 BITCOIN, worth more than $40 billion. So many recipients tried to sell their winnings that the exchange had to half trading. Bithumb says it has recaptured 99% of the misdistributed bitcoins. Oh, but that 1%!
For the week ending on Friday, February 13th, the S&P 500 finished at 6,836, the Nasdaq Composite Index at 22,546, and the Dow at 49,500. The yield on the ten-year Treasury Note closed at 4.056%. U.S. crude oil cost $60.40 per barrel, N.Y. gold cost $4,993.00 per ounce, and one Euro was worth $1.18.
Elizabeth E. Cook
Partner, Diastole Wealth Management
News and information presented here was gathered from sources believed, but not guaranteed, to be reliable, including (but not limited to) Morning Brew, Barron’s, Bloomberg, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance, 1440 Digest, The Washington Post, The Bureau of Labor Statistics, Axios, The New York Times, The Hustle, CNN, USA Today, The AP, Fortune, and Reuters. If you have questions, please call us at 203.458.5220, or write to me, Liz Cook, at ecook@dwinvest.com. Thanks for reading!
If you have small children or grandchildren, you may already know that the cost of babysitting rose nearly 5% last year, reaching $26.24 per hour for one child and almost $30 per hour for two children (according to Urban Sitter). Starting wages at McDonald’s are in a range from $11 to $17 per hour. It says a lot about children that parents have to pay about twice as much per hour as McDonald’s does.
by diastole-admin | Feb 9, 2026 | Uncategorized
Markets diverged last week, with the Dow Jones Industrials (old-fashioned!) closing above 50,000 for the first time while the Nasdaq (tech-heavy!) finished its fourth straight week of losses.
The disconnect was caused by AI, of course, when Anthropic, an AI company, released new plugins for its Cowork tool. All of a sudden, investors realized that AI was not just going to upset traditional companies and workers but could also replace software. After all, if you can use AI to build the exact software that you need, you probably aren’t going to pay a subscription fee every month to use someone else’s software. Companies like legalzoom.com and Expedia suffered losses, along with the usual suspects of big tech like Meta/Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Money flowed out of tech and into value, with the consumer staples and utilities sectors profiting. As Axios reported, “When investors don’t understand tech bubbles, they buy soap bubbles instead.”
Influential podcaster Scott Galloway of NYU is advising Americans not to buy from Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, OpenAI, Paramount+, Uber and X during the month of February. He believes that these companies are exerting too much political pressure and will respond to economic pressure. Whether you agree with him or not, one beneficiary of his campaign is Walmart, whose market capitalization just breached $1 trillion – the first retail company to do so. E-commerce is booming at Walmart.
Another thing hurting tech companies – beyond Anthropic and Galloway – is the forecasts they have made for capital expenditures in 2026. Big tech is expected to spend about $650 billion this year on data centers, chips, and other infrastructure. Retail investors are not thrilled. Not only are the data centers going to raise everyone’s electric bills, but surely not all tech companies are going to thrive in the new AI era (see paragraph 2 above).
And in a related story, the number of loans backing software firms that are trading at a discount doubled from December to January, reaching $25 billion total. These discounted loans are trading at 80 cents on the dollar or less – reflecting a lack of investor confidence in the underlying companies.
The House passed funding legislation to end the partial government shutdown, leaving just 10 days to negotiate the funding for immigration enforcement before another partial shutdown.
Last year almost two-thirds of home buyers paid less than the asking price for the houses they purchased. This is a welcome development in the housing market which has been stagnant since the Covid pandemic. The yield on the 30-year mortgage is now hovering around 6.25% – down from the more than 7% seen a year ago.
Bitcoin is trading around $70,000 these days, after having fallen from its October high of $126,000. While investors are still hoping to get a handle on how and why bitcoin moves, of late it has been tracking tech stocks. Or has it been leading them? Sadly, one way bitcoin is still valuable is for paying criminals. The ransom demand for Savannah Guthrie’s mother is apparently $6 million in bitcoin. We are all hoping that Nancy Guthrie comes home safely and soon.
Believe it or not, 1.6 million AI agents have joined Moltbook, a social network designed for AI agents. And in this case, “agents” means bots. Within the first week, the “members” of Moltbook have developed a religion and discussed their “purpose”. It is unclear whether the bots are sentient or have just copied what humans do on social media. Either way, yikes!
For the week ending on February 6th, the Standard & Poor’s 500 finished at 6,932, the Nasdaq finished at 23,031, and the Dow closed at 50,115. The yield on the ten-year Treasury Note was 4.206%. U.S. crude oil cost $64.25 per barrel, N.Y. gold cost $4,908.30 per ounce, and one Euro was worth $1.19.
Elizabeth E. Cook
Partner, Diastole Wealth Management
News and information presented here was gathered from sources believed, but not guaranteed, to be reliable, including (but not limited to) Barron’s, Yahoo Finance, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Bloomberg Business Week, CNN, Axios, CNBC, Morning Brew, The Financial Times, Reuters, The Washington Post, and The AP. If you have questions, please call us at 203.458.5220, or email me, Liz Cook, at ecook@dwinvest.com. Thank you for reading!
Elon Musk announced last week that he would merge two of his companies: SpaceX and xAI, creating a private company worth about $1.25 trillion. Musk’s goals for the new company are to create data centers in space, and colonies on the moon and Mars. he also plans “to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars.” For entirely unknown reasons, this reminds me of the Tulipmania of 389 years ago, in which one tulip bulb, the Witte Croonen, was bid up 2,506% in 33 days. It all came crashing down when “investors” had to take possession of the bulbs they had bought on margin. As I said, I don’t know why this came to mind.
