Your Money University

  Within the brain, sleep enriches a diversity of functions, including our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity. In  Why We Sleep,  preeminent neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night’s sleep every night. “The best bridge betw...

Rest of World investment against USA The global stock market performance derby moves in big, long-term cycles. U.S. stocks outperform for years at a time, then international stocks take over for the next several years. Over the past few months, this trade-off has been taking place. The chart above shows the relative performance of U.S. and global stocks. When the line moves up, U.S. stocks are posting the best performance. And when the line moves down, global stocks have the upper hand. You can see from the steady upward slope that U.S. stocks had been outperforming the rest of the world since 2008, to a degree we’d never seen before. U.S. stocks, driven mostly by the performance of a handful of Big Tech stocks, absolutely crushed global stocks in recent years. But they got a bit too far ahead of themselves. And now the tides are turning. In the chart above, you can see previous turning points like this highlighted in red. After those turns, global stocks went on to outperform U.S. sto...

We are out of a recession, ease in gently T he advance/decline line for the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE") cumulative indicator takes the total number of stocks that rose during the day and subtracts the number of stocks that fell. So the advance/decline line rises when more stocks go up than down over time. For the most part, this indicator makes new highs and lows right alongside the S&P 500. But that doesn't always happen... These divergences often mark a turning point for the overall market. Just look at the chart below to see what I mean... The stock market and the NYSE advance/decline line both hit new highs in November 2021. But when stocks hit another new high in early 2022, the advance/decline line was well below its high. That divergence was an early warning sign for investors looking under the hood. It meant that more stocks were going down than up, despite a broad rally in the market. And that meant losses were likely... which is exactly what ended up ha...

 We have liftoff! Semiconductors facilitate the modern method of delivery. So here's my Dow Theory 2.0 chart which includes Semiconductors as well, not just the Industrials and Transports: They look similar don't they? When you zoom out, do you see higher lows and higher highs?

  Nominal Broad U.S. Dollar Index Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis  4 Another reason for U.S. underperformance relative to foreign has to do with technology weighting. Tighter financial conditions and higher interest rates have led investors to shun high P/E growth stocks, many of which reside in the technology sector. At the end of 2022, technology stocks made up about 26% of the S&P 500, compared to about 11% of the MSCI ACWI ex-U.S. index. In recent months, technology has not served as a major drag on foreign returns, as they have in the U.S. This is good for foreign investors currently as the dollar slides, the USA will have an OK H2 and a better 2004.

 The bottom for the U.S. Stock Market was in June. Look at the tremendous outperformance out of Emerging Markets, and more surprisingly it's the Developed Markets outside of North America that are leading the way. The way I see it, by the time those October lows came around, most stocks were already been  going up and to the right . When you look at the new lows list, whether on the NYSE or the Nasdaq, there were very few stocks left still making new lows by that point. The bottom for the U.S. Stock Market was in June.

  Take a look at how the leap in savings from stimulus quickly melted away throughout the last two years: All this money was "YOLOed" (You Only Live Once) away on crypto, meme stocks, and other frivolous stuff.  The free money turned the younger generation into gamblers who would risk it all at a shot of wealth without much care for losing it: So how do people make ends meet? They borrow more.  Take a look at how credit card debt is blowing through the roof as savings fizzle out: Meanwhile, in just a year, mortgage rates have increased to the highest in the last two decades.