There is a mantra in the investment community that goes by “Don’t Fight the Fed”. It suggests that investors should align their decisions with those taken by the Fed, and more specifically the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), regarding reference rates. At the moment we are experiencing the fastest Fed Rate Hiking Cycle ever, as described in the previous article, and the S&P 500 Index is close to 15% below its early 2022 all-time high it seems prudent to live by this mantra.

Happy Fed Week! After the tumultuous last two weeks, which saw the most severe bank failures since the Global Financial Crisis, this week we will have a highly anticipated FOMC meeting with an anxiously expected Fed Interest rate decision due on Wednesday. Considering the current Fed rate hike path and inflation dynamics, I decided to write this article to look through the previous Fed rate hike cycles. The Highest Inflation Rate in the Last 40 Years Let’s start with analyzing the historical values for the Fed reference rate and inflation.

After over two years away, Vasconomics is finally back! Following an incredible January in the financial markets that reminded me of the January effect, I started wondering about stock market seasonality. From the January effect to the “Sell in May and Go Away” adage, monthly return seasonality is something that comes to investors’ mind from time to time. In this article we will look at the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 500 Sector Indices historical monthly returns in search of seasonality patterns.

Covid-19 and the urge to lockdown countries had a sudden economic impact never seen before. Some mentioned that the pandemic’s impact was sort of a combined impact of the Spanish Flu and the Great Depression together, and at the same time. On the other hand, there was a major difference when it comes to the economic impact, in that the Governmental and Central Banks’ response was much faster now than it was during the Great Depression.

Every year when May comes, people start dreaming of summer holidays. Also, for those who follows the financial markets, it marks the date when writers remind us of the old saying: “Sell in May and Go Away”. The underlying is relative straightforward as during the summer months there is, typically, less trading activity. On the other hand, some of the late market crashes seem to have happened precisely after the summer holidays: the crash of 2008-2009 started in mid-September and the 2018 Global Stock Market Downturn started at the beginning of October.

In the last century, we observed a high growth in technological innovation which was later boosted by the creation of the Internet. The rise of the Internet was a Black Swan, which would then fuel a notorious bubble in the stock market: the Dot.com Bubble. Stock valuations for companies with businesses focused around the use of Internet became highly inflated and continued to grow as a sort of speculative mania for companies whose name finished with “.

This article on Investment Analysis is the second part of a series comprising two articles. In the first article I focused on Technical Analysis providing firstly a comparison with Fundamental Analysis, later an introduction to its foundations and concluding with an overview of the application of some of its indicators. Now, on this second part, I will focus on Fundamental Analysis. The structure of the article is divided into 4 parts: an immersion on Fundamental Analysis framework, a summary of the Multiples Approach application and the link with the topic of Analysts’ Recommendations.

In this article, I will discuss the topic of Investment Analysis, that is, the method used for making the decision regarding an investment in the stock market. There are two main approaches when undertaking the analysis of a stock traded in the market: Technical and Fundamental Analysis. It is important to understand that these methods use different inputs with the same goal of evaluating an investment opportunity. The structure of the article is divided into 3 parts: an introduction defining the two mentioned approaches, a deeper examination of Technical Analysis foundations and an overview of the application of some Technical Analysis indicators’.

In this article I intend to explain the concepts of Nominal Interest rate, Inflation and Real Interest rate. I believe that the general public knows the first two concepts, however, I am not so sure about the third one. Therefore, the final goal is to understand this last concept by having a thorough view of all the concepts and observe their representation. “Whatever it takes” In 2012, the Eurozone was financially falling apart, getting deeper into its infamous “Eurozone debt crisis” after the bailouts of Ireland, Greece and Portugal, alongside multiple banks’ bailing out domestically.