Quarterly Investor Memos

Download Memo as PDF Retrospective As 2021 came to an end, the stock market party was going strong. The S&P 500 index closed at 4766.18 up 1,010 points or 26.9% for year to within a hair’s breadth of its all-time high. The Dow Jones (36,338) and the NASDAQ (15,645) indexes also closed near record highs. Most

Download Memo as PDF  Efficient markets              If markets are efficient in that prices always reflect fair value and expected returns on stock are constant, why would anyone need an investment manager? There are two answers. The first, put forth by Sandy Grossman and Joe Stiglitz, is that a truly efficient market is a contradiction

Download Memo as PDF Looking Back Too often financial market analysis is focused on the issue de jour – jumping from hot topic to hot topic with little reference to what was said in the past. Breaking from this tradition, this quarterly memo takes stock of what we have said in the past to provide perspective

Download Memo as PDF Time For a Change? There are two themes that we have stressed in our quarterly memos and in various episodes of our Reflections on Investing video series. The first is that interest rates have been extraordinarily low, particularly relative to the rate of inflation. The second is that stock prices have been

Download Memo as PDF A Time for Caution: Cracks in the Dam As 2021 draws to a close, our primary objective at the Cornell Capital Group remains protecting our client’s capital. In a market where valuations remain frothy this means a strategy of carefully comparing price and fundamental value and selective hedging. One of the key issues

Download Memo as PDF The Challenge Continues As the third quarter of 2021 draws to a close, investors face the same challenges: record high stock prices relative to any measure of earnings or revenue and record low interest rates. In this environment it is perhaps not surprising that investors have been stretching for returns anywhere they