As an investing community, we love to hang on every word, if not every syllable, that is uttered by a Federal Reserve governor. And while the Fed serves a vital role as an independent agency charged with the dual mandate of maximum employment and stable prices, and has overall served that role pretty well, we also love to complain about how they often tend to be too early, too late, or just plain wrong.

I often find that investors often consider “bearishness” and "pessimism" to be synonyms.  Any time I’ve shared a cautious tone in my own work, I’ve often gotten questions along the lines of, “Why are you being so pessimistic?” Bullishness and bearishness for me are temporary states…

The market is gearing up for today’s earnings report from Magnificent 7 standout Nvidia.  No other stock perhaps encapsulates the AI-fueled bull market of 2025 as much as NVDA, which has powered off its April low to achieve another new all-time high this month.

While technical analysis does not necessarily help us predict the outcome of earnings releases, it can help us better assess investor psychology leading into their latest report.  Let’s review the evidence for Nvidia…

I recently spent a week up in the hills of southwest New Hampshire, making music and making new friends at the Walden School’s Creative Musicians Retreat.  A group of composers, performers, and musicians of all ages come together for a week-long festival celebrating creativity and community.

“Think you’d want to teach the course with me this fall?”  

I was on the phone with legendary technical analyst Charlie Kirkpatrick, co-author of the book Technical Analysis: The Complete Resource for Financial Market Technicians.  Bruce Kamich has told me that Charlie was looking to step back from the technical analysis course he had created for Brandeis University, and I was thrilled that he even considered me to step in and continue the program.

I will never forget the first time I sat down with a growth-oriented portfolio manager.  I was working for Bloomberg, and my job was to help financial professionals see how they could use our product to improve their investment returns. 

As an aspiring technical analyst, I was excited to show them some of the charting tools I was using, many of which had been huge hits at the hedge funds I’d been working with.

I very quickly discovered that my “mean-reversion-buy-low-sell-high” approach was exactly the opposite of what this guy was looking for. 

Since the market’s sudden upside reversal off the April low, I’ve fielded lots of questions recently along the lines of, “How can the market be going up if XYZ is still true?”  

People have asked about tariff impacts, inflationary pressures, geopolitical risk, headline risk, volatility, and innumerable other things that arguably should be causing investors to go more risk-off right about now.

I usually respond with a version of John Maynard Keynes’ famous quote, “The market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

Along with most investors of the present day, I’ve not known a world without Warren Buffett holding court in Omaha, Nebraska.  When I started in the financial industry in June 2000, I asked people for suggestions of books to read to learn about top investors and their strategies. 

I picked up Mary Buffett’s Buffettology and was blown away by the simplicity of Buffett’s approach. 

I’ve spent about 25 years in the financial industry.  Many of those years were spent working at or for large financial institutions in the Northeast.  I’m so thankful for that period where I was to learn from smart people, travel to many locations for the first time, and make contacts who have become lifelong friends.

And I also learned a great deal about who I was, what I think I have to offer others, and where I’m called to spend my time and efforts.

The unfortunate reality about the financial industry…

A whole generation of quantitative analysts have been taught that volatility equals risk.  The thought process goes that if an asset price is more volatile, then it is much more likely to move against you.

So the more volatility in prices, the more risk in your portfolio.

I was taught that volatility does not equal risk, but rather that volatility equals opportunity.