We’re just about halfway through the year… and I find big picture wisdom elusive, as usual.  The VIX is near pre-COVID lows, indicating some complacency among investors who have relatively little fear about being at historically high market valuations, despite the fact that safe(r) Treasuries now offer real returns.  Gold soared to start the year, but has mostly been pretty flat for a few months, and the investor interest in the big gold ETFs has been shrinking, not rising, so mainstream investors are not betting on gold or silver (yet), perhaps because they’re so uninterested in hedging or currency risk in general.  Bitcoin soared at the same time as gold did, to start the year, reinforcing the notion that perhaps Bitcoin will be the “sound money” digital gold for the next generation, but likewise has been pretty much flat for a few months since that rise.  What’s working is still working, as big tech continues to lead the way and quite a few of our larger holdings are at or very near all-time highs again (Amazon, NVIDIA, Alphabet and Intuitive Surgical all hit new all-time highs in the past couple weeks… a few others are very close).

And John Hussman is still warning us that there’s no historical precedent for stocks doing well from this kind of starting point.  Here’s a taste of his latest take, which remains similar to what he was saying at the late 2021/early 2022 peak…

“Taken as a whole – extreme valuations, divergent market internals, overextended market action, euphoric sentiment, tepid participation, deteriorating leadership, and other warning signs – the current set of market conditions provides no historical examples when stocks have followed with decent returns. Instead, the “nearest neighbors” are either major market peaks or extremes that preceded steep corrections.”

I keep buying companies that look relatively appealing, and there’s a good historical record for presidential election years closing very strong… but there aren’t many precedents for an election that might be this divisive, and this close, with so many folks trying to hard to manipulate the emotions of voters, who are also in many cases investors who trade on their feelings.  So who knows what will happen next.

Which means that instead of foolishly trying to predict the future for you today, I thought I’d look back at the recent past.