Investment Newsletter: Stock Market & Investment Strategies
HELPING YOU NAVIGATE A TOUGH INVESTMENT ENVIRONMENT
DECISION MOOSE-- Global Investment Markets This Week
A Fed Managed Market
Market Thumbnail: WEEK through 12/07/25:
The Fed spent the six weeks since its last FOMC meeting trying to talk US interest rates higher. Basically, they were successful in keeping rates elevated during the November off-year election season, but the market didn’t buy into their inflation pivot enough to change directions before the 12/10 meeting. The 3-month-10-year median yield is in fact 1 basis point lower this Friday than it was the Friday before the October meeting. As a result, US large and small-cap equities crept higher this week and are sitting right below the highs they set for the year before the October meeting, Japan, Europe, and Asia Pacific were also cautiously optimistic, as was Latin America, which took back some of last week’s outsized gain. US long Treasury bonds took a big hit as long yields jumped. The 10y yield rose 12 bps to 4.14%, a signal the bond market expects a rate cut and a normalization of the yield curve. The 3m yield dropped to 3.60%, also presaging a cut, which weakened the US Dollar. The weaker Dollar helped commodity prices, including oil but not gold, which still awaits the Fed’s decision.
THE FREE GLOBAL INDEX MODEL-- SUMMARY 12/7/25
Gold On Hold
THIS WEEK: Holding #1 Gold (GLD) since 8/28/25 @313.07 via buy-stop after switching out of #2 EFA.
The Index Model has had a record run in 2025, a once in a lifetime event posting a record annual year-to-date gain about a month ago, most of it from gold. Severely overbought, gold corrected about 11% on hawkish Fed-speak in November, never triggering a stop-loss. This week, Emerging markets (EEM) and US small caps (IWM) have both overtaken gold in the primary momentum metric (CI%). Gold continues to lead in technical strength, PMO, and quarterly performance. Since the Fed meeting is three days away and the probability of a rate cut is high, we are sticking with gold until we get more clarity from the Fed meeting December 10.
PERFORMANCE YEAR-TO-DATE:
INDEX MOOSE +55%
AOA (Aggressive Growth) +18%
SPY BENCHMARK +17%
AOM (Moderate Growth) +11%
THIS YEAR: Strong gold and weak US stocks put the Index model into gold from January through April helping us to avoid the March-April V-bottom in equities caused by the tariff announcement. Exiting gold, which had flattened by mid-May, for International stocks set up a period of vacillation between gold and international stocks that ended with a switch to gold in late August, ahead of the first Fed rate cut on 9/18. With rate cuts and trillions in US federal deficit spending gold and hard assets should have solid future prospects.
THE FREE GLOBAL INDEX MODEL has been around for 34-years in one iteration or another. It is a momentum-based market timing model the latest version of which compares the relative strength of ETFs representing US stocks (SPY, IWM) and international stocks (EFA, EEM)) along with US Treasuries (SHY, EDV) and Gold (GLD) in order to pick the single best asset class in which to invest your money. Rankings provide the basis for the Moosecalls global financial newsletter, and have in the past been a solid predictive tool. They provide a general direction (stocks, bonds, precious metals, cash) for allocating investment assets. A daily signal, it is provided here for free once a week as a guideline only.