January 22, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index broke lower out of the gate on Monday, the first trading session when it could react to Friday’s Senate vote to shutdown the government. The Monday open at 2809.16 was a big 1.14 POINTS (not percent) below the Friday close at 2810.30. You could feel traders shaking in their boots–although maybe that was the rumble from the #2 train passing under the exchange.
January 22, 2018 | Daily JAM, LNG, Stock Alerts |
Natural gas volumes feeding into Cheniere Energy's (LNG) Sabine Pass terminal have nearly doubled compared with this time a year ago, S&P Global Platts has reported. LNG feed-gas volumes have averaged 2.9 billion cubic feet per day and have risen as high as 3.3...
January 22, 2018 | BAC, Daily JAM, Stock Alerts |
I'm adding shares of Bank of America (BAC) to my Dividend Portfolio today. The stock yields only 1.2% on trailing 12-month dividend payouts so why am I adding it to a portfolio dedicated to beating the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond? Because Bank of America has...
January 22, 2018 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. A typical item resembles this note from today: “12:40 p.m.: Biotech stocks up strongly with iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology ETF (IBB) ahead 3% on news of two big acquisitions: Celegene (CELG) buying Juno (JUNO) for 90% premium to pre-news price and Sanofi (SNY) buying Bioverativ (BOVV) at 64% premium.”
January 22, 2018 | Daily JAM, MCD, Stock Alerts |
I've become convinced that the best way to think about McDonald's (MCD) and other established fast-food stocks is as cyclicals. Oh, not in the usual way where the fortunes of a company rise and fall with the cycles in the economy. No, I think the established fast food...
January 22, 2018 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised its forecast for world economic growth in 2018 to 3.9%. That’s a 0.2 percentage point increase from its October projection and the fastest growth rate since 2011. About half of the improvement in the forecast is a result of the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs act passed in December. The IMF raised its forecast for U.S. growth in 2018 by 0.4 percentage points to 2.7%. That’s the fastest forecast growth among developed economies.
January 20, 2018 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
Before Washington and the government shutdown stole all the headlines, the U.S. stock market was whipping up a good deal of enthusiasm about reports of fourth quarter earnings. Because the Securities & Exchange Commission gives companies more time to file end of the year annual financial reports than run of the mill quarterly reports, earnings season for the fourth quarter is especially drawn out, but we still get some important bellwether reports this week
January 20, 2018 | Daily JAM |
The shutdown of the Federal government the occurred as expected on Friday night won’t have much effect on U.S. or global stock markets until it exceeds the 2013 shutdown in duration. That shutdown lasted from October 1 to October 17. Each week of the shutdown shaves 0.1% to 0.2% off the GDP growth rate, according to calculations from Standard & Poor’s. And in past shutdowns the economy has quickly recouped that loss GDP once the government has gone back into operation .Judging from history the stock market doesn’t like a shutdown but it doesn’t ‘t see it as a big deal. Could it be different this time? Sure.
January 19, 2018 | ALB, Daily JAM, SQM, Stock Alerts |
The announcement of a deal between Sociedad QuÃmica y Minera de Chile (SQM) and Chile's development agency CORFO that resolves a long-standing dispute on royalty rates and that would allow SQM to expand lithium production from the brines at government-owned Salar de...
January 19, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
China’s GDP grew at a 6.8% year over year rate in fourth quarter. That represents a slight improvement on the expected 6.7% growth rate and an absolutely “perfect” continuation of the 6.8% year over year growth recorded in the third quarter. Data this good from China always raises the suspicion of either manipulation of the numbers or intervention by the Beijing government.
January 18, 2018 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, You Might Have Missed |
2017 was a tough year for benchmarking my Dividend Portfolio. For the year the total price appreciation on the stocks in the portfolio was 3.4% The 21.64% return on the Standard & Poor’s 500 crushed that. The dividend yield on the portfolio for the year came to 3.11%. Which beat the 2.8% total return from holding 10-year Treasury bonds for 2017. The total return on my Dividend Portfolio for 2017 was 6.48%.
January 17, 2018 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. A typical items resembles this from today: “4:20 p.m.: The U.S. Dollar Index gave up a morning gain to fall back to 90.32 before rallying again to close at 90.736, up 0.34 on the day. Some analysts think that the 90 level on the index might give support to the U.S. currency against other major currencies. Others think the dollar is on the verge of falling to a new thee-year low that could open the way to further declines.”
