April 30, 2018 | Daily JAM, Long Term, Volatility, You Might Have Missed |
In the period from January through March, the U.S. Treasury borrowed $488 billion. That’s a record for the quarter and $47 billion more than the Treasury had earlier estimated. The Treasury finished March with a cash balance of $290 billion, up from an initial estimate of $210 billion.
April 30, 2018 | Daily JAM, MCD, Stock Alerts |
McDonald's reported a solid earnings beat of 12 cents a share ($1.79 vs expectations for $1.67) before the market opened today, April 30. Revenue fell 9.5% year over year to $5.14 billion but that was still ahead of the $4.97 billion Wall Street consensus for the...
April 30, 2018 | Daily JAM, NKTR, Stock Alerts, Volatility |
Shares of biotech rocket Nektar Therapeutics (NKTR) are down 23.25% since they traded at $106.91 on March 21, 2018. I can't find evidence that the positive catalysts that led me to recommend the stock for my Jubak Picks portfolio and the options for my Volatility...
April 30, 2018 | Daily JAM, FANG, PXD, Short Term, STO, Volatility |
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that he will make a statement at 8 p.m. Tel Aviv time tonight on a “significant development” regarding the Iranian nuclear pact. (8 p.m. in Tel Aviv is 1 p.m. in New York.) Israeli news sources are saying that the government has obtained documents that government sources say prove Iran has misled the world about its nuclear program.
April 30, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, the core Personal Consumption Expenditures index (Which excludes fed and energy prices) rose to an annual rate of 1.9% in March the Commerce Department announced this morning. That was inline with economist forecasts and market expectations. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 2.94%. It stood at 2.96% on Friday.
April 29, 2018 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend |
Nobody expects the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at its May 2 meeting. Or to be precise almost nobody expects the Fed to move. The odds of an interest rate increase by the Fed are just 6.2%, according to the CME Fed Watch Tool, which calculates the odds of a Fed move by looking at prices in the Fed Funds Futures market. In addition there’s no press conference scheduled nor will the Fed produce one of its updates of its projections on the likely performance of the economy. But this doesn’t mean the Wednesday meeting can’t swing the market.
April 29, 2018 | Daily JAM |
Apple (AAPL) will set the tone for the market in the early part of the week. But then with Apple earning and revenue worries out of the way, will stocks, especially technology stocks, be “freer” to respond to their own reports?
Apple is scheduled to report fiscal second quarter (March quarter) earnings after the market close on Tuesday, May 1. Wall Street is expecting earnings of $2.68 a share and revenue of $61.02 billion for the quarter–and bracing for disappointment.
April 27, 2018 | Daily JAM, MRK, Stock Alerts |
News out of the imuno-oncology sector of the biotech world has hit stocks in my portfolios such as Incyte (INCY) and Nektar Therapeutics (NKTR) hard. But, I'd argue that it has left Keytruda and its owner Merck (MRK) in a measurably stronger position in the market for...
April 27, 2018 | Daily JAM, Stock Alerts, ZNH |
You might know that China Southern is the largest airline in China. But I bet you didn’t know that it has the largest fleet (702 planes) of any Asian airline. I’ve been looking to add shares of China Southern Airlines (ZNH) to my long-term 50 Stocks ever since I saw the newest list of the world’s 20 busiest airports from the Airports Council International on April 6.
April 27, 2018 | Morning Briefing |
U.S. GDP grew at an annualized rate of 2.3% in the first quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced this morning. Economists had expected growth of 2.1%. In the fourth quarter of 2017, the U.S. economy had grown at an annualized rate of 2.9%. But the rate of growth for the U.S. economy was overshadowed by other data in this morning’s report showing a significant increase in wages and inflation.
April 26, 2018 | Daily JAM |
The Bureau of Economic Analysis releases the first take on economic growth in the first quarter of 2018 tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. New York time. So by the time the financial markets open in New York, investors and traders will have had a chance to absorb the report and decide how they feel about it.Economists surveyed by Briefing.com are looking for the growth rate to drop to 2.1% for the quarter. That would be down from 2.9% in the fourth quarter of 2017 and from 2.3% for all of 2017.
April 26, 2018 | AMZN, Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Okay, this obviously isn’t a Morning Briefing. I wanted to wait and catch the earnings announcements from Amazon, Intel, and Microsoft. All three beat earnings estimates–but this market hasn’t been very generous in rewarding earnings surprises (after Netflix) that is. The key tests here are to see what the shares did in after-hours trading, after investors and traders saw the earnings news, and to see how the market treats these beats tomorrow.