May 16, 2018 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
This development that could push the price of international benchmark Brent crude to $90 wasn’t on my radar screen. It should be–and it should be on yours. (Brent closed up 1.08% today to $79.28 a barrel.) Oil analysts at Morgan Stanley are arguing that changes in the kind of fuel that ocean-going vessels use will result in an additional spike in the price of oil. That’s besides whatever goes on with Iran, the Middle East, and OPEC.
May 16, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Not so long ago global cash seeking safety and liquidity was keeping the yield on the 10-year Treasury at 2.95% in spite of the huge budget deficit resulting from the December Tax Cuts & Jobs Act and the flood of bond sales by the U.S. Treasury and the prospect of more interest rate increases from the Fed. But now in the last two days 10-year Treasury yields have tacked on almost a full tenth of a percentage point and today the yield on the 10-year Treasury closed at 3.10%.
May 15, 2018 | Daily JAM, NKTR, Stock Alerts |
It hasn't exactly been a stellar couple of months for shares and options on Nektar Therapeutics (NKTR). The stock is down 23.1% since it hit a high of $108.44 on March 8. The August 17, 2018 call options with a strike of $90 I bought on February 25, 2018 are now down...
May 15, 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. Today’s 10:20 post is a representative item: “10:20 a.m.: Target (TGT) has cut its next-day delivery fee nearly in half in one of the most visible efforts to capitalize on Amazon’s (AMZN) decision to raise the price of its annual Prime membership to $119 from $99. Target has dropped the delivery price for household essentials to $2.99 from $4.99 and waived it altogether for customers paying with a Target card. The Target Restock service lets shoppers get 35,000 everyday items like paper towels and baby food for a flat delivery fee. And as Target noted in announcing the cuts, “Membership fee? Nope.” Target has also teamed with Google Home to let customers restock with a voice command using Google’s Alexa.”
May 15, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Not great numbers but strong enough. For April it looks like a strong job market and higher take-home pay more than balanced out higher gasoline prices. Gas prices are now at their highest level since 2014.
May 14, 2018 | Daily JAM, MRK |
President Donald Trump speech last week on drug prices, what he billed as “the most sweeping action in history to lower the price of prescription drugs for the American people,” didn’t deliver any of the ghosts and goblins that drug makers feared. Drug stocks by and large climbed on the proposals. Which turns stocks in the drug sector into one of the most interesting places to stash money for the next six months for investors looking for decent upside and above average safety.
May 14, 2018 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, You Might Have Missed |
Here’s my complete 2018 earnings boom 2018 profit strategy Parts 1 and 2 with all seven picks. Part 1 originally ran on April 17. Part 2 originally ran on May 8.
May 14, 2018 | Daily JAM, GOLD, Stock Alerts |
My criteria for adding a gold stock to my long-term 50 Stocks portfolio have been reasonably consistent over the years: I've looked for a gold miner that was growing gold production and reducing production costs. Up until my latest revision of this portfolio in early...
May 14, 2018 | AMZN, Daily JAM, Stock Alerts |
Amazon has announced a new advertising tool that lets companies selling on Amazon buy digital ads that will follow shoppers wherever they travel on the Internet with ads intended to lure those consumers back to Amazon to make a purchase. The tool goes out to select merchants for test later this month,
May 14, 2018 | Daily JAM, FCX, SCCO |
Today, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced a May 17 deadline for the Trump administration to submit a proposal NAFTA revision to Congress–if President Trump wants this Congress to vote on a revised agreement. The odds of an agreement emerging from current talks and moving on to Congress on that schedule are just about nil. At the same time news of significant horse trading is coming out of U.S.-China trade talks.
May 14, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
All is right in tech land again, cash flows say. Last week investors and traders poured $670 million into the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK). That’s the most in a year for the second largest technology ETF. Apple (AAPL) is the largest position in the ETF with a 15% weighting.
May 12, 2018 | Friday Trick or Trend |
The is a week with plenty of potential economic trends–although none is so strong that geopolitics couldn’t seize control of the world’s financial markets
