March 31, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Goldman Sachs’ influential strategist David Kostin has just cut his target for the Standard & Poor’s 500 for a second time this month. (Kostin had first reduced his target from 6,500 on March 11.) He now expects the index to end the year at around 5,700 versus his previous estimate of 6,200. The new target implies a gain of just 2% from Friday’s close. In other words, you’d be better off buying a 6-month Treasury paying 4.23% and holding it to maturity.
March 31, 2025 | Daily JAM, TSLA |
On 2 April, Liberation Day, President Donald Trump will announce a big new round of tariffs on global exports to the United States. And Tesla (TSLA) will release data for first-quarter deliveries. Analysts expect the report to show a dip on the same period last year.
March 30, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
It’s not clear who White House advisor Peter Navarro speaks for but on Sunday he spoke up loudly for more tariffs. On Fox News Navarro claimed Sunday that President Donald Trump’s new tariffs would raise more than $6 trillion in federal revenue over the next decade. Exactly why that’s a good idea wasn’t clear from Navarro’s appearance since it would amount to the largest peacetime tax hike in modern U.S. history.
March 30, 2025 | Daily JAM, FXY, Perfect Five-ETFs, Short Term, UUP |
On Monday, March 31, I will sell the Invesco DB U.S. Dollar Index BullishFund ETF (UUP) out of the Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio and replace it with the Invesco CurrencyShares Japanese Yen ETF (FXY). I will leave the portfolio weighting at 25%. The yen ETF is up 5.32% in the last three months as of the close on March 28. It charges a 0.40% expense ratio.
March 29, 2025 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
Wall Street is, clearly, afraid that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are going to significantly slow the U.S. economy. Those fears drove the Standard & Poor’s 500 down another 1.97% on Friday and sent the NASDAQ Composite down 2.70%. But I think that there’s still a large percentage of investors who think the tariffs won’t be as bad as their advance press suggests, either because they believe they’re simply negotiating ploys or because President Trump has history of barking worse than he bites. Frankly, I think those investors are wrong.
March 28, 2025 | Daily JAM |
The next big round of Trump tariffs and the March jobs numbers will be the big events of the week.
March 28, 2025 | Daily JAM |
In the latest Bloomberg survey, economists cut back their expectations for U.S. growth this year.Gross Domestic Product, (GDP) will grow at a 2% rate. That’s down from projections of 2.3% growth in the previous month’s poll
The economists in the survey lowered their projection for first-quarter growth by a full percentage point to 1.2%.
March 28, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure rose in February at a faster pace than in January. The rate of increase was also greater than economists had expected
March 27, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Friday’s core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index excluding food and energy—-the central bank’s preferred measure of underlying inflation-—is forecast to show signs of stickiness.
March 26, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
President Donald Trump will announce auto tariffs on Wednesday afternoon, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said during a briefing with reporters at the White House.
Details of the tariffs are unclear–who following White House “policy” on tariffs is surprised at that? Stock markets fell on news. The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed down 1.12%. The NASDAQ Composite dropped 2.04%.
March 25, 2025 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
Credit rating company, Moody’s Investors Service, one of the three big debt ratio companies, warned on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs could hamper the country’s ability to cope with a growing debt pile and higher interest rates. The rating agency said that America’s “fiscal strength is on course for a continued multiyear decline”, having already “deteriorated further” since it assigned a negative outlook to America’s Aaa credit rating in November 2023.
March 25, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
U.S. consumer confidence fell in March to the lowest level in four years, according to the Conference Board’s survey.
The Conference Board’s gauge of confidence fell 7.2 points to 92.9. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a reading of 94. A measure of expectations for the next six months dropped nearly 10 points to 65.2, the lowest in 12 years
