I expect Wednesday’s meeting of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee to be the big event. Not because the Fed will do anything unexpected on interest rates. It won’t change its benchmark policy rate now at 4.25% to 4.50%. But because the Fed might say something that hints on whether and when it might cut interest rates again.
That was quicker than I expected. On Thursday President Donald Trump used a virtual address at the Davos World Economic Forum to pick a fight with he Federal Reserve and Fed chair Jerome Powell. I wasn’t expecting the President to go after the Fed until Wednesday, January 29–assuming, as now looks just about certain, that the Fed doesn’t cut interest rates at its meeting that day.
In 2025 you will want your portfolio fully weighted toward AI, ENERGY, and WEIGHT-LOSS DRUG stocks.
Not just any stock in those sectors, of course. All three sectors will be full of surprises and they won’t play out the way the conventional wisdom now believes. Some stocks in these sectors will do just okay as a rising tide lifts all boats. But some stocks will be GREAT. These winners could be the foundation for another great year for your portfolio. In fact, I expect that 2025 will be a tough year for an investor to make money even if stocks do finish higher. That’s because the year will be filled with more than the usual twists and turns designed make you sell on fear just when you should be holding on or even buying more. And don’t think that the year won’t include more than one of those moments rallies designed to suck you in at the top because–well, because you fear missing out. Yes, FOMO, fear of missing out will be alive and well in 2025. To do well in 2025, you’ll have to not only pick the hot trends, but also understand when that trend is about to zig zag and which stocks you’ll want to ride through all the noise and chaos. Giving you what you need for profits in 2025vis what this Special Report: 10 stock picks for the hottest sectors of 2025 is all about.And there’s no better sector to demonstrate the challenges of 2025 than Artificial Intelligence, the first of my hottest sectors for 2025. (The next two hot trends, energy and weight-loss drugs will follow in the next few days.)
Assuming that conventional economics still has some validity and that economic history has some predictive value, Paul Krugman, who won his 2008 Nobel-prize in economics for his work on international trading patterns, has put some numbers on the likely effects of the higher tariffs proposed by President Donald Trump. In his Substack (Krugman left the New York Times after 25 years at the end of 2024) he laid out this math.
Imports are about 11% of U.S. GDP. A first-pass estimate would be that tariffs on the scale Trump is threatening would be a 25% sales tax on goods that account for 11% of consumer spending. That would raise the cost of living by almost 3%–well over 3% if, as Trump has said he intends in some speeches, he puts much higher tariffs on imports from China. Since median household income is more than $80k, that’s around $2500 a year for the typical household.
Sales of Apple’s iPhones dove 18.2% in China during the December quarter, according to independent research firm Counterpoint Research. The company’s flagship handsets, China’s top sellers a year earlier, relinquished the top spot to Huawei Technologies. Apple slipped to third in the world’s largest smartphone market over the three months with a market share of roughly 15%. The drop in China drove a global slump of 5% in iPhone sales during the key shopping period, Counterpoint reported.
I advise investors not to think for a moment that the regulatory issues that faced Big Tech under the Biden Administration have al gone away. President Trumps key picks for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) show there are still big bumps in the road ahead.
Oil slid as U..S President Donald Trump promised to boost U.S. crude production. Brent crude retreated almost 1% to near $80 a barrel.
I expect big market moves from some of new President Donald Trump’s initial batch of executive orders. Trump has promised lots of moves for Day One. Now it remains to be seen what executive orders he actually signs in his first days in office and which ones move the financial markets.
Here’s the fiscal grim status of the United States on the Friday before Donald Trump is sworn in as President on Monday, January 20.
As of January 17, 2025, the U.S. national debt stands at approximately $36.17 trillion. This figure represents the total outstanding public debt of the United States government and can be broken down into two parts. Debt held by the public of $28.83 trillion and intragovernmental debt, that is debt that one part of the government owes to another, of $7.34 trillion. But in some ways that’s the good news.
Mortgage rates rose this week to the highest level since May 2024. The average 30-year mortgage rate jumped to 7.04% through Wednesday, January 15, up from 6.93% a week earlier. Average 15-year mortgage rates also rose to 6.27% from 6.14%, according to Freddie Mac It’s the fifth straight week that mortgage rates have moved higher.
Last week I sold my commodities ETF, the VanEck Agribusiness ETF (MOO) out of my Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio.
Today I’m replacing it with the Invesco DB U.S.Dollar Bullish ETF (UUP), UP 0.82% in 2025 as of January 14, 2025. The ETF gained 13.48% in 2024.
As of noon New York time today, January 15, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was ahead 1.30%. The NASDAQ Composite and the small-cap Russell 2000 were both up 1.80% on the session. Today’s big moves come on relatively minor changes in inflation trends in this morning’s report on CPI inflation in December. And I think they have more to do with how afraid Wall Street is that the Federal Reserve isn’t going to deliver at least one or two interest rate cuts in 2025 than with any big news in today’s report. The consumer price index (CPI) rose at an annual rate of 2.9% in December, up from a 2.7% annual rate the previous month. That increase was in line with expectations. On a month-to-month basis, the index rose 0.4%. The “core” index, which strips out volatile food and energy prices and is much more important to the Fed than the headline inflation number, rose at a 3.2% annual rate in December. That was down slightly from its annual rate of 3.3% in November, and less than economists had expected. It’s this dip in the annual rate of core inflation that has investors feeling so optimistic today.
