August 31, 2023 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
We’ve finished moving the JubakAM.com editorial offices (and residence) to Venice. The move was intended to be seamless. I hoped to keep posting on my regular schedule as a team of gondoliers rowed us across the Atlantic. But moving, as always, was more exhausting than anticipated. But it is now accomplished. Computers are unpacked. Jet lag is unlagged. And the sporadic quiet period is over. (Ready or not.) Just in time for the pre-Labor-Day jobs report spectacular due Friday, tomorrow.
August 24, 2023 | Daily JAM, Videos |
Today’s video is: Stay Away From China for a While. China is looking at a long-term downward trend in the price of Chinese stocks. The iShares MSCI China ETF is down 8.1% year to date. It was down nearly 23% in 2022 and around 22% in 2021. What’s causing this? China has a long-term demographic problem. You’ll see occasional spikes in stock prices whenever the government puts money into the economy, but those spikes disappear after it becomes evident that putting more money into the system isn’t enough to fix it. In the long term, China is going through some extreme demographic changes. Last year, China’s population fell for the first time since 1961 and the United Nations predicts that China’s population will go from 1.4 billion now to 800 million by the end of this century. This is because fewer couples are deciding to have children, and the one-child policy led to a scarcity of females in the population. The younger generation is highly educated but unable to find jobs, which has led to negative sentiment on the economy and sluggish consumer spending. China’s economic policy has been based on high-tech industrialization and a dampening of consumer spending in an effort to provide the capital needed to support its industrialization. This model works for a while but inevitably hits a wall because the things you produce need somewhere to go. For a long time, China exported most of its goods, but many countries, like the United States, have pivoted to policies designed to increase domestic production. China looks to have hit the middle income economy wall, like a lot of industrializing countries before it.
August 23, 2023 | Daily JAM, Short Term, Videos |
Today’s Trend of the Week is Watch Nvidia. NVIDIA (NASDAQ) reports earnings today, August 23. The consensus is that the company will report $1.69 a share, up from last year’s $0.32. And that revenue growth will come in with 65% growth.
This stock has been one of the big gainers this year and has effectively led the market. The shares recently hit a bit of a plateau until Monday, when the stock popped 8% on earnings optimism. The stock trades at a trailing PE of 238 but the big earnings jump should help with that. So what do you do with this stock that is leading the market, but is also known to be overpriced and therefore somewhat risky? You go with the momentum. Follow the market to see if investors start to sell and take profits after earnings, or if people continue to buy, even at a high price, with hopes for even greater gains. This will be an indicator of how momentum in the market is going, especially for the booming AI sector.
August 22, 2023 | Daily JAM, Videos |
Today’s Trend of the Week is What’s the Story? What is happening with the market? Retail numbers are up but stocks are down. Wall Street was expecting a 0.4% growth in retail from June to July, and we got .7%. While big-ticket items like furniture, electronics, and appliances remained down, e-commerce sales were up 1.9%, and consumers seem to be spending money on things like dining out. Retail numbers were much better than expected, so why did stocks go down? At the time of filming (August 15), the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were both down nearly 1%. Part of the reason we’re seeing the market go down, I think, is because money is going into bonds, instead of stocks. The U.S. economy is doing markedly better than the overall international economy, and people are looking to buy Treasuries. The yield on the 10-year treasury went up to 4.27 on August 15 and real yields, (yield minus inflation), are near a 14-year high. The expectation is that inflation will continue to moderate, but the Fed will likely not be cutting rates any time soon. As more money goes toward treasuries, less money is available in the market to buy stocks.
August 21, 2023 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing, Special Reports |
As cities like Phoenix bake–the city has recorded a record 19 straight days of temperatures above 110 as of July 18–and as 58 million people in the United States are forced to face 3-digit temperatures this week, and as researchers in Europe estimate that the 2023 death toll from extreme heat is likely to surpass the 2022 record to 61,000 (up from 40,000 in 2018 and 2019), you’d think it’s impossible to underestimate the climate disaster now facing us. But it is. The stories about extreme heat (and the deaths from it) and about deaths in flash floods (because hotter air can carry a larger load of water) and in the first recorded tropical storm to hit Los Angeles and about the likelihood that polar bears face extinction focus on what I’d call primary effects of global climate change. But the secondary and tertiary effects of climate change look to be even bigger, more far-reaching, and to have a bigger impact on the daily lives of billions of human beings.The terrifying truth is that our civilization is a lot more vulnerable than we realize because of these secondary effects. The crisis in the Florida citrus industry is a good, if very depressing, example of the power of these secondary (and beyond) effects.
August 19, 2023 | Daily JAM, Jubak Picks, Top 50 Stocks, Videos |
Today’s Quick Pick is Eli Lilly And Co (LLY). Lilly is my favorite big drug stock right now. The company recently announced second-quarter earnings and showed 22% year-over-year sales growth. The company has a promising pipeline of new drugs. Mounjaro, Lilly’s diabetes drug, is likely to get weight-loss approval from the FDA. They also have new products for Alzheimers, and Cardio Metabolic drugs coming out soon. The growing enthusiasm for diabetes and weight-loss drugs has the stock overvalued by about 46% according to Morningstar. Their competitors are in similar situations. Novo Nordisk (NVO) is 28% overvalued according to Morningstar. At this point, if you’re looking for somewhere to immediately put some money to work, I’d still go with Eli Lilly. In this case, you have to consider not just the absolute valuation but also weigh the prospects of both companies. In my opinion, Eli Lilly outshines Novo Nordisk if you look at the pipelines at the two companies
August 19, 2023 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
The Treasury will auction a literal truckload of debt this week. And that’s making the bond market nervous. We’ve already had major volatility that wiped out this year’s 4% gain in Treasury bonds. The worry is focused on the long end of the yield curve where demand for 20- and 30-year Treasuries has been light. The Bloomberg index of Treasuries maturing in 10 years and more has slumped 5.7% so far in August.
August 19, 2023 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
A nervous global financial market will hope that Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s Friday talk at the annual Jackson Hole conference hosted by the Kansas City Fed will add clarity after the Fed’s minutes of its July policy meeting that showed most Fed officials saw significant upside risk to inflation.
August 18, 2023 | AMAT, Daily JAM, Top 50 Stocks |
After the close, yesterday, August 17, semiconductor equipment gorilla Applied Materials (AMAT) reported a 2% year-over-year drop in fiscal third-quarter revenue. At $6.43 billion revenue still beat Wall Street estimates of $6.15 billion. Gross margins of 46.3% were up 0.2% from the year-earlier period. The company reported operating income of $1.8 billion, with earnings per share of $1.85. And the future looks solidly better.
August 17, 2023 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The Dow Jones closed down 291 points, or 0.84%. That moved the index below its 50-day moving average.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 was off 0.77% and the NASDAQ Composite fell 1.17%. Both indexes were already below their 50-day moving averages. The 50-day moving average is a key support level for technical analysts. All things being equal, a drop below a support level like this is usually enough to keep stock prices falling until they find the next support level or until something fundamental changes. Stocks had been up so strongly since May that the next support level for the S&P 500 is down at the 200-day moving average, off another 250 points at 4127 from today’s close at 4370. I’d note that to my eye this would still leave stocks in a trading range of 4,000 to 4,500. No nothing to panic about if that’s the extent of the decline. But all things aren’t equal. The global financial markets are coping with a big increase in bond yields. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.28%. That was up another 3 basis points today (and an increase of 47 basis points in the last month.)
August 17, 2023 | Daily JAM, Videos |
Today’s video is The Fed’s Dollar Currency Ripples. Monday, August 14 was a big day in the currency market with the currencies of China, Argentina, and Russia all making headlines. China’s yuan fell to its lowest level against the dollar since November. The Argentine peso collapsed as the government looks like it is losing its fight against inflation. The Argentine government raised rates by 21 percentage points to 118% and devalued the peso by another 18%. This immediate cause of the drop in the Peso was a surprise victory by a libertarian in a recent primary race for president. Argentine debt due in 2046 fell $0.04 to $0.28 on the dollar. Russia had an emergency rate increase of 350 basis points to a benchmark interest rate of 12%. Of course, none of these things are solely attributable to the dollar’s strength. China’s economy is slowing, Argentina is dealing with economic chaos, and Russia is feeling the effects of international sanctions due to the war in Ukraine. But, the dollar is very strong because it’s safe. The U.S. economy is showing surprising signs of growth with inflation going down and interest rates expected to remain high for some time. The popularity of the dollar in currency markets is creating big economic ripples. China, Argentina, and Russia are the tip of a very large iceberg. The World Bank and IMF say that 40% of the world’s poorest countries are on the verge of default. It’s time to watch your dollars, yuan, pesos, and developing country currencies closely.
August 14, 2023 | Daily JAM, GOOG, Jubak Picks, Top 50 Stocks, Videos |
Today’s Quick Pick is: Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) or as most people know it, Google. Google is an extraordinarily good stock with pricing power. At 85% of the search market, Google is pretty close to having a monopoly. The good time to buy a stock like this is when there have been doubts about it. The recent worries were Microsoft’s addition of AI to their search engine, possibly having a huge impact on Google and a decrease in Google’s advertising market. These factors caused the stock to plateau for a time, but we’re now seeing the stock shoot upward. This has been solidified by second quarter earnings. Revenue growth returned to YouTube, searches increased, and second quarter revenue was up 7% year to year, cloud revenue grew 28% and operating margins grew to 29% from 28%. Morningstar says Google is about 17% undervalued. Google is a part of my long term 50 stocks portfolio, but I’ll be adding it to my 12-18 month JubakPicks portfolio as well.
