November 8, 2024 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
President-elect Donald Trump and Republican Congressional leaders are already promising to push through a new round of tax cuts to replace the 2017 cuts that expire in 2025. New tax cuts, they say, will be the first legislative–as opposed to initiatives by executive order such as new Trump tariffs–priority after the new president is inaugurated on January 20 2025. With Republican assured of a 53 to 55 seat majority in the Senate and likely to retain a majority in the House of Representatives, there’s not much Democrats can do to stop the cuts from becoming law.
November 7, 2024 | Daily JAM, Dividend Income, Videos |
Today’s Hot Button Moves NOW video is “Yield Drought.” CDs that used to pay 5.25% are now paying closer to 4.90% on the high end and Treasuries yields are also falling. As stock prices rise, dividend yields fall to. I think this yield drought will continue to get worse. You have to be opportunistic and BE ready for bouts of volatility. Keep an eye out for temporarily depressed stocks and buy those for the yields. I’ll be releasing a special report on dividends and yield drought next week. Keep an eye on your email or subscribe to get alerted when that report drops.
November 7, 2024 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates on Thursday by a quarter of a percentage point. The cut was the second this year, following on a larger than usual 50 basis point cut in September. The size of this cut was expected by the financial markets. Wall Street is expecting another 25 basis point cut at the central bank’s December 18 meeting. With the cut and its size so widely expected investors and traders were left trying to find policy hints in the Fed’s words. The pickings were rather slim.
November 6, 2024 | COP, CVS, Daily JAM, LLY, Special Reports, UNG |
When I posted the previous version of this Special Report back on September 30, I wrote: “I don’t know which candidate will win the election. Right now the polls are within the margin of error on the national level–and even tighter in the seven battleground states that will likely decide the election. But I do know the results on November 5 will move stocks. Some right off the bat even before the results are certified. And more significantly as a new administration clarifies its policy views and takes office.” That has changed just a bit with last night’s victory by Donald Trump. We do know who won and will be the President come January 20. And we do know whose policies will move stocks and the financial markets in general. So let’s see if I can bring my picks and strategic advice up to date.
November 6, 2024 | Daily JAM, Videos |
Today’s Quick Pick is Fortinet (FTNT). Fortinet is a cybersecurity company with a concentration in firewalls. They have about 15% of the firewall market. Firewall sales have a four or five year cycle as technology develops and companies need to upgrade their security. Morgan Stanley recently predicted the firewall replacement cycle is likely to begin in the second half of 2025. Fortinet is currently at a 20% discount to Palo Alto Networks, the leader in the cyber security stock sector. FTNT is profitable (GAAP and non-GAAP) with their non-GAAP earnings from the second quarter of 2024 showing 35% profitability. Morningstar predicts operating margins will grow to 38%-40% by 2028. I’ll be adding this to my Jubak Picks portfolio with an eye to 2025.
November 5, 2024 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
I continue to see this rally continuing through the fourth quarter of 2024vbefore faltering in the first quarter of 2025. That call does assume that we’ll get through today’s election and its aftermath with relatively little actual violence–protests in the streets from the losing side and lots of court cases, but no mass armed violence. And it assumes that projected earnings growth in the fourth quarter will live up to expectations and show the highest growth rate in all of 2024. No one knows what this post-election period will bring. So let’s move onto assumption #2: How likely is it that fourth quarter growth will hold up?
November 4, 2024 | CNH, Daily JAM, DE, Jubak Picks, Morning Briefing, Stock Alerts, Top 50 Stocks |
Today I added CNH Industrial (CNH) as Pick #7 for my Special Report “10 new stock ideas for an old rally.” I also added the stock to my Jubak Picks Portfolio. Here’s what I wrote:
I like farm equipment maker CNH Industrial for the same reason I own Deere (DE) in my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio. In the long term the world’s farmers are facing a huge challenge: produce more food as an increasingly chaotic climate makes growing stuff harder and harder. One important piece of the solution is a new generation of intelligent farm equipment that uses artificial intelligence to guide everything from when to plant to when to fertilize. At the moment, though, I like CNH more on price. CNH, the #2 farm equipment maker, is invitingly attractive because it is so cheap, absolutely and in comparison to Deere.
November 3, 2024 | Daily JAM, FTNT, Jubak Picks, PANW, Stock Alerts |
Today I added Fortinet (FTNT) as Pick #6 for my Special Report “10 new stock ideas for an old rally.” I also added the stock to my Jubak Picks Portfolio. Here’s what I wrote:
There’s a long-term buying cycle in the firewall cyber security sector.
November 3, 2024 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
In normal times, the November 7 meeting of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate setting body, the Open Market Committee would be the big event of the week. But these aren’t normal times in case you haven’t noticed. The country faces a stark choice on Tuesday and the polls show essentially a dead heat. And then add in fears that Donald Trump and/or his followers won’t accept the election results if he loses. Traders and portfolio managers have been adding hedges to protect against market volatility in the days around the election.
November 2, 2024 | Daily JAM, Jubak Picks, NVDA, Top 50 Stocks |
AI chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) will join the Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing chipmaker Intel (INTC), S&P Dow Jones Indices, the owner of the 127-year-old index, said late Friday.
November 1, 2024 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The U.S. economy added 12,000 jobs in October. The unemployment rate, which uses a different survey method, held steady at 4.1%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the August and September reports to take a total of 112,000 jobs off earlier estimates. The average job growth over the past three months is now 104,000, down from 189,000 over the six months before that. The revised data and the October estimate are both more in line, in my opinion, with what is likely to have been happening in the economy as the result of high interest rates from the Federal Reserve. I thought hugh interest rates should have been slowing the economy more than the initial data suggested. And now it it looks like those high rates were working much more in line with past history of the economy. Of course, the big question today is should we believe the October report
October 31, 2024 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of U.S. inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, fell to a 2.1% annual rate in September.
