Morning Briefing
April 29, 2021 | AAPL, Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing, You Might Have Missed |
After the close yesterday, April 29, Skyworks Solutions (SWKS), a key Apple supplier and a maker of radio frequency chips for smartphones and WiFi networking equipment, reported earnings of $2.37 a share on sales of $1.17 billion for quarter that closed on April 2 2021. That beat–slightly–Wall Street projections for earnings of $2.35 a share and sales of $1.15 billion. Year over year Skyworks earnings climbed 77% and sales rose by 53%. And what happened to the stock in after-hours trading? It got punished. Shares dropped to $183.37, a loss of $14.49 a share from the day’s close at $197.86. That’s a loss of 7.32%. In a market driven by expectations for constantly higher growth, I think you can see the problem.
April 29, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
In the first quarter the economy grew by 1.6%. That’s equal to an annualized growth rate of 6.4% for U.S. GDP. You don’t have to look hard to find the cause. Consumer spending rose 2.6 percent in the first three months of the year, with a 5.4% increase in spending on goods accounting for most of the growth. Americans increased spending on cars, furniture, recreational vehicles and other long-lasting items, as well as on clothes and food
April 28, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Speculation, informed and otherwise, is that in his address to Congress tonight, President Joe Biden will propose raising the top income tax rate to 39.6% from the current 37%. And (this is the one that sticks in Wall Street’s craw) raising the tax on long-term capital gains to 39.6% for tax payers with an income above $1 million. The current rate on long-term capital gains is 20%. (There’s a tax surcharge from the Affordable Care Act that raises the effect capital gains tax rate to 23.8% currently. With that surcharge the proposed new rate would be 43.4%) What does this mean for your portfolio–assuming that you’re not one of those making more than $1 million a year?
April 26, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Special Reports |
Today’s Part 1 is a kind of over view of the state of the art in global climate change accounting. With my suggestions about what principles you should bring to understanding this “information.” Part 2 will take off from this conclusions in Part 1 to try to prioritize opportunities for investing–at a profit–in the battle to control global climate change. Part 3 will use Part 1 and Part 2 to build a portfolio of 10 stocks where I’d put money today given what we can see of the course of that battle over the next decade. So let’s start with Part 1 on how to read the numbers.
April 23, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Today, markets remembered that there was still money to be made in the near term–whatever the longer term tax picture might be. The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed up 1.09% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.67%. The NASDAQ Composite tacked on an impressive 1.44% and the NASDAQ 100 finished higher by 1.26%. The small cap Russell 2000 rose by 1.76% on the day. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) pushed higher by 1.45%.
April 22, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Americans filed 547,000 first-time unemployment claims last week, the Labor Department reported. That marked a pandemic low for a second week in a row.
April 20, 2021 | Daily JAM, DIS, Morning Briefing |
This won’t help an already nervous market one bit. Today, April 20, after the close Netflix (NFLX) reported first-quarter subscriber growth way below projections. The stock was down 1.21% in after-hours trading as of 4:30 p.m. New York time.
April 15, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Initial claims for unemployment in regular state-run unemployment programs fell to 576,000 last week. Economists had projected 710,000 new claims for the week.
April 13, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.6% in March from February, the Labor Department reported this morning. Year over year consumer prices are 2.6% higher than they were in March 2020. Economists had projected that the headline CPI would climb 0.5% in March from February and 2.5% year over year. Financial markets shrugged off the numbers.
April 12, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
This isn’t good news for the prospects for a sustained economic recovery in the United States from the pandemic recession of 2020. The 25 biggest U.S. banks reduced their total loan portfolios by 8% in 2021 through March from the same point in 2020, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest weekly survey.
April 8, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
We want to see the job gains before we remove any support for the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said at an event at the International Monetary Fund, on Thursday, April 8. Putting another marker in the ground on when the central bank might start to cut back on its schedule to purchase $120 billion a month in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities–and then to raise its benchmark interest rate, Powell said the Fed wants to see a string of months like March when the economy added 916,000 jobs.
April 8, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Initial claims for unemployment in regular state programs rose by 16,000 to 744,000 in the week ended April 3, the Labor Department reported today, April 8. This was the second straight weekly increase in new claims. For the prior week, the total new claims figure was revised upward to 728,000. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected that initial claims for the week would fall to 680,000.
