Videos
March 9, 2023 | AAPL, Daily JAM, Videos |
Today’s Quick Pick is Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). For this Quick Pick, I’m suggesting you wait to buy until Apple falls to around $140 (which I think is coming.) Apple, like many tech stocks, is a seasonal stock, and we’re currently in one of the company’s traditionally weaker quarters. The Christmas buying quarters (the last two quarters of the year) are when Apple brings in the most revenue, and the first two calendar quarters are generally weaker. Apple took a hit during the big downward turn on the bear when all tech stocks were hit, but the stock recovered strongly during this early 2023 rally. If shares get down to $140, that’s a great place to get in before Apple announces new technology and updates to its product line. There are rumblings of an Apple VR headset announcement coming soon and we know that we’ll see new iMacs and Powerbooks. We can also look forward to the Apple Developer Conference in May and new product announcements in September. If you can get this cheap in the first half of the year, you can look for a big recovery in the second half of the year.
March 8, 2023 | Daily JAM, Videos |
Today’s topic is How Long Before Climate Change Forces the Fed to Rethink Inflation? In Jerome Powell’s most recent report to the House and Senate, he made it clear that interest rates would be raised higher than previous expectations and that 50 basis points weren’t off the table for the March 22 meeting. The CME’s Fed tool, which tracks how the market believes the Fed will move rates, was showing a 50/50 split of 25 and 50 basis points on March 7. The week before that, the odds of a 50 basis point hike were only at 24%. We can see the market is coming around to the idea of maintaining higher interest rate hikes. How does this relate to climate change? Well, another data point is coming out on Friday; the jobs report. The big blow-out in January jobs is directly related to climate change. January had about 200,000 additional jobs created due to the fact that it was warmer than usual for the month. Those actual numbers were seasonally adjusted with past trends of colder Januaries, when jobs had been lost due to the colder weather, leading to very questionable final numbers. The Fed’s division of inflation into an “all prices” number and a core rate is also becoming questionable. The Fed often focuses on the core rate, which leaves out food and energy price increases, but those are two categories that are likely to be central to the way that warming temperatures change the global economy. At some point, the Fed will have to figure out how it will handle those two categories of prices, and how climate change will lead to a new calculation of the neutral interest rate.
March 6, 2023 | Daily JAM, Dividend Income, Videos |
This week’s Trend of the Week video is Utilities are Struggling as Inflation Surges. As utilities start to update their grid infrastructure to support renewable energy sources, utility companies have filed for rate increases. Those rate increases have to be approved by state government regulators, and they’ve recently gotten some pushback, specifically from utility commissions in the Midwest, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. As an example, in Michigan, DTE applied for a $388 million rate increase and the utility got approval for just $31 million. Utility commissions are arguing that they can’t approve rate increases when consumers are already facing soaring utility bills. Investors have expected utilities to be a place to hide in this market, with projected growth and higher revenue, but due to this kind of resistance from regulators, you can’t count on utilities to revenue and income to fuel dividend increases at the same rate as in recent years. I suggest picking utilities one by one, as opposed to ETFs in order to stay away from some of those companies that do business in less accommodating states. You can find specific utility stocks in my Dividend Portfolio available on JubakPicks.com and JubakAM.com.
March 1, 2023 | Daily JAM, FXI, Perfect Five-ETFs, Videos |
Today’s topic is Will China Send the Global Economy Surging? We’ll really know the answer to this starting on Sunday, when the National People’s Congress of China meets. The leaders of China will make some important decisions for the Congress to rubber-stamp. China is looking for a 5% or higher GDP growth this year after last year’s 3%, but in order to get there, they’ll have to stimulate the economy. Local governments are drowning in debt that they can’t pay, and the government’s usual stimulus plan of requiring local governments to borrow and then spend it on “infrastructure “, isn’t likely to work. There’s also added pressure to cut interest rates to stimulate the economy and the rising tide (albeit a very low tide) of disgruntlement of the government and Xi Jinping’s leadership throughout the Covid lockdowns and the subsequent deadly spread of Covid-19. All this while the population is aging dramatically (with little to no retirement infrastructure), following the one-child policy, which reduced the younger population drastically. To take advantage of the expected and necessary economic stimulus, I recommend the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (NYSEARCA: FX) which captures a lot of the state-owned and larger corporate companies that would likely benefit from a stimulus from China. You’ll  find it in my Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio.
February 27, 2023 | COST, Daily JAM, Videos, WMT |
This week’s Trend of the Week is How Tired Is the Consumer? Consumer spending makes up 70% of the economy, so if consumers get tired and start spending less, the economy as a whole will slow down. The current consumer data doesn’t look good. Credit card debt is at an all-time high and delinquency rates are up to 4%. On February 21, Walmart (NYSE: WMT) came out worried about the full year, noting that consumers were purchasing less-expensive goods, and lowered its guidance for 2023 below Wall Street expectations. However, the lowered guidance didn’t affect the stock price. Why? As consumers are looking more tired, investors will look for stocks like Walmart and Costco, where a consumer would go to substitute products with lower prices. If you’re looking to put some money somewhere if the consumer is looking tired, Costco (NASDAQ: COST), Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and Dollar General (NYSE: DG) are good options. If you believe the consumer is REALLY tired, you may want to look to put your money somewhere outside of the market, like a CD with a 5% yield. For other 5% options, check out my recent post “The best way to get a 5% yield–my choices and their pluses and minuses”: https://www.jubakpicks.com/the-best-way-to-get-a-5-yield-my-choices-and-their-pluses-and-minuses/.
February 23, 2023 | Daily JAM, UNG, Videos |
Today I posted my two-hundred-and-forty-first YouTube video: Quick Pick U.S. Natural Gas Fund Want to grow your portfolio and protect it too? In the toughest investing market in 40 years? Grab my eBook, Your Best Investing Strategy for the Next 5 Years: Free download for subscribers to JubakAM.com. Just click on the image in the right margin. Today’s Quick Pick is United States Natural Gas Fund (NYSEARCA: UNG). The chart for UNG is horrendous, with a peak in August and a steady plummet after that. For 2022, the stock was up about 12%, thanks to late summer surges in price, as natural gas was bid up under the expectation that the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia would cause Europe to run out of natural gas. But year to date for 2023, it’s down 44%, as Europe proved better at replacing Russian gas than anyone had expected. As the end of winter approaches, European natural gas stockpiles are at about 65%–above normal for this time of year. UNG has a pattern of up years following down years–in 2020 UNG saw a 43% decline, and in 2021, a 35% increase. As the price of natural gas goes down, demand spikes as buyers look for the cheapest fuels and purchase more natural gas, which sends the pendulum swinging back upward for natural gas providers and funds that track the commodity. Between now and mid-March is a good time to get in on natural gas as we look for the upswing when China and Asia start looking at cheaper natural gas prices and Europe looks to get its stockpile back to 100%.
February 22, 2023 | Daily JAM, Videos |
Today I posted my two-hundred-and-fortieth YouTube video: 6% Yes, 8% No. Today’s topic is: 6% Yes, 8% No. I’ve been saying that I think 6% is the peak for interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve this cycle. Inflation is not coming down as fast as the Fed would like and it’s going to have to keep raising rates until it can bring inflation down to an acceptable level. But what’s acceptable to the Fed? According to the Taylor Rule, which looks at unemployment to calculate where interest rates should be in order to control inflation, we’re heading toward 9% interest rates. I don’t think that’s going to happen in this cycle–not because the economics are wrong, but because the politics don’t work. Mohamed El-Erian recently argued that what is really needed is 8%, but if the Fed did that, he noted, it would cause a massive recession. Instead, he thinks the Fed will declare victory when inflation reaches 3% to 4%, (and we’re 4.5% to 5.5% now, depending on what inflation measure you choose). The idea is that the Fed will settle for a higher inflation rate and blame the green energy transition, geopolitical challenges, and changes in the labor market. Look for a 6% interest rate peak as a good buy point into this market.
February 16, 2023 | Daily JAM, Videos |
Today’s topic is: Sell! Time to Take Some Rally Profits. Wednesday’s rally had all the earmarks of a blow-out-the-top rally. Though it wasn’t a huge jump, the markets went up on a goldilocks reaction to stronger-than-expected retail sales for January. The S&P was up 0.28% and the NASDAQ Composite was up 0.92%. The interesting part of this jump is the stocks that saw the big action – not Microsoft, Amazon, or some of the big stocks, but some more speculative things. One of them was Quantumscape Corporation (NYSE: QS), a tech company that is in the process of creating a solid-state lithium battery- though it’s not expected until 2025. They reported losing less money than they expected, and their stock shot up 32% in one day. Wayfair (NYSE: W) is up in the last month by about 58% and was up 10.4% yesterday. These are both examples of a big jump in 2023 and an even bigger jump on a blow-out day. These kinds of numbers are not sustainable, especially with more interest rate hikes from the Fed on the way and an impending debt ceiling crisis. This really is not likely to last too long. If you want to learn more about what I’m selling now, you can go to my latest post on JubakPicks.com and JubakAM.com for a detailed breakdown of what I’m selling and why.
February 13, 2023 | Daily JAM, Videos |
Today I posted my two-hundred-and-thirty-sixth YouTube video: 6% Is Coming This week’s Trend of the Week is: 6% is Coming. This song lyric keeps playing in my head: “They laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round.” I’ve maintained that peak interest rates from the Fed will be 6% and I’ve gotten blowback from people saying, “No way! We’ll barely get to 5%.” I’m sticking with 6% and I also think we’ll get more rate increases than the market was expecting. Keeping this in mind, I’m looking at the best time to buy Treasuries and setting some parameters. The yield on the 10-year treasury on February 7 was 3.63%. I won’t wait until 6% from the Fed, but I will wait until the yield reaches 4.25% for the 10-year Treasury. I’m looking for that yield sometime in late 2023. Buy at Treasuries at that 4.25% for the 10-year Treasury and watch that 6% peak rate from the Fed. The world is round.
February 9, 2023 | Daily JAM, Videos |
Today I posted my two-hundred-and-thirty-fifth YouTube video: Quick Pick C3.ai Today’s Quick Pick: C3.ai (NYSE: AI). This is not a normal Quick Pick, this is, well, a little different. I’m not suggesting you buy this today, but instead, keep this one in your back pocket for the next big “risk-on” market rally. This is TICKER you’ll want to own when the market is shooting upward. Someone recently commented on Seeking Alpha that this ticker is worth more than the company–and I think they’re exactly right. When Microsoft came out with the news that they had invested $10 billion into OpenAI, it kicked off a frenzied buying spree for all things “AI.” C3.AI, with its ticker, AI, was no exception. AI saw its stock shoot up from $10.26 to $25 in approximately a month. I maintain that if you were to start an ice tea business, but call it “Ice Tea AI,” your stock would shoot up during this time as well. The company is a real company, run by Tom Siebel, a Silicon Valley pioneer. Overall, the company doesn’t have a lot of traction in the market just yet, and I’m not sure they have a big enough asset to be bought out at the moment. For now, keep this in mind for that small rocket section of your portfolio; if it blows up- no big deal, if it goes to the moon, fantastic!
February 6, 2023 | Daily JAM, Perfect Five-ETFs, Videos, Volatility |
Today I posted my two-hundred-and-thirty-third YouTube video: Trend of the Week China Accelerates This week’s Trend of the Week: China Accelerates. There is a horrific death toll in China as the country’s COVID policy changed dramatically, allowing COVID cases to surge wildly, spreading throughout the country and killing possibly a million people, but ultimately resulting (everyone hopes) in immunity. Now, Bloomberg is seeing a pick-up in China’s manufacturing activity and predicts 5.8% GDP growth in 2023, a huge bump from 3% in 2022. You can see this upswing by looking at the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (Nasdaq: FXI) as the market anticipates this GDP growth and a likely stimulus from the People’s Bank of China to make up for problems relating to the COVID crash. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), which is an ETF that tracks at emerging markets as a whole and is heavily influenced by China, is also back on the upswing. I had been shorting EEM as China’s economy was dragging markets down, but I’ll be ending that short now. The bad thing about China being back is that it will start exporting inflation to the global economy, likely to the tune of about 100 basis points. Whether or not this will change the Fed’s timeline for pausing interest rates is unclear at this point. We can expect higher commodity prices, energy prices, and eventually, consumer prices as China continues its upswing. To follow more ETFs, go to my paysite, JubakAM.com.
February 2, 2023 | Daily JAM, Dividend Income, Videos |
Today I posted my two-hundred-and-thirty-second YouTube video: Quick Pick Intel Today’s Quick Pick: Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). Intel’s revenue and earnings report last week was terrible. It was a classic kitchen sink quarter, where the company laid out all the bad news at once, so investors only have positive things to look forward to. The stock was trading at $28 on January 31, and the 52-week range is $52.5 – $24, so we’re currently pretty close to the bottom of the range. The 2022 loss is a little over 38% but year to date, even with all of this bad news, the stock is actually up 5.75. If you have a longer time range, this is the time to buy Intel. We’re close to a bottom here and their plans going forward include new chips and, in 2024, new technology that can really compete with AMD. Additionally, Intel’s fab business, where they manufacture chips designed by other companies, went up about 30%. They are one of the few companies left that are actually manufacturing the chips, (their biggest competitor being Taiwan Semiconductors.) As Intel improves its own technology, its fab business will grow and become more appealing to chip designers. As long as Intel hits its projected milestones throughout 2023, this is a good buy for 2024.
