MGM

Please Watch My New YouTube video: Quick Pick Sell MGM

Please Watch My New YouTube video: Quick Pick Sell MGM

On Friday I posted my two-hundred-and-twentieth YouTube video: Quick Pick Sell MGM. This week’s Quick Pick is a little different. Normally my Quick Picks are long (buys) but this one is short (sell). This is a reaction to the terrible Covid outbreak in China right now. China went from a strict, 0-covid policy to hardly any policy at all. While their vaccine rate sounds good at 90%, a lot of that is Chinese-produced, non-RNA vaccines, which have proven to be fairly ineffective against the new Covid variants. As a result, viral projection models expect 1.1 to 1.3 million deaths over the next wave (or waves) of Covid in China. So how does that affect MGM International? Their resort in Macau, China, while recently receiving their gambling license renewal, will get hit hard by the largely self-directed reduction in travel. And the “official” policy, which is to encourage travel and work-as-usual, seems to be having the opposite effect by creating fear among Chinese citizens. Macao, following the lead of the new policies from the central government, has just about dropped its requirements for testing and quarantine. The new rules essentially say, “We just want you to come.” Instead, many people are locking themselves down in an effort to stay healthy as China’s covid problem runs rampant and the Chinese government refuses to share accurate data. I don’t want to watch this Covid disaster further hammer my position in the stock. I’ll be selling it at a loss in my Jubak Picks Portfolio (hey, harvest those tax losses for 2022), but I will look to get back in April or May if I start to see optimistic traders betting on an end to this wave of the Covid Pandemic in China.

How bad will China’s Covid disaster be for stocks? The likely answer is very bad–sell Volkswagen and MGM

How bad will China’s Covid disaster be for stocks? The likely answer is very bad–sell Volkswagen and MGM

After swiftly abandoning its 0-Covid lockdown policy–without replacing it with anything resembling a national Covid protocol–China is facing a Covid disaster that could see more than 1 million deaths from the coronavirus in 2023. That would put China’s death toll from the Pandemic on par with that of the United States, which has seen 1.1 million people die from Covid19 since the pandemic began. The magnitude of the disaster is actually understated by that comparison since China’s comparable death toll would be condensed into a much shorter period than that in the United States. We don’t know with any degree of precision what a pandemic outbreak like this would do to the economies of China and the world. But we can make some reasonable guesses.

A stock isn’t a buy just because it’s cheaper than it was–Lessons from Disney on when to buy on the dip

A stock isn’t a buy just because it’s cheaper than it was–Lessons from Disney on when to buy on the dip

After a huge rally like we’re had this year, it’s easy to fall into one of the most common buy on the dip traps. Just because a stock is cheaper than it was, it’s not necessarily a bargain. There’s nothing that says a stock has to return to its previous price after a dip. And especially that it has to return to that former price on your schedule. Let me use Disney (DIS), one of the stocks I’m tracking in my Dip-O-Meter, as an example.

How much of a hedge do you need–and how much can you afford

I try to use big up and (especially) down days in the stock market to stress test my portfolio. One of the things I look to learn from a high volatility down days is how the hedges that I’ve put on to protect my portfolio work under big stress. So, for example, on a big day down day like July 16, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 725 points, I looked to see if 1) the hedges I owned worked to reduce or better yet eliminate my downside losses, and 2) how much those hedges were costing me in opportunities for upside gains postponed.

Special Report: 5 Picks and 5 Hedges for a Falling Market (4 picks and 2 hedges as of June 4)

Special Report: 5 Picks and 5 Hedges for a Falling Market (4 picks and 2 hedges as of June 4)

2021 will be a very different year from 2020. Or to be more exact the second half of 2021 and 2022 will be very different. We’re looking at going from a financial market where investors and traders believed the Federal Reserve was on their side with cash and more cash to push the prices of financial assets higher and then higher some more to a market where everyone is asking when will the Fed take th punch bowl away and shut down the party.Let me be clear. At this point it’s not the certainty that the Fed will reduce its $120 billion in monthly bond buying in this exact month or that, or the certainty that the Fed will start raising interest rates before the end of 2022, say, but rather the worry that those events are on the calendar, that they will change the trend in the market, and that no one can predict when the turn will materialize.FDR said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” To which the market right now says “Exactly.” Look at this “fear and worry calendar” that I’ve put together. And today I’ve got 3 picks and one hedge for this market

Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…

Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…

This week will bring positioning for what’s looking like a record quarter for earnings growth for the first quarter of 2021 that’s likely to keep the stock market trend pointing upward. The first earnings report for the quarter are due from the big banks on April 14 and 15.
On April 1 FactSet reported that the bottom-up analyst earnings projection for the stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 for the first quarter had climbed 6% as the quarter itself progressed. That’s the biggest increase in analyst projections since FactSet began tracking quarterly bottom-up earnings estimates in the second quarter of 2002. Normally, analyst estimates slip downwards as the quarter progresses with the average decrease of the last five years at 4.2%
What we’re looking at the the possibility of an almost unbelievable surge in earnings in the first quarter of 2021, the second quarter, and for the whole year–caused by year-to-year comparisons with the pandemic recession in these quarters of 2020.

Raising my target price for MGM Resorts in my Jubak Picks Portfolio to $48

MGM Pick #9 for my new Millennial Portfolio (for investors who have more time than money)

I’m taking advantage of today’s drop in shares of MGM Resorts International (MGM) after yesterday’s earnings report to add these shares to my new Millennial Portfolio. The stock dropped on bad pandemic performance from the company’s Las Vegas casinos and resorts and a slide in revenue from its Macao operations. But revenue from online betting soared. And that business is the future of MGM–and the reason that investors with long-time horizons would want to own this stock. (And it won’t hurt at all, when revenue picks up from Las Vegas operations once the pandemic is in the rear-view mirror.

Market sees fourth quarter GDP slowdown as good news

Market sees fourth quarter GDP slowdown as good news

U.S. GDP growth slowed in the fourth quarter, gaining just 1% from the third quarter. For the full year the U.S. economy contracted by 3.5%. That makes 2020 the first time that the economy has contracted for a full year since 2009 and the Great Recession. At the bottom of that recession that economy contracted by 2.5%. 2020 is also the worst year for economic growth since 1946 when the economy shrank by 11.6% as the country demobilized after World War II. Consumer spending slowed in all 15 categories tracked by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The sectors that had powered the recovery in the third quarter–restaurants and hotels, for instance–reversed. The growth in spending on cars and health car also slowed from the acceleration in the third quarter. So why is this good news as far as the stock market is concerned?