
Special Report: 10 Greatest “Savings Account Stocks”–#3 Applied Materials
Today, September 25, I’m making Applied Materials (AMAT) my third pick in my Special Report: 10 Greatest “Savings Account Stocks.”
Today, September 25, I’m making Applied Materials (AMAT) my third pick in my Special Report: 10 Greatest “Savings Account Stocks.”
I’d call the policy being followed by the People’s Bank in the China Evergrande crisis “Try to support the markets but see how little we can get away with.” Today Chins’s central bank supplied liquidity to the country’s financial markets with an injection of short-term cash. But the move fell far short of the kind of “Charge of the People’s vanguard” that the bank has mustered in earlier crises. And, importantly, there was no big statement of market support to go with today’s actions.
Today, September 20, I’m making Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) my second pick in my Special Report: 10 Greatest “Savings Account Stocks.”
The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell another 1.70% today and it’s now down 3.94% from the September 2 high. As the index dropped last week (again) and over the weekend, lots of Wall Street money managers said Hey, stocks were over-valued and news from Beijing and Washington (and places in between) is negative, but if stocks drop 5% we will be buyers. It looks like might get to test that conviction sooner than anyone expected. Which way will things break on another decline?
Huge surge in volatility this morning. It’s as if everybody woke up and said, “Hey, you know there are risky trends in the world.” As of 12:30 p.m. New York time today, Monday, September 20, the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index is up 29.51% to $26.08. I think there’s more volatility ahead so today I’m going to sell the VIX November 17 Call Options with a strike price of 18 in my Volatility Portfolio and buy some more time with a purchase of the VIX December 22 Call Options with a strike price of 19.
You know how a savings account works, right? You deposit money in a bank. The bank uses your deposit to make a loan. Out of its profits, the bank pays you interest. That interest payment is a pittance today. 0.5% if you’re very, very lucky. But the national average is just 0.06%. What I’m calling “savings account stocks” work the same way that a bank savings account does. (Share prices do fluctuate but in the long run I’d argue that these stocks are as safe as a bank savings account.) And they pay an annual return that’s 10X–or much, much more–higher–than the paltry 0.5% now offered by the highest yielding savings accounts. How do these stocks work and why are they so much better than bank savings accounts? You–investors–give the company capital by buying newly issued shares or company bonds. The company invests that cash in making widgets or apps or whatever. And the company returns the bulk of the profits from those investments to the owners of its stock in the form of dividends, stock buybacks, and the appreciation in share price that results from the growth of the company’s business over time. I’m posting the first of my 10 Greatest “Savings Account Stocks” today and my Special Report will name a total of 10 great “savings account stocks” in posts over the next week. Today’s Greatest Savings Account Stock Pick: Microsoft (MSFT). The average annual return on Microsoft shares has been 28% over the last 10 years. Beats that 0.5% on a savings account, no?
I found myself humming “I scare myself” this morning as the market continued its September selling. The Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks song pretty much sums up the market action this morning. We all know that stocks go down in September so we’re sending stocks downward. And we all know that September 17 is the Big Bad Day in the month so it’s unreasonable to expect a turn in sentiment before that date. But so far, I’d note, the selling seems “orderly” with the usual candidates bucking the trend and showing up in the green. It’s when those still in the green stocks start tumbling that I’ll really start to worry.
In last week’s video QuickPick of Palo Alto Networks (PANW) I promised a longer take on the cybersecurity sector and another pick for my portfolios to go with Palo Alto Systems and CrowdStrike (CRWD). This post is that (somewhat) longer take and OKTA (OKTA) is my promised pick for my Jubak Picks and Millennial portfolios.
We’ve heard from Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple. The earnings from the BIG GUYS are IN. But this week brings a bushel of earnings reports from the next generation in technology. And on recent performance these stocks have been out gaining most of the big tech stocks. Like what stocks, you ask?
The Apple September 17 Call Options with a strike of $150 in my Volatility Portfolio climbed another 23.3% today. The options looks to be moving up as traders position themselves for a bump in Apple after the company’s next new product day–speculation has the date for the announcement of a nee iPhone as September 14 with pre-orders to start on September 17. The announcement is likely to be big news and will probably drive the stock higher. For the September 17 Call Options, however, the date is something of a double-edged sword since a September 14 announcement–a big positive–runs right into the time decay of the options since them expire on September 17.
I’m starting up my videos on JubakAM.com again–this time using YouTube as a platform. My forty-fifth YouTube video “QuickPick: Palo Alto Networks” went up today.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), which makes chips for everybody and everything, plans to raise prices on its silicon by 10% to 20% in 2022, DigiTimes reported today. The company will raise prices on “mature-technology chips” manufactured on 16 nanometer or larger processes by 20%. Leading-edge chips with circuits smaller than 16 nanometers will see price increases of about 10%.