April 2, 2025
What You Need to Know Today:
Job growth in January slower but still steady
The U.S. economy added 143,000 jobs in January, a slower but solid pace that was a tick below economist forecasts. The unemployment rate dipped to 4%. The labor market slowed compared to December. That December report was revised Friday to show 307,000 jobs gained that month. Average hourly wage growth accelerated, rising by 4.1% rate over the past 12 months. That wage gain was above the rate of inflation.

Watch my new YouTube video: What if the economic consensus on tariffs is wrong?
Today’s video is What if the economic consensus on tariffs is wrong? It would be really bad news for stocks. The current consensus among economists is that tariffs will be inflationary as companies pass on rising prices to consumers. However, as Nir Kaissar recently wrote in an opinion piece for Bloomberg, this may not be correct. He used McDonald’s as an example. In February, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said that the fast food restaurant has been losing low-income customers–houseold income of $45,000 or less– as the cost of its meals has risen. The price of a Big Mac, for example, has risen 25% since 2019, even though the price of raw materials has not risen at that rate. The operating margin at the company gone up and Wall Street expects that to continue, even as the company has lost customers. The company announced that they’d be offering a new, low price menu in an effort to retain a larger low-income consumer base. If more companies go in the direction of cutting costs to retain customers rather than passing on the cost of tariffs to consumers, Wall Street will be in for a big, unwelcome surprise in earnings since the current analyst consensus looks for operating margins to continue to climb in 2025 and 2026. 2025 is sure to come with volatility and uncertainty until we have a better idea of how high and far reaching the tariffs will be, and how companies will respond to them.

“Drill, baby, drill”? OPEC doesn’t think so
Oil edged lower–West Texas Intermediate closed down 0.06% and Brent ended 0.08% lower–after OPEC+ announced plans to defer supply increases for three months, but still add barrels starting in April to a market that’s expected to be oversupplied. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies agreed to delay their planned output hike.

Peak gasoline demand is near (or maybe even here) in China
The forecasts don’t totally agree on the date but they do agree on the trend: Because China’s sales of electric vehicles and hybrids accounted for more than half of retail passenger vehicle sales in the four months from July, the country’s demand for gasoline is near a peak. And unlike in the U.S. and Europe where peaks in consumption were followed by long plateaus, the drop in demand in the world’s top crude importer is expected to be more pronounced. Brokerage CITIC Futures sees Chinese gasoline consumption dropping by 4% to 5% a year through 2030. The
International Energy Agency says demand peaked in 2024 and forecasts a 2.3% decline in 2025.

When does that U.S.-China tech trade war arrive? Right about now
Yesterday, Tuesday, December 3, China retaliated to a new round of U.S. technology restrictions from the Biden Administration with a ban on exports of high-tech minerals gallium, germanium, and antimony. Beijing will also place tighter controls on sales of graphite. On Monday the White House slapped new restrictions on the sale of high-bandwidth memory chips made by U.S. and foreign companies to China. The measures blacklisted 140 additional Chinese entities with a focus on companies that produce chip manufacturing equipment that’s crucial to China’s pursuit of semiconductor self-sufficiency. The metals targeted in China’s export ban are used in everything from semiconductors to satellites and night-vision goggles.

Saturday Night Quarterback (on a Sunday) says, For the week ahead expect…
I the Big Event to be Friday morning’s report of the November jobs numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 2% last week. The Nasdaq Composite and the Standard & Poor’s 500 rose more than 1%. Both the S&P 500 and Dow Jones ended November at all-time highs. A ”good” jobs report, which is likely, will keep the records coming for at least another week–until the usual Fed meeting jitters set in on the run up to the central bank’s meeting on December 18.

Special Report: 10 Great Growth Stocks that Are Getting Greater–today my 10th (and final) pick QCOM
GREATER Growth Stock Pick #10: Qualcomm (QCOM). I think the market and the current stock price are missing a good prt of the growth story for Qualcomm. Which is why I find the stock undervalued enough to buy here. Right now the market disagrees. However, I’ll be adding the stock to my Jubak Picks and Volatility Portfolios on Tuesday, January 16.
Live Market Report (20 minute delay)

Good news on growth from China
Today China reported third quarter GDP rose by 4.9% year over year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. That’s better than economics had expected and it’s within striking distance of Beijing’s goal of 5% growth for the year. Economists are still expecting growth to slow to 4.5% in 2024.

Retail sales stronger than expected; Treasury prices fall and yields surge (some more)
Retail sales in September roe by 0.7% from August, the Commerce Department reported today. That was more than twice the All Street projector of 0.3% growth. I would note that these retail sales numbers are not adjusted for inflation. So yes, they may be surprisingly strong, given that Wall Street was expecting 0% growth once you subtract inflation. But they hardly indicate a “Nellie, bar the door” economic expansion.

Notes You Need for October 16: Amazon Prime Day sales, chip turnaround, diabetes scourge, another unicorn disappears
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don't justify a full post. I've decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I'm calling Notes...
Add Italy to your list of Global Debt Bomb worries–maybe it should be at the top of the list
The last thing global financial markets need right now is another Euro Crisis. But that could be what Italy is about to put in motion

Special Report: 10 Contrarian Bargains to Buy Now–My third of 10 Picks is Barrick Gold
A few days ago I recommended selling positions in the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and in the VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX) on the grounds that with bon yields rising, gold wouldn’t move higher. (This was all, of course, before Hamas attacked Israel and sent markets running for safety. On Friday, October 13, Comex gold for December delivery was up 3.11%.) So what I am I doing today recommending Barrick Gold (GOLD) as the third pick in my Special Report “10 Contrarian Bargains to Buy Now”?

Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…
Look for a big earnings test for regional banks and a feW clues about consumer goods, airlines, and autos. Last week ended with great earnings reports from Big Banks JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC) and Citigroup (C). Big Bank earnings continue this week with Bank of America (BAC) and Goldman Sachs (GS) reporting on Tuesday. But the important news for the financial sector will come from the dozens of earnings reports from regional banks.

JPMorgan Chase starts off big-bank earnings by knocking it out of the park (Go Phillies!)
Maybe JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon felt his bank’s earnings report was so good that he had to pour a little cold water on investors. “This may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades,” Dimon said in a statement Friday. He also issued a caution about the records set in the third quarter. “These results benefit from our over-earning on both net interest income and below normal credit costs, both of which will normalize over time.” But the caution aside, it’s hard for me to find anything not to like in the big bank’s report.

Special Report: 10 Contrarian Bargains to Buy Now–My second of 10 Picks is Nidec
Today, October 12, I’m making Nidec, the Japanese company that is the leader in the market for small electric motors and a growing presence in the market for motors and drive trains for electric vehicles, the second pick in my Special Report: 10 Contrarian Bargains to Buy Now.

U.S. electric vehicle sales up 50% year over year in the third quarter, but Tesla loses market share
In the third quarter electric vehicle sales in the United States jumped to more than 300,000 for the first time, Cox Automotive reported today. Electric vehicle sales were up 50% year over year in the quarter. And electric vehicles made up 7.9% of total industry sales. It’s not surprising that as vehicle sales volumes have surged, market leader Tesla (TSLA) has lost market share.

Just enough in today’s CPI inflation report to keep one more rate increase for 2023 on the table
Today’s Consumer Price Index report on inflation had just enough bad news on inflation to keep one more interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve on the table for 2023. The all items CPI inflation rate rose 0.4% in September from August. That was slightly above the 0.3% monthly rate that economists had expected. The core rate, which excludes more volatile food and fuel prices, rose by 0.3% in the month, as expected by economists. The bad news in the core number is that the month to month rate of increase at 0.3% recently isn’t low enough to bring inflation down to the Fed’s 2% target.

We’re looking at a global debt bomb
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” Monty Python observed back in 1970 before attempting to torture a coal-miner’s wife with a dish rack. There’s an important investing version of this core truth: The financial market usually worries about the wrong problem. So that when the “Spanish Inquisition” (in financial terms) finally arrives, everybody is surprised. Well, we investors and traders have done it to ourselves again. We’ve spent much of 2022 and a good part of 2023 worrying about whether Federal Reserve interest rate increases would send the economy into a recession. There are still a few recession die hards worrying about that possibility, but by and large the worry has shifted to whether or not the Fed will delay its rate cuts in 2024–and thus delay the arrival of the “rate-cut-bounce.” While MANY–but certainly not all–investors, traders, and market analysts have been looking OVER THERE, however, the credit markets have built up a huge debt overhead and the global debt bomb looks ever closer to exploding. A crisis with the dire effects of the Global Financial Crisis of mid-2007 to 2009 is a possibility. I’d “guess” that most portfolios aren’t ready. The time to get ready is now. This increasingly looks like a debt market crisis of the type known as a Minsky Moment. To get ready first understand the source of the problem. I’m putting together a new Special Report for next week on what to do to get ready. Today’s post is a kind of set up, a get ready for the post on getting ready, if you will.

PepsiCo beats on earnings, raises guidance
Clearly, inflation isn’t bad for everyone. Not if you have pricing power, anyway. Today, PepsiCo (PEP) reported earnings and sales that a beat Wall Street estimates, and raised its guidance for the next quarter.

Special Report: 10 Contrarian Bargains to Buy Now–My first 3 picks are Luminar, Nidec, and Barrick
a lot of individual stocks are cheap right now, I’d argue. 180 of the 500 stocks in the S&P 500 trade now at the same or lower price that they commanded a year ago. And for many individual stocks the performance is even worse. For example, Luminar Technologies (LAZR), a maker of LIDAR safety and navigation equipment for cars, is down 40% in the last three months. Albemarle, the world’s leading supplier of lithium, is off 27% in the last three months. Nidec (NJDCY), a Japanese maker of small electric motors and electric vehicle drive trains, is down 13% in the last three months. I’d argue that these and the rest of the 10 Contrarian bargain stocks that I’m going to recommend in this Special Report share a number of characteristics that have led to their losses over the last few months or longer.

Selling 2 gold positions out of my portfolios tomorrow
Gold was up 1.9% in trading on COMEX today to $1876 an ounce on war in Israel and Gaza and fears that it would become a wider conflict in the region. I’ve been looking for an exit from two of my gold positions for a while now. And tomorrow is a good exit point, I think.

OPEC doesn’t see a reduction in global oil demand by 2045
Oil consumption will climb 16% to reach 116 million barrels a day in 2045, about 6 million a day more than previously predicted, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said today in its World Oil Outlook. India represents the biggest expansion in projected consumption, more than doubling its consumption to almost 12 million barrels a day, followed by China, with a gain of 4 million a day, or 26%.

News with the potential to move the markets this week: CPI inflation, Fed minutes, bank earnings
In my last post I wrote that the trend for the market is very uncertain at the moment and very dependent on news. This week will bring some of the news that will determine the market trend. Here’s a list in order of my sense of importance to the markets.

Saturday Night Quarterback (on a Sunday) says, For the week ahead expect…
I’m hoping for some clarity this week on the market trend after Friday’s wild day. Friday’s intraday moves summed up the uncertainty about the direction of this market.

Exxon Mobil in talks to acquire Pioneer Natural Resources for $60 billion–I’m selling my position on Monday
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Exxon Mobil (XOM) is in advanced talks to buy Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) in a deal valued at $60 billion. Pioneer currently has a market cap of $55 billion. Through in th debt that Exxon would be buying and there’s not a lot of extra upside here, in my opinion. Today’s 10.45% jump in pioneer shares to care of a lot of any potential deal premium. (I’m assuming that the report is accurate. Today’s news story follows on earlier speculation that the two companies were talking.) Unless you think another bidder will emerge–difficult but not impossible at this deal size, I’d sell my shares here. I like Pioneer as an independent big dividend paye

Ya can wrap fish in that ADP report showing a slowing jobs market
The U.S. economy added 336,000 jobs in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today, October 6. The unemployment rate held 3.8%. Economists surveyed Bloomberg had expected to see continued slowing growth in the labor market—-with forecasts of 170,000 jobs created, down from 187,000 in August. On Wednesday the ADP Research Institute reported that private payrolls rose by just 89,000 jobs in September. That was the fewest jobs added in a month since the start of 2021 and added to expectations of a weak report this morning.

So how high will yields go? I’m hearing 6% or even 7%
Today the yield on the 10-year Treasury closed at 4.71%. That was down 2 basis points on the day but in the year the yield is up 96y basis points. Almost a full percentage point. How high can yields go? Bond traders and investors want to know. Investors in other financial assets, stocks, for instance want to know. The Federal Reserve, which is supposed to set interest rates but is increasingly a sideline spectator on rates, wants to know.