The week will bring lots of important news on inflation and on the auto sectors and from Adobe on developments in AI. With some strange wrinkles in timing due to the short Good Friday schedule.
Access to auto credit declined in January as credit tightened across all channels and across most lender types compared to December, according to the Dealertrack Credit Availability Index. Investors who pay so much attention to interest rates to predict the trend in consumer spending need to spend more time on the other parts of the current credit crunch, the ability of loans. Consumers who can’t borrow can’t spend no matter how many times the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates.
Usually I start off one of these stock-picking Special Reports by building a paradigm that I can use to screen for the kind of stocks I’m looking for. For this Special Report: 10 Penny Stock Home Runs I’m going to reverse that process and begin with the 10 picks.My first pick is Luminar Technologies.
General Motors (GM) shares are up 8.34% as of the close today after the company reported a huge jump in earnings for the fourth quarter and the full year. For the quarter the car company reported adjusted earnings per share of $2.12 versus an expected $1.69, and revenue of $43.1 billion versus an expected $40 billion. Revenue grew by 28% year over year. For the full year, GM reported EBIT profit of $14.5 billion, near the high end of its forecast of $13 billion to $15 billion.
Ford Motor (F) CEO Jim Farley said yesterday, December 9, that pre-orders for the soon-to-launch F-150 Lightning pickup truck are so great that it had to stop taking reservations. Ford shares were up 9.81% today, Friday, December 10 as of the New York close.
So far Ford Motor (F) is meeting the expectations I had when I added it to the Jubak Picks Portfolio on June 9, 2021. Today, Wednesday, October 27, the company raised its earnings forecast (EBITDA) for 2121 to $10.5 billion to $11.5 billion on an improved supply of chips, and strong demand for its cars, especially for the electric versions of its Mustang and F150 pickup. The company also reinstated a quarterly dividend-
The global semiconductor shortage is getting worse as the Delta variant creates production delays in Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. That’s a new set of bottlenecks. Some automakers that had managed to avoid big shutdowns in production during earlier stages of the shortage are now moving to curtail output.
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.
General Motors (GM) will boost global spending on electric and autonomous vehicles to $35 billion through 2025. That’s a 30% jump over its last spending plan, Reuters reported today.
Chip lead times, the gap between ordering a chip and taking delivery, increased to 17 weeks in April, indicating users are getting more desperate to secure supply, according to research by Susquehanna Financial Group. That is the longest wait since the firm began tracking the data in 2017.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), the globes biggest independent chip foundry, said last week that it expects the chip shortage that has left automakers scrambling for silicon and cutting back production will be over by the end of the third quarter. Whether that’s good news or not depends on how much weight you give to this company’s projections.
