May 18, 2018 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
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 You Need. This item from today is a representative sample: “3:40 p.m.: The U.S. Dollar Index recorded its fourth weekly gain in the past five weeks, rising nearly 4.5% during that period. It’s interesting to speculate what the price of oil would be now without that dollar advance. Since oil trades in dollars, the price of a barrel of oil falls when the value of a dollar rises against other currencies.”
March 15, 2018 | Daily JAM, Long Term, Volatility |
If you spend a significant part of your day staring at your computer to watch the markets, you know that, perplexingly, the traditional safe havens for mitigating portfolio risk haven’t been working very well. Now Goldman Sachs has put its computers and data crunchers to work and has reached the same conclusion as the anecdotal evidence suggested. Goldman has tagged this a period of “diversification desperation.”
March 9, 2018 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
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 You Need. A representative sample is this entry from today: “10: 20 a.m.: Recode is out with the compilation of reviews on Samsung’s new flagship phones, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ due in stores on Friday, March 16. Consensus: It’s not an “If you’ve seen last year’s Galaxy S8, you’ve seen the $719.99 S9. The Bixby voice assistant is still a dud.” Samsung added a number of gimmicky features, Recode concludes, such as face-scanning, aperture-switching, Super Slow Motion and AR Emoji to show on TV commercials. The company did make a number of unseen changed to improve the user experience. My take is that this illustrates the big current problem with top end smart phones: Where’s the whiz-bang to get people to ditch their old phone and spend $700 to $1,000 on a new model?”
January 26, 2018 | CAT, Daily JAM, Stock Alerts |
Investors and traders were determined to sell Caterpillar (CAT) shares after the stock gained 70% in 2017. That determination overshadowed yesterday's good news on fourth quarter earnings and positive guidance for 2018. The shares, which I added to my Jubak Picks...
January 25, 2018 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
Today somebody in the Trump administration decided that the idea of the world’s biggest debtor nation talking down the value of its currency–as Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin did yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos–might be a bad idea. Overseas investors worried about a decline in the value of their dollar-denominated Treasuries would be certain to demand higher yields just as the Treasury was scheduled to sell $1 trillion in new Treasuries in 2018. So this afternoon President Donald Trump told CNBC that he favored a strong U.S. currency.
January 25, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
The dollar continued its fall today after European Central Bank president Mario Draghi voiced minimal concern over the rise in the euro. That currency topped $1.25 for the first time since 2014. The MSCI Emerging Markets Currency Index jumped 0.9%, its biggest leap in more than a year.
December 28, 2017 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
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 You Need. A typical post looks much like this entry from today: “10:20 a.m.: Cook County, the county that includes Chicago, has announced a lawsuit against makers of prescription opioid painkillers such as OxyContin and Percocet. The lawsuit cites the companies’ “coordinated, sophisticated, and highly deceptive marketing.” Cook County has seen a 70% increase in opioid-related deaths between 2015 and 2016.”
December 13, 2017 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
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 You Need. A typical item is much like this from today: “10:20 a.m.: Intel (INTC) will cut payments under its “Intel Inside” program by 40% to 60%, according to CRN.com. Intel Inside darts to 1991 and paid OEMs and channel partners to mention Intel’s brand on products from PCs to workstations. CRN.com says that Intel will use some of the funds from this cut to invest in its data center business.”
November 3, 2017 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
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 You Need. Items in this mini-blog include mentions like this one: “10:20 a.m.: Japan’s stock market was closed today but the Nikkei 225 index gained 2.4% for the week continuing its post-election run higher.”
October 23, 2017 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
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 You Need. It includes items like this from today: “10:40 a.m.: A teardown by iFixit showed that the Visual Core chip from Google’s new Pixel 2 phone is built on an Intel (INTC) chip. A Google spokesperson told CNBC that the “Pixel Visual Core is a custom designed process from Google” that the company built “with Intel.” Google also confirmed the Alphabet’s Wayne self-driving technology uses Intel chips.
October 3, 2017 | Daily JAM, GLD, Perfect Five-ETFs, Stock Alerts |
For my third pick for my new Perfect 5 ETF Active Passive Portfolio I looked to fill the Commodities slot in the portfolio with an ETF that would provide a hedge for the portfolio if the market tumbled but that would also produce a positive return if the market didn’t fall but other recent trends continued. The pick that achieves those two goals is the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD)
October 2, 2017 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
It’s hard to interpret today’s report on manufacturing from the Institute for Supply Management because of the damage inflicted on the U.S. economy by hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, but it certainly looks like the economy is strengthening,. The ISM factory index climbed to 60.8 in September –economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a reading of 58.1. This it the highest level for the index since May 2004
