September 26, 2023 | AAPL, ADBE, ALB, AMAT, EUM, GOLD, LAC, Morning Briefing, MSFT, NVDA, PILBF, RWM, SCCO, Short Term, Special Reports, UUP, Volatility |
So what do you do with your portfolio for the rest of 2023? And what’s your best strategy to be prepared for 2024? In Part 1 of this Special Report I laid out the 10 developments that I thought would drive the financial markets for the rest of 223 and into 2024. Today, in Part 2, I’m going to give you the first 2 of 10 moves to take–with as much detail and as many specifics as possible–that you should be making now to position your portfolio for the uncertainties of the last quarter of 2023.
February 6, 2023 | Daily JAM, Perfect Five-ETFs, Videos, Volatility |
Today I posted my two-hundred-and-thirty-third YouTube video: Trend of the Week China Accelerates This week’s Trend of the Week: China Accelerates. There is a horrific death toll in China as the country’s COVID policy changed dramatically, allowing COVID cases to surge wildly, spreading throughout the country and killing possibly a million people, but ultimately resulting (everyone hopes) in immunity. Now, Bloomberg is seeing a pick-up in China’s manufacturing activity and predicts 5.8% GDP growth in 2023, a huge bump from 3% in 2022. You can see this upswing by looking at the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (Nasdaq: FXI) as the market anticipates this GDP growth and a likely stimulus from the People’s Bank of China to make up for problems relating to the COVID crash. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), which is an ETF that tracks at emerging markets as a whole and is heavily influenced by China, is also back on the upswing. I had been shorting EEM as China’s economy was dragging markets down, but I’ll be ending that short now. The bad thing about China being back is that it will start exporting inflation to the global economy, likely to the tune of about 100 basis points. Whether or not this will change the Fed’s timeline for pausing interest rates is unclear at this point. We can expect higher commodity prices, energy prices, and eventually, consumer prices as China continues its upswing. To follow more ETFs, go to my paysite, JubakAM.com.
September 28, 2022 | Daily JAM, Videos |
My one-hundred-and-eighty-ninth YouTube video: “From a Bear Market to a Global Financial Crisis” went up today. To me, it increasingly looks like we’re going from a bear market to a global financial crisis. The signs of an upcoming global financial crisis are there: volatility in the currency markets, the decline in nearly every currency against the dollar, the World Bank lowering its estimates of economic growth around the world, and global inflation due to food and energy. A good way to track the “progress” toward a global financial crisis0 is to look at emerging markets. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) and iShares MSCI India ETF (INDA) both saw accelerated declines starting around September 12, and South Korea has been down since mid-August. Many key emerging markets rely on in-flows of foreign capital to balance their accounts but the flow of that money has slowed, as investors are risking less internationally and keeping their funds closer to home. Right now, we’re seeing a global “Whac-a-Mole”, where individual countries pop up as problems. But if more financial individual crises pop up simultaneously and at a more rapid pace, we’ll have a global financial crisis on our hands. Oh, goody. Something more to worry about.
July 19, 2022 | Daily JAM, EUM, FXI, Perfect Five-ETFs |
I’m making a switch today (well, actually tomorrow) in the Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio Out goes the iShares Large Cap China ETF (FXI). In comes the ProShares Short MSCI Emerging Markets (EUM). My weighting remains the same at 15% of the five-ETF portfolio.
July 15, 2022 | Daily JAM, Videos |
I’m firmly in the negative camp on emerging markets. If you want to profit from the downward move in these markets, I see two options: one is investing in a fund that shorts emerging markets, like EUM. Or, two, you can buy put options on a fund like EMXC (which tracks emerging markets minus China). There are benefits and downsides to each approach.
July 11, 2022 | Daily JAM, Videos |
My one-hundred-and-fifty-sixth YouTube video “Trend of the Week: India’s at a Danger Point” went up today. This week’s Trend video is a follow-up to my piece on the “Global Debt Bomb” from last week. Maybe default by Sri Lania or Laos isn’t enough to disturb the global financial marketplace, but India? I think the Indian economy is at a danger point, with money flowing out of the country and high inflation. I think this will have a huge negative effect on emerging markets globally.
March 10, 2022 | Daily JAM, Videos, Volatility |
I’m starting up my videos on JubakAM.com again–this time using YouTube as a platform. My one-hundredth-and eleventh YouTube video “Russia’s looming default” went up today.
January 24, 2022 | Daily JAM, Short Term, Volatility |
When I posted over the weekend that coming increase in interest rates from the Federal Reserve and the possibility of soaring energy prices from a Russia/Ukraine conflict and the ensuring sanctions by Western allies against Russia constituted a double whammy on emerging market assets and developing economies. A strong dollar and higher U.S. interest rates would exacerbate a looming debt crisis (yes, yet again) in the developing world, and higher oil and natural gas prices (and tighter supplies) would hit developing economies really really hard. I said then that I’d be looking for hedges to insure against and profit from the downside risk in emerging market assets. Well, things have moved faster than I expected
December 12, 2021 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend, Mid Term |
In late November non-resident cash flows to emerging market assets, excluding China, turned negative for the first time since March 2020 and the Pandemic global economic dip, according to the Institute of International Finance.
October 2, 2021 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend |
Our regular (or occasional or perhaps occasionally regular) Friday series (actually running on Satur... To subscribe to JAM you need to fill in some details below including, ahem, some info on how you'll pay us. A subscription is $199 (although if you're subscribing...
March 7, 2021 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend |
Cash flows for emerging market stocks turned negative in the last week of February, according to the Institute for International Finance. Cash flows for emerging market debt turned negative last week. The data show daily outflows of $290 million in the last week. That compares to daily inflows of about $325 million in February.
November 8, 2020 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
... the dollar. The dollar continued to fall last week. The dollar spot index (DXY) of the dollar against a basket of other major trading currencies is now down 4.32% for the year (as of the close on November 6.) More recently, the dollar is down 5.3% since June 29....