Trick or trend: Safe haven, safe haven. Who’s got the safe haven
The unexpected weakness in the normally safe-haven Swiss franc indicates just how uncertain long-term market “truths” have become. What is a safe haven now?
Notes You Need for April 13: Google and right to be forgotten, Amazon, BA, rig count, Uber, USPS, NFLX, gold ETFs
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 example of an entry: “This morning the Trump administration issued an executive order setting up a task force to examine the operations and finances of the U.S. Postal Service. Section 3 says “The Task Force shall conduct a thorough evaluation of the operations and finances of the USPS, including:  (i)   the expansion and pricing of the package delivery market and the USPS’s role in competitive markets.” Think that could mean Amazon’s (AMZN) contract for package delivery?”
Goldman Sachs turns bullish on gold
Goldman Sachs has turned positive on gold for the first time in five years. Â “Our commodities team believes that the dislocation between the gold prices and U.S. rates is here to say,” Goldman Sachs says. Drivers for higher gold prices include signs of an uptick in inflation and increased risk in equity markets.
Cracking the nutty asset correlations of this market
This morning provided a great example of how confusing and complicated correlations among asset classes are in the current market.Stocks rallied with the Standard & Poor’s 500 up 1.15% as of 11 a.m. New York time and the Dow Industrial Average ahead 1.7%. In some markets that would have been an all-clear signal after last week’s chaos and sent a message that buying risk assets was okay again.
Rebalancing my Perfect 5 ETF portfolio to hedge against a break through the February 8 low
When I last rebalanced my Perfect 5 Active Passive ETF Portfolio on January 16, I said that I’d rebalance it again on July 1–unless events intervened to force an unscheduled rebalancing. Well, events have indeed intervened. The S&P 500 index closed within a handful of points of the February 8 low today, March 23. If the index and the U.S. stock markets were only going to drop another few points and then hold (or even bounce on that low), I wouldn’t feel the need to rebalance. But there’s a good chance the market will fail its test of the February 8 low.
How to manage risk in this market when the traditional risk safe havens aren’t working
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.”
Bonds sell off today on fear of end of the week jobs number?
Last week we saw Treasury bond prices fall and their yields rise on weakness in the U.S. dollar. Today the dollar is stronger–up 0.31% on the Dollar Spot Index–but bond prices have still stumbled and yields on the 10-year Treasury have climbed to 2.7%, the highest level since early 2014.
What seems to be driving this dynamic is fear in the bond markets of end of the week data on the jobs market.
Trump administration pushes a weak dollar at Davos
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin gave the markets a green light to push the U.S. dollar lower in remarks at Davos. Currency traders, already on board the lower-dollar train, didn’t waste time before pushing the throttle. The Dollar Spot Index (DXY) is down 0.86% as of noon New York time to 89.347. Traders have been eyeing the 90 level on the index to see whether support would hold at this level or if the index would break below 90 and set up a move lower.
Gold keeps climbing on rising demand from ETFs
Gold held by ETFs that invest in the yellow metal rose to 2,250 metric tons on January 22, according to Bloomberg. That’s the highest level of gold held by ETFs since May 2013. After turning in its best year since 2010 in 2017, gold has continued to climb in 2018
Finally. As promised. Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio performance and rebalancing–up 8.6% since October
Back in October 2017 I set up a very simple portfolio of 5 ETFs with the goal of beating the performance of a Standard & Poor’s 500 ETF (so that’s the benchmark) with less risk (because of the added diversification.) I said that I would rebalance this portfolio as needed–or on a six month schedule (which ever came first.) But that this would be a relatively passive portfolio of passive ETFs–but with some active management thrown in by way of those shifting allocations. Well, the portfolio certainly isn’t six months old, but we have flipped the calendar page into 2018 so I’m going to do the first performance report now and at the same time do an initial rebalancing of assets.
Notes You Need for January 9: Target prices, MSFT, INTC, AMD, bitcoin apology, gold
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 would resembles this one from today: “10:20 a.m.: Wall Street analysts continue to position their target prices ahead of earnings season. Today I’ve seen higher target prices for MGM Resorts International (MGM), up to $4 from $41; Microsoft (MSFT), up to $115 from $100; and Charles Schwab (SCHW), up to $60 from $52. I’ve also seen lower targets for Allegan (AGN), down to $215 from $230; and Alibaba (BABA), down to $219 from $221.”
Notes You Need for January 2: Macao gaming, USB, natural gas, gold, WFT
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 resembles this from today: “10:40 a.m.: Ahead of earnings Barclays raised its target on U.S. Bancorp (USB) to $65 from $60. Stock was trading at $53.38 at the open. Before Christmas, December 17, to be precise UBS downgraded the bank stock to neutral from buy (while raising its target price to $60 from $58.) The downgrade reflects a shift to favor banks with a higher exposure to tax cuts in the recently passed tax bill.”
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