May 15, 2023 | Daily JAM |
Want to short this market and a world full of risk? The choice is gold, of course. And the only question is whether to use the precious metal itself or shares of a gold miner. Here’s the basic case for gold now. The trend is extremely positive for gold under almost all scenarios. Which is why I’m making gold my #3 Short Pick in my Special Report: My 5 Favorite Shorts for This Market
May 3, 2023 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
Immediately after the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates another 25 basis points today, stocks moved up on a reading of the Fed’s 2 p.m. statement released with the rate news that saw the Fed as saying it would begin to cut interest rates soon. At 2:26 p.m. New York time the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 0.58%. In Wednesday’s statement, the Fed said, “In determining the extent to which additional policy firming may be appropriate to return inflation to 2% over time, the committee will take into account the cumulative tightening of monetary policy, the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, and economic and financial developments.” In March, the central bank had said it “anticipates that some additional policy firming may be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent over time.” But stocks peaked for the day shortly after Fed chair Jerome Powell began his press conference at 2:30 p.m.
April 27, 2023 | Daily JAM, IWM, RWM, Short Term, Special Reports |
I’m expecting modestly positive economic news in the next few days. Which will, in my opinion, create a low-risk opportunity to make big gains by going short this market in order to profit as stock prices fall. I’m looking to put the first of those shorts in place right now. With the rest to go into place in the days after the Federal Reserve meets on Wednesday, May 3. In this Special Report, I’ll explain this perhaps initially counter-intuitive call on short-term market direction and give you the details on five of my favorite shorts for profiting in this market. With the first short pick today
April 18, 2023 | COST, Daily JAM, GDX, GLD, GOLD, KO, Mid Term, PEP, RWM, Special Reports |
10 Picks for the Coming Recession. This one is especially difficult. Not only do I face the usual crystal-ball problem that comes up whenever you try to pick an investment for the future–what’s the macro and micro world going to look like in 6 months or a year from now–but I’ve got two big Recession-specific challenges. First, is there actually going to be a Recession in 2023? All the signs, in my opinion, point toward a recession in the second and third quarters, but it’s by no means guaranteed that we’ll have the two quarters of negative GDP growth that’s required by the minimal definition of a recession. And what’s the point, you might well ask, of making picks for a coming recession that never arrives? And, second, how bad will this recession be?
April 6, 2023 | Daily JAM, DVN, GDX, GOLD, GOOG, Jubak Picks, Long Term, MSFT, PXD, SCHW |
I will add this post to the end of my post of the entire Special Report today. I’m also posting it here, however, as a stand-alone so you will get notice in your email box that Move #4 has gone up. Here’s what I posted for Move #4.
April 4, 2023 | AG, Daily JAM, GDX, GLD, GOLD, Jubak Picks, Perfect Five-ETFs, Volatility |
Gold for June delivery closed at 2039.00 an ounce on the Comex today. That’s not too far away from the all-time record high of $2,070 an ounce. The move above $2,000 an ounce and any breach of the record at $2070 could trigger a rally as traders short gold buy to cover positions. That could well be true, but I’d note that this forecast of a gold rally is coming from traders long gold who are trying to talk a rally into being.
March 16, 2023 | Daily JAM, Jubak Picks, Videos |
Today’s Quick Pick is Barrick Gold (NYSE: GOLD). There are three big arguments for owning gold, and Barrick Gold specifically, right now. Number one is that gold always does well when the markets are volatile and people are unsure where else to put their money. Gold is the safe haven. Second, if the Fed pauses rates, gold will be back on the upswing. Gold generally doesn’t pay dividends, so if interest rates are higher, people will put their money where they can get a return through dividends (not gold), but as the rate hikes stop, gold will become more attractive. The third reason is specific to Barrick Gold because although it’s a gold mining company, it gets about 18% of its revenue from the copper it mines alongside the gold. The market for copper has been growing with the renewable energy transition. Electric vehicles use massive amounts of copper and copper miners haven’t been investing to keep up with future demand. Year to date (as of March 10), Barrick was down about 6.81% and Morningstar calculates it as 24% undervalued. While I mentioned that most gold stocks don’t pay a dividend, Barrick actually does, at about 3.23%, and they just announced another $1 million stock buyback. As the turmoil in the market continues, Barrick will continue to go up as people look for a safe haven from the chaos.
March 15, 2023 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Shares of Credit Suisse (CS) fell this morning–if a 31% drop at the worst moment can be called “falling”–after the bank’s biggest shareholder said it would NOT put more money into the challenged bank. As of noon New York time, shares of Credit Suisse were down 24.1%. The bank’s bonds fell to levels that signal deep financial distress, with securities due in 2026 dropping 17.75 cents to 70 cents on the dollar in New York. That puts their yield at about 20 percentage points above U.S. Treasuries.
January 30, 2023 | Daily JAM, GDX, GDXJ, GLD, GOLD, Jubak Picks, Perfect Five-ETFs, Volatility |
With the Federal Reserve seemingly winding down its cycle of interest rate increases, a stronger dollar is no longer the big currency market story. Gold is. Gold is back. And for at least the next 3 to 6 months.
January 19, 2023 | Daily JAM, Perfect Five-ETFs, Videos, Volatility |
Today I posted my two-hundred-and-twenty-sixth YouTube video: Quick Pick Sell UUP. This week’s Quick Pick: Sell UUP–the dollar ETF. I had the Invesco DB US Dollar Index Bullish Fund (NYSEARCA: UUP) in my portfolio through 2022 while the dollar was doing well but the dollar has recently taken a turn South and I’m now saying: Sell. UUP was going up while expectations were that the Fed was going to continue to raise interest rates, but now that the market believes (rightly or wrongly) that the Fed will be slowing their rate hikes, we’ve seen it move down by about 1.22% for 2023. This will likely continue to be the case as other countries maintain steady interest rates or even raise them to fight inflation (Watch the European Union) and as we edge closer to the debt ceiling cliff. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen thinks the government can shift things to cover us through June, but after that, if the debt ceiling isn’t raised by Congress, the United States will not be able to borrow enough money to meet all of its obligations. I think we’ll walk right up to that cliff, but I sincerely hope we don’t go over it. For now, I’m selling UUP and I’ll be looking for a gold ETF to replace it. More on that to come!
August 29, 2022 | Daily JAM, Videos |
My one-hundred-and-seventy-first YouTube video: “Trend of the Week The Market is Badly Mispricing” went up today. Market prices say that investors and traders don’t think things are very risky, especially in the long run. Look at the yields on the 10- and 30-year bonds, for example.
August 26, 2022 | CORN, Daily JAM, DBA, Jubak Picks, Volatility |
Pretty much everything got clobbered today after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell promised that the Fed would raise interest rates and keep them high until inflation is under control. In other words, no quick turn to cutting interest rates in the second half of 2023. So chip stocks were down today, August 26, with Nvidia (NVDA) plunging 9.23% at the close. Consumer stocks were down with Shake Shack (SHAK) tumbling 8.61%. Financial technology stocks were down with Block (SQ) shedding 7.72%. Climate change stocks, an extremely hot sector lately, were down with EVgo (EVGO) bleeding 7.86%. Hide in gold? No way. The SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD) was down 1.22%. (Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I suppose.) But agricultural commodity ETFs? Green in a sea of red.
