March 19, 2024 | Daily JAM, Dividend Income, EQNR, Jubak Picks, Mid Term, Special Reports, Top 50 Stocks, V |
Let’s say you’re a dividend income investor. You need cash income in retirement. Or you want your portfolio to generate cash now so you can invest in new opportunities. Or you just want the extra safety and lower risk that owning a stock with a substantial dividend can bring. Whatever your reasons–and I can think of a lot more–this is a particularly challenging financial market for dividend income investors.But I do think there are strategies dividend income investors can successfully pursue even in this challenging market. In the rest of this Special Report I’m going to explain the three ways I think you should be thinking about dividend income investing in this market. And then I’m going to give you 10 dividend stocks that I think are especially well-suited to producing income (and price appreciation, which is always nice even if you’re an income investor) in this market environment. First pick just posted–Pfizer
March 18, 2024 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
About 8.5% of credit card balances and 7.7% of auto loans moved into delinquency in the fourth quarter of 2023, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported last week. “Credit card and auto loan transitions into delinquency are still rising above pre-pandemic levels,” said Wilbert van der Klaauw, economic research advisor at the New York Fed. “This signals increased financial stress, especially among younger and lower-income households.” Total household debt increased by $212 billion last quarter to $17.5 trillion
March 16, 2024 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
There’s room for disappointment in Wednesday’s Dot Plot projections from the Federal Reserve. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg were still expecting the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates three or more times in 2024 with the first cut coming in June. (To be more precise, the survey found that a majority expect three or more cuts in 2024 while more than a a third expect two or fewer cuts in 2024.) The survey was conducted from March 8 through March 13. Why do I highlight the dates?
March 14, 2024 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
It’s becoming a refrain. Today another inflation measure came in hotter than expected. Which is the problem. It’s har to ignore the possibility that inflation has stopped its steady decline and its recent months has started to move up again. Is there a problem here beyond a stickiness in prices that is preventing the Federal Reserve from reaching its inflation goals? And that might be endangering even a June timetable for an initial interest rate cut? Prices paid to U.S. producers rose in February by the most in six months.
March 13, 2024 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
There’s not much question of what the Federal Reserve will do at its March 20 meeting. The odds–99% on the CME Fed Watch Tool–are that the Fed will do nothing and leave interest rates at the current 5.25%-5.50% benchmark. But that day the Fed will also release its most recent quarterly revision of its economic projections for the year ahead, the Dot Plot. And those projections will have, potential, market moving power. The central question: Will the Fed hold to its projection of 2 interest rate cuts in 2024 or will the bank, worried by recent evidence that inflation has been stubbornly high in recent months, point toward just one cut by the end of the year?
March 12, 2024 | Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Core CPI inflation came in hotter than expected in February for a second straight month. The core Consumer Price Index, which excludes food and energy prices, increased 0.4% from January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The year over year inflation rate rose to 3.8%. Economists had been projecting 3.7% annual rate. Core CPI over the past three months rose an annualized 4.2%, the highest annual rate since June. That adds to worries that the improvement in inflation has stalled in recent months.
March 11, 2024 | AAPL, Daily JAM, GOOG, Top 50 Stocks, Videos |
Today’s video is The Magnificent Five? The Magnificent Seven were the main drivers of market success at the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024. But what happens when the Magnificent Seven are more like a magnificent Five, or even four? The original Magnificent Seven included Apple, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Nvidia, and Tesla. Both Tesla and Apple have taken major hits largely due to problems with China. China’s regulations have made it harder to sell Apple products in the country in the government’s effort to push domestic goods. Apple sales in China are down 16-17%. in the first six weeks of 2024. This, alongside a Wall Street perception that Apple is behind in AI technology, has brought Apple shares down 12% for 2024. As for Tesla, China is producing massive numbers of cheaper electric vehicles that are increasingly exported globally (with the exception of the United States where high tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles limit sales) leaving Tesla down 25% in 2024. Google is also down 5% year to date though it may be too soon to write Alphabet off as “not magnificent” just yet. Both Apple and Tesla are no longer pacing the market and are indeed lagging. Bad thing? Good thing? I’d vote for “good thing.” The rally is beginning to spread out from a handful of big names. The only thing that makes me a bit wary is that so many investors are hoping to make money on speculative moves while the market is moving sideways. Those moves could cause volatility in a market that is otherwise likely to stay steady until we get big news from the Federal Reserve on interest rate cuts in June or so.
March 2, 2024 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
The coming week I expect a battle for the market’s attention between the continued AI monster momentum story and the macro story on inflation and interest rates.
February 29, 2024 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
The headline, all-items Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, climbed at a 2.4% year over year rate in January. That was in line with what economists had forecast and down from the 2.6% annual rate in December. The core PCE, that is after stripping out more volatile food and fuel prices, climbed at a 2.8% year over year rate. In December the annual rate of core inflation had been 2.9%. But that was the end of the good news in today’s PCE inflation report.
February 26, 2024 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
On Thursday the financial markets get a new monthly PCE inflation report. The PCE, Personal Consumption Expenditures index, is the Federal Reserve’s favorite inflation measure. And Thursday’s report on January inflation could be bad news for the financial markets,
February 15, 2024 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Videos |
Today’s video is Inflation: Stickier for Longer. The market is now beginning to suspect that the Fed has a last mile problem. The CPI numbers from Tuesday weren’t terrible, but they weren’t as low as the market hoped. Headline inflation was at 3.1% annual rate and core inflation was 3.9%–markedly better than the past high of 9%, but not quite hitting the 2.9% for headline inflation that economists were looking for. The miss has finished a flip in sentiment about a March rate cut. The CME FedWatch poll in January had March rate cut odds at 90% likely, now, just a month later, the odds of no action are up to nearly 90%. Only about a third of investors believe there will be a rate cut in May with odds of no action up to 61%. The calendar is being pushed out to June or July for cuts from the Fed. This has resulted in bond yields going back up, around 4.3% on the ten year Treasury, and stocks going down a bit. There is a hope out there that the CPI numbers were a January blip, but if you look at the breakdown of the inflation numbers, it seems clear that inflation is just plain sticky. The Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank index that looks at the sectors that tend to be sticky and how much they’re influencing the overall inflation rate shows that prices in those sticky inflation categories have stopped and that they are a major factor keeping inflation higher than hoped. . Additionally, while there’s been a big drop in goods prices, the price of services has not gone down nearly as much. The super core inflicts number, which looks a prices in the services sector after taking out the cost of shelter has stalled. All this to say, we’ve got good evidence that this last mile from 3% to 2% on inflation could take a while.
February 13, 2024 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Headline, all-items Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation fell again in January, but not by as much as economists had projected before this morning’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In January prices rose at 3.1% year-over-year. That’s a slower increase than the 3.4% annual rate notched in December. But economist had projected that inflation would dip to a 2.9% annual rate. And stocks dropped on the disappointment.
