March 12, 2021 | Daily JAM, Volatility, WPM |
Before you get too excited by that headline, note that a 30% hike in the dividend at Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM) will bring the payout to just 13 cents for the first quarter of 2021. But that’s still, as my grandmother used to say, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. At the least it’s a vote of confidence by the company’s board of directors that they see strong revenue and earnings growth in the year ahead. Wheaton Precious Metals doesn’t actually do any mining itself. Instead it purchases a stream of production from miners of precious metals and cobalt.
February 22, 2021 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
As of the close in New York today, February 22, the yield on the 10-year Treasury had climbed another 3 basis points to 1.37%. Commodities that can act as inflation hedges were up as well. Copper showed no signs of ending its climb, rising 4.17% today to $8909 a ton on the London Metal Exchange today
January 28, 2021 | AG, Daily JAM, DIS, FCX, FQVLF, GDX, GOLD, Jubak Picks, MGM, Morning Briefing, SCCO, Top 50 Stocks |
U.S. GDP growth slowed in the fourth quarter, gaining just 1% from the third quarter. For the full year the U.S. economy contracted by 3.5%. That makes 2020 the first time that the economy has contracted for a full year since 2009 and the Great Recession. At the bottom of that recession that economy contracted by 2.5%. 2020 is also the worst year for economic growth since 1946 when the economy shrank by 11.6% as the country demobilized after World War II. Consumer spending slowed in all 15 categories tracked by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The sectors that had powered the recovery in the third quarter–restaurants and hotels, for instance–reversed. The growth in spending on cars and health car also slowed from the acceleration in the third quarter. So why is this good news as far as the stock market is concerned?
January 20, 2021 | Daily JAM |
Gold futures on the COMEX for February delivery closed up 1.4% today, January 20, at $1866.50 an ounce. That’s the highest finished for the most active contract on the futures market since January 7. Silver for March delivery closed up 1.8% to $25.766 an ounce. All the talk about the need for a big stimulus program, bigger even than in response to the global financial crisis and the Great Recession, has sent some traders looking for inflation plays.
August 25, 2020 | Daily JAM |
Part 3A: Strategies and Picks for the less risky end of a retirement portfolio Part 3 of my Special Report : "Meeting Your Retirement Challenge," which will focus on 5 concrete steps that you can take in your retirement portfolio. In this, Part 3A, I'm going to begin...
October 16, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
It would be an overstatement, in my opinion, to say the market is trendless. I think there's a definite and but unspectacular bias to the upside in the short-term--four weeks, say. It would be accurate, however, to say, there's not much conviction to that trend. So...
October 14, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
China now says it wants to hold more talks this month to hammer out the details of the U.S.-China mini-deal announced by President Donald Trump on Friday before Chinese President  Xi Jinping will sign it, both Bloomberg and the Washington Post are reporting today....
October 4, 2019 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
Yes, U.S. stocks were up today with the S&P 500 closing higher by 1.10% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 1.11%. But that still left the stock market down for the week. And looking at the performance today of risk havens, today's move looks to be a bounce...
October 2, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term, Volatility |
In a different environment, the disappointing jobs numbers from the private ADP employment survey and the weak quarterly sales reports from Ford and General Motors would not have taken the Standard & Poor's 500 down 1.79% and the Dow Jones Industrials lower by...
September 23, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Some days U.S. stocks move decidedly higher on positive news about the global economy or speculation that the U.S-China trade war may be moving toward a negotiated resolution. Other days U.S. stocks head decidedly lower on bad news about the global (or U.S.) economy...
August 27, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term, Volatility, You Might Have Missed |
This morning you could hear the gears whirring as Wall Street strategists tried to position their portfolios so they were hedged against U.S-China trade war risk but also positioned to catch any bounce on good news on the trade front and ahead of the September 18...
August 23, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term, Volatility |
Xi Jinping and Donald Trump upstaged Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell this morning. Powell's Jackson Hole speech this morning was supposed to be the day's big market event. (More on this speech in a later post.) But this morning China announced that it would...
