August 10, 2021 | ALB, AMSC, CAT, Daily JAM, DE, Mid Term, MLM, Morning Briefing, VMC |
The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that the Senate passed today–roughly half of that represents new spending–still faces a tough go in the House of Representatives where progressive Democrats have criticized the measure as light on dollars to fight global climate change. That spending has been pushed into a second infrastructure bill, which would also include money for expanding Medicare and improving access to childcare among other “social” infrastructure spending, which the Senate actually took up today. Most political pundits think that efforts to pass a “social” infrastructure bill using reconciliation will be enough to secure all the votes needed to pass the traditional infrastructure bill in the House. The bill passed today would include more than $110 billion to replace and repair roads, bridges and highways, and $66 billion to boost passenger and freight rail. The plan includes an additional $55 billion to address problems in the U.S. water supply such as continued use of lead pipes despite conclusive evidence that lead in water pipes leads to cognitive impairment in children. It allocates $65 billion to modernize the country’s power grid and $7.5 billion to build out a national network of electric-vehicle charging stations. The bill earmarks $47 billion to respond to wildfires, droughts, coastal erosion, heat waves and other climate crises.
June 25, 2021 | Daily JAM, Jubak Picks, VMC |
On Monday, June 28, I’ll be adding shares of Martin Marietta Materials (MLM) to my Jubak Picks Portfolio to increase my exposure to the infrastructure sector after the Thursday, June 24, announcement at the White House of a bipartisan infrastructure deal. You should think of this producer of construction aggregates–used in highways, for example–as a version of aggregate producer Vulcan Materials (VMC) with a different regional profile. Whereas Vulcan is strongest in the Southeast and Texas, Martin Marietta has just acquired the assets of Heidelberg Cement in Arizona and California.
June 24, 2021 | CAT, Daily JAM, DE, Jubak Picks, Top 50 Stocks, Videos, VMC |
I’m starting up my videos on JubakAM.com again–this time using YouTube as a platform. The twenty-ninth YouTube video “5 stock picks for the infrastructure deal” went up today.
June 24, 2021 | CAT, Daily JAM, DE, Jubak Picks, Top 50 Stocks, VMC |
The White House has announced that it has struck an infrastructure deal with a bipartisan group of 10 Senators. There are almost no details on the deal and it’s not at all clear that President Biden will be able to convince the progressive wing of his own party to support the deal. On the other side of the aisle, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has not endorsed the deal. As I do the math, if only the 5 Republican Senators who were part of the negotiating group vote for the deal in the Senate, it will fail to clear the 60-vote threshold necessary for passage if McConnell and other Republicans decide to filibuster the legislation. All that aside, today the usual infrastructure stocks gained.
April 6, 2020 | Daily JAM, Stock Alerts, URI |
This sell follows the same logic as my immediately prior sell of Vulcan Materials. Last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw in the towel on any near-term chance for a big infrastructure spending package. The horrific jobs numbers had convinced her, she said, that...
January 10, 2020 | Daily JAM, URI |
When I wrote up United Rentals (URI) as part of my Special Report: Global Warming and Your Portfolio: Is Your Portfolio Ready? I named it as a stock that I thought would profit from the first stage of response to the damage caused by global warming. In that initial...
December 14, 2018 | Daily JAM, Special Reports |
$23 trillion. It's a big enough number to get my attention. On Monday, December 10, 415 investment managers, pension funds, and insurers, told the ministers gathered for the United Nations climate summit in Katowice, Poland, that the world faces a financial crash...