Do you see what I see?
This morning what I saw in photos and videos from this past Memorial Day weekend was a country rushing pell mell toward re-opening the economy without a thought for safety amidst a still uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak. I saw photos of crowds at beaches, on board...
China is the big wild card this week
China isn’t the only story out there with market moving potential but it is the “ripest.” We won’t have anything but anecdotal accounts of the collapse of social distancing at events across the country this weekend and we won’t know how...
Mortgage delinquencies soar in April
The number of borrowers who stopped paying their home loans jumped by 1.6 million last month, according to data from Black Knight, a real estate analytics company. The national mortgage delinquency rate rose to 6.45% in April, up from 3.06% in March. That’s...
Another 2.4 million workers filed initial claims for unemployment last week–but take the data with a grain of statistical salt
According to the Department of Labor another 2.4 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment in the week that ended May 16. That puts the total from this report at 38.6 million initial claims for unemployment filed in the last 9 weeks. The two-month total...
Stock Pick of the Day: Barrick Gold (GOLD)
I can think of two reasons to buy shares of Barrick Gold (GOLD) now. Either one alone would be enough to justify a “buy.” First, sentiment is shifting among investors toward the idea of buying gold as protraction against currency depreciation. The U.S....
Stock Pick of the Day: Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM)
Announcing a new feature–my stock pick of the day. With Taiwan Semiconductor as my first pick. The hoo ha at the end of last week over restrictions on the sale of U.S. semiconductors to China’s Huawei Technologies, high-lighted the central role that Taiwan...
Oil keeps on rallying–and takes market with it
Remember how back on April 20 West Texas Intermediate traded at a negative $40.32 a barrel on the futures market? Then the fears were that anyone who owned a forward future and who was forced to accept delivery of that oil would not be able to find a place to store...
Even after yesterday’s rip-roaring gains, the S&P 500 is stuck–so what comes next?
Yesterday, May 18, the Standard & Poor’s 500 closed at 2953. We’ve been here before. Several times, in fact. On May 8, the index closed at 2929.80. On April 29, the close was 2939. With the 200-day moving average at 2998.,56, even yesterday’s...
Selling Illinois Tool Works out of my Dividend Portfolio to make room for new dividend strategy and new picks
My second sell of the day. Way back in November 2019–if you remember a period when projected earnings growth was strong and before the coronavirus recession–I argued for a dividend strategy that focused on companies with fast growing and solidly...
Selling Visa out of Dividend Portfolio to make room for new dividend strategy and picks
Way back in November 2019–if you remember a period when projected earnings growth was strong and before the coronavirus recession–I argued for a dividend strategy that focused on companies with fast growing and solidly predictable earnings that were, in my...
Stocks roar ahead on perfect storm of good news
As of 1 p.m. New York time today, May 18, the Standard & Poor’s 500 is up 3.17% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is higher by 3.60%. The NASDAQ Composite has climbed 2.47% and the Russell 2000 small cap index is ahead 5.29%. The iShares Emerging Markets...
The U.S.-China trade war looks to move beyond words–and again it involves Huawei Technologies
China is ready to put U.S. technology companies such as Apple, (AAPL), Cisco Systems (CSCO), and Qualcomm (QCOM) on its “unreliable entity list.” That would likely result in investigations and economic restrictions on those U.S. companies, according to the...
Retail sales plunge 16.4% in April
U.S. retail sales fell 16.4% in April from March levels, the Commerce Department reported today. March itself had seen an 8.3% month to month drop. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg were looking for a 12% decline. In a separate report from the Federal Reserve today...
Weekly new claims for unemployment near 3 million again, above projections from economists
Initial jobless claims totaled 2.98 million for the week ended May 9, the Labor Department reported today. That’s down from last week’s 3.18 million claims and marks a sixth straight week of declines. But the figure was higher than the 2.5 million claims...
Two negative views of the oil market–and one’s from OPEC
It will take more than a year, and perhaps several years, for oil demand to recover to what it was before the coronavirus pandemic, said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency ahead of Thursday’s update on energy markets. Crude demand...
Now it’s the Fed’s Powell’s turn to push stocks lower, urge Congress to provide more coronavirus money
Yesterday, I argued that the barrage of cautionary comments from Federal Reserve officials seemed designed to talk stock prices lower and to push Congress toward a new bigger coronavirus rescue package. (Why might the Fed want to slow the current rally? The only...
Has the market broken it’s upward trend? I’m watching the big tech stocks as indicators
As of 12:30 p.m. New York time today, U.S. stocks had continued their downward move of yesterday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 was lower by 2.23% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average had tumbled 2.35%. The NASDAQ Composite was off 2.44% and the Russell 2000...
Federal Reserve puts its corporate-bond-buying vehicle in motion
On March 23, the Federal Reserve announced that it would create a facility to buy corporate bunds and ETFs tracking the corporate bond market. That facility remained an all-talk/no-action vehicle until today when the New York Federal Reserve Bank announced that its...
People’s Bank says it will resort to “more powerful” policies to stimulate China’s economy but leaves details vague
Think of it as a first step toward a policy move and not as an actual plan for action. In its quarterly monetary policy report released Sunday, the People’s Bank of China said it will resort to “more powerful” policies to counter unprecedented economic challenges from...
And the earnings estimates are tumbling down: stocks get more expensive on forward earnings
On March 31 Wall Street analysts were projecting a decline in first quarter earnings of 6.9% for the stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500, according to Factset. As of May 8, with 86% of the S&P 500 reporting, the consensus projection for the quarter was...
The Fed speaks and speaks and speaks this week: Will all the words push Congress on more spending for coronavirus rescue?
Due to a quirk in the Federal Reserve calendar, the central bank doesn’t meet in May. (Next meeting June 10; last meeting April 29.) That means the Fed has lots of time to jawbone the financial markets and Congress in an effort to get Washington to provide more...
Another reason stocks are rallying? A belief in negative interest rates by early 2021
The Fed funds futures market, which trades bets on where the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rates are headed, has rallied this week to send prices for futures contracts in early 2021 above 100. Above 100 traders are pricing in negative interest rates from...
Another week, another 3.17 million new claims for unemployment, but stocks move higher
Initial claims for unemployment totaled 3.17 million for the week ended May 2, the Labor Department reported today. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected 3 million new claims for the week. This week’s total was down from the 3.85 million initial claims...
Not good news for the capital goods sector: Fed finds 42% of non-financial U.S. public companies are discussing slashing investments
A new study by the Federal Reserve that looked at 600 earnings calls last month found that 42% of American non-financial public companies are discussing slashing investments. Another 17% are focused on drawing down on credit lines (The study, conducted by Fed ,...
Today’s big job losses in ADP survey don’t bode well for Thursday new unemployment claims and Friday government jobs report
Employment at U.S. companies plummeted in April by the most in records back to 2002, according to numbers fro the ADP Research Institute release today.. The report reflects data through April 12 in order to align with the report from the Labor Department for April,...
Disney misses Wall Street projections on earnings; signals worse to come
How did Wall Street analysts get Disney (DIS) earnings today so wrong? Analysts had been projecting earnings of 86 cents a share. The company reported earnings of just 60 cents for the company’s second quarter. The bigger-than-Disney takeaway here is...
Inflation continues to fall; deflation a possibility
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said annualized inflation across the group of 37 advanced economies slowed to 1.7% in March from 2.3% in February. That’s the biggest deceleration since the 2008 global financial crisis. Energy prices...
Credit crunch hits credit cards hard
Credit card issuers have already cut the credit limits or closed credit card accounts entirely for about 1 in 4 credit card holders–almost 50 million Americans–in the past 30 days, according to a survey byLending Tree’s Compare Cards website. The...
Treasury to borrow $3 trillion during April to June quarter
Okay, the Treasury actually will need to borrow only $2.99 trillion, but close enough, no? It will still be a record. The previous record for borrowing in a single quarter was $530 billion in the July to September 2008 quarter in the fallout from the global financial...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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