Tariff news from China today should be enough to feed rally in holiday markets
We’ve got two short weeks coming up–since the New York markets are closed this week for Christmas and next week for New Year’s–when trading volumes shrink and it doesn’t take much in the way of news to move stocks up or down. I think we...
Could collapse of U.S.-China trade talks trigger a second Federal Reserve Put?
You’re aware, I hope, of the idea that there’s an implicit Federal Reserve put that undergirds a stock market trading near record highs. The idea is that Fed chair Jerome Powell, would move to cut interest rates to support stocks if the market looked like...
At least someone wants to buy TD Ameritrade–can we say the same for Citibank?
Interesting column by Matt Levine on Bloomberg Opinion today. In the piece “Schwab Broke Ameritrade to Buy It” he points out that the acquisition bid from Charles Schawb (SCHW) today to buy TD Ameritrade (AMTD) for a reported $26 billion comes after...
Senate passes Hong Kong support bill, House to take it up today scrambling China trade talks
As you might imagine, this complicates things. Just as U.S. and Chinese negotiators struggle to put together a Part 1 deal to de-escalate the U.S.-China trade war, the two houses of the U.S. Congress are moving to pass legislation that would support pro-democracy...
Oil prices under pressure as OPEC meeting looms
Oil prices are down significantly today, November 19, on speculation that data to be released tomorrow will show a fourth straight weekly increase in U.S. oil inventories and nervousness about a successful conclusion to U.S.-China Part 1 trade talks. As of 1:30 p.m....
Ho, hum–another day, another all time high driven by FOMO
Today, Monday November 4, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit its first new all-time high since July. The Standard & Poor’s 500 and the NASDAQ Composite also saw new highs. Stocks gave up some of their gains into the close but the Dow still finished up...
Oil earnings expected to disappoint starting with BP tomorrow and then continuing with ExxonMobil and Chevron on Friday
The oil supermajors–ExxonMobil (XOM), Chevron (CVX),Royal Dutch Shell (RDS), Total (TOT) and BP (BP)–are expected to show a 42% year over year average plummet in third quarter earnings when they report earnings this week. That’s an even bigger slump...
What are the implications for FinTech disruption from Visa’s earnings?
It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement but it was enough to send share prices higher in after-hours trading by 1.1% on Thursday and by 0.8% in regular trading on Friday. Visa (V) earnings for the fiscal fourth quarter were better than expected. The company...
Consumers look to be holding up but I wouldn’t call them super-positive
The University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment was revised down to 95.5 in October from an initial reading of 96 today. That leaves the index at the monthly average for 2019. But well below the post-recession peak of 101.4 set in early 2018. Consumer...
Beyond Meat takes another beating on worries about next round of insider selling
Shares of Beyond Meat (BYND) dropped 7.99% to close below $100 (at $97.90) for the first time since June 3. The drop cut gains for the plant-based “meat” company since its IPO to a mere 292%. Driving the drop are fears that insiders will sell a day after...
A tale of two tech markets as Texas Instruments and Apple move in opposite directions.
Shares of Texas Instruments (TXN) closed down 7.48% today after the company reported that third-quarter earning felt $1.49 a share from $1.58 a share in the third quarter of 2018. Revenue dropped 11% year over year. On the other hand, shares of Apple continued to move...
Enthusiasm for this quarter’s earnings; worry about guidance for 2020
Today the Standard & Poor’s 500 matched a 12-week high and made yet another assault on a new all-time record. Better than expected earnings have been the market driver. Some 81% of the S&P 500 companies that have reported for the quarter so far have...
Wall Street puts two more 2019 interest rate cuts back on the table
Yesterday’s disappointing Purchasing Managers Index news on U.S. manufacturing has put two interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve back on Wall Street’s expectations.(Economists had expected that the PMI number for September would show the...
U.S. manufacturing disappoints with continuing contraction for September
All the major U.S. stock indexes fell today as the Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers Index for Manufacturing disappointed by sinking further into contraction territory. At 47.8 for September, the index hit a 10-year low. Economists surveyed by...
China’s economy continues to weaken
The manufacturing sector–thanks to the U.S.-China trade war–continues to slow China’s economy. But the real problem may be an underperformance in the services sector that makes it impossible for that sector to pick up the slack. The end result is that the...
Financial markets still showing signs of indigestion in debt auctions so Fed will pump another $75 billion into money markets tomorrow
Today, Friday, September 20, the Federal Reserve will buy another $75 billion in the overnight repo market. That brings the total this week to $203 billion in the Fed’s effort to stabilize the short-term markets that Wall Street uses to finance its purchases of...
Barrick Gold at the junction of positive macro and micro trends; raising my target price
It’s by no means a guarantee of gains, but owing shares of a company that is riding the wave of positive macro and micro trends does indeed usually result in solid profits. On the macro side, Barrick Gold has global trends pointing toward toward higher gold...Another index shows U.S. manufacturing in contraction
The Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers Index fell to 49.1 in August, according to data released this morning. That was below all the forecasts of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. In this survey anything below 50 indicates that a sector is...
Recession expectations slowly climbing–slowly driving odds of a recession higher
Recessions have a huge “sentiment” component in their causation. Consumers and CEOs look around at the economy, assess their feelings about the future economy, and decide that the prudent course is to cut back on spending to prepare for the coming economic...
It’s just analysis, but reports say China’s Xi has a Trump trust problem
With the proviso that no one is inside the head of Chinese President Xi Jinping (except Xi himself) and that this is all speculative analysis which carries it’s own bias, I think it’s worth taking seriously reports that Xi may have a Trump problem that...
A deep dive into Exxon Mobil financials shows where even the big oil majors are vulnerable
On Monday, August 19, I posted a deep dive into the financials at Concho Resources (CXO) to illustrate some of the pressures weighing on the stocks of oil shale producers. Now Exxon Mobil (XOM) is a very different kind of oil company. It’s diversified globally....No consensus at the Fed in July for faster interest rate cuts, minutes show
The financial market didn’t get what it had hoped for out of today’s release of the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s July 31 meeting. The market was hoping for something in the minutes that pointed toward a shift in Fed policy toward an extended...
Concho Resources highlights the problems in the oil shale patch
After-hours on July 31, Concho Resources (CXO), the biggest producer in the low-cost, high-yield Permian Basin, reported earnings of 69 cents a share for the second quarter of 2019. That missed the Wall Street consensus by 3 cents a share. Revenue climbed 19.3% year...
Markets bet that Fed will follow ECB this week to announce something “spectacular”
Gotta love that financial market enthusiasm for central banks. Last week the markets rallied on signals from the European Central Bank that it would cut its key interest rate–now at a negative 0.40%–to a negative -0.50%, lower the rates that banks pay to...
The drop in job openings worries me more than an inverted yield curve
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 800.49 points today, or 3.05%; the Standard & Poor’s 500 finished 2.93% lower; and the NASDAQ Composite lost 3.02%. One reason for the plunge was an intraday inversion in the Treasury yield curve with the yield...
Names may never hurt me but they sure count in the U.S.-China trade war
The United States has called China a “thuggish regime” after the country labelled a U.S. diplomat who met with Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, a “black hand.” Along with charges that the meeting showed the United States was...
The stock market seems resigned to a long delay in U.S.-China trade talks
This morning President Donald Trump said that talks with China planned for next month could be called off. “We’ll see whether or not we keep our meeting in September,” Trump said as he left the White House for a fundraiser in the Hamptons. “If we do, that’s fine. If...
People’s Bank signals its goal of an orderly retreat in China’s yuan, and markets recover–somewhat
Stocks rallied today on signs that the People’s Bank intends to deliver an orderly drop in China’s currency. This morning the yuan traded slightly above the critical 7 yuan to the dollar currency band. And the bank said it will sell $4.2 billion in yuan...
Portfolio strategies for a changing market: What went up today when everything went down
For the last few weeks I’ve been working to shift gears in my online portfolios in anticipation of a tougher market after the Federal Reserve meeting (and a likely additional interest rate cut) on September 18. I’ve added Treasury ETFs–the Vanguard...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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