January 27, 2024 | Tech Talk for Saturday January 27th 2024
The Bottom Line Responses to fourth quarter results released last week by S&P 500 companies were mixed with important exceptions. Notable were responses to reports by key technology companies: Strongest positive responses were recorded by Microsoft, ASML, IBM, Netflix and Lam Research. Strongest negative responses were recorded by Texas Instruments, Tesla, Intel and Visa.
January 26, 2024 | Never Ever Vote for Nikki Haley
January 26, 2024 | Tesla Debuts a New Inexpensive Sedan
Tesla announces a new low-cost sedan which will sell for about $25,000 in U.S. dollars. This vehicle will be available in mid-2025 and will be manufactured initially in Austin, Texas. Will this new model be enough to justify Tesla’s valuation? For the 2023 year Tesla announced revenue of $25 billion while the stock market value […]
January 25, 2024 | The Year of the Recession that Didn’t Come: Our Drunken Sailors Partied & Spent, GDP Jumped
The year 2023 was supposed to be the year of the recession. It was the most anticipated recession ever, the most hoped-for recession. Starting in 2022 with the initial rate hikes, the “Leading Economic Index” predicted a recession for late 2022; and when that didn’t come, for early 2023; and when that didn’t come, for […]
January 25, 2024 | Your Morning Coffee is Killing the Planet
Now they’re coming for your coffee.☕️😂 Swiss banker and World Economic Forum “agenda contributor”, Hubert Keller: “The coffee that we all drink emits between 15 and 20 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of coffee… Every time we drink coffee, we are basically putting CO2 into the… pic.twitter.com/cQUcKLluGR — 🗡️🛡️Sir Rickster🛡️🗡️ (@Rickster_75) January 23, 2024 The […]
January 25, 2024 | Hoisington Q4 2023 Review and Outlook
Hoisington Management’s latest Q4 quarterly review and outlook is now available here. With some risk markets still drunk on blind optimism, the list of recessionary indicators grows longer by the day. Real-world facts always matter in the end. Hoisington summarizes some of the most historically prescient data to date: Over the past year, inflation, real GDI, […]
January 24, 2024 | Real Rates Rise After Central Banks Stop Hiking
Well-documented policy lags suggest that central banks have done more than enough to reverse the inflationary impulse over the next 12 to 24 months. As the rate of inflation comes down, real interest rates (overnight rate less CPI) rise (better for savers but worse for borrowers) and crimp the economy even after central banks pause […]
January 24, 2024 | US Supreme Court Votes AGAINST the People – Invasion Continues
The Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling permitting the federal government to stop any attempts to control the crisis at the US-Mexico border. The initial case was in regard to the razor wire Texas implemented at its southern border, which now must be removed based on this ruling. This is an establishment issue that […]
January 23, 2024 | Recession Watch: Doom Spending and Frozen Real Estate
Stocks are melting up while government officials claim credit for a soft landing. And yet… The US Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) continues to predict a slowdown while GDP, which normally tracks the LEI, remains strong. Which one is right? The December index of business conditions in the New York Fed’s territory plunged to -43, the […]
January 23, 2024 | China Canary Warns About Global Economy and The Downside To Euphoria
Remember in 2007-08 when bulls were all in love with China and projecting endless growth and outsized investment returns as far as the eye can see? It turns out the business cycle was not repealed, and high valuations and euphoric consensus remain a reliable precursor to mean reversion and capital losses. Chinese stock prices have […]
January 22, 2024 | Alex Soros is a Nut Job – Implies Assassinating Trump
an insanity, funding the prosecutions against Trump, funding the case in Colorado to remove Trump from the ballot all in the name of democracy? They ignore culture, religion, and even family, force their view upon the world, and assume only what they know is best. Both he and his father think their Open Society promotes […]
January 22, 2024 | No solutions, Only Trade Offs
Happy Monday Morning! Tiff Macklem and the Bank of Canada are on deck this week. While they’re largely expected to remain on hold, Canadian households suffocating under the weight of higher interest payments will be looking for clues for when relief can be expected. The real estate market will be doing the same, it has […]
January 22, 2024 | Clamp Down on Short-Term Rentals
Limiting short-term rental properties increases housing inventory for primary occupancy, pressuring long-term rents and sale prices lower. This is a necessary part of helping to abate the housing affordability crisis. But it comes at the expense of highly leveraged owners and lenders who were banking on prices only going up. B.C.’s new laws on short-term […]
January 22, 2024 | Health Prepping, Part 4: Vitamin D Seems To Prevent Dementia
Vitamin D pops up in pretty much every general discussion of health maintenance and disease prevention. Having enough of it seems to help while having too little seems to cause — or at least associate with — everything from cancer to heart disease. So keeping lots of vitamin D in one’s bloodstream is kind of […]
January 21, 2024 | Trump Speaks Out Against CBDC
The leftist media cutaway Donald Trump’s victory speech after his Iowa victory. Some, such as Rachel Maddow who has no credibility, said it would be dangerous to air a live statement from the former president due to January 6. The truth of the matter is that they wanted to censor what he had to say, […]
January 21, 2024 | DoubleLine Markets Outlook 2024
The first 57 minutes of this presentation are a worthwhile macro overview. (The final 17 minutes are a micro dive into individual debt types for US investors and less accessible for Canadians and lay people). In his annual “Just Markets” webcast presented Jan. 9, 2024, DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach among other outlooks shares his forecast […]
January 21, 2024 | Clashing Crises
“Two is better than one” is a nice saying, but it really depends on what you’re describing. Two hurricanes or earthquakes aren’t better than one. Just one disaster at a time will suffice, thank you very much. The same holds true for man-made crises like the debt fiasco we’ve been discussing. Last week in No Way […]
January 21, 2024 | Onward and Upward for Perhaps a Little Longer
When forecasting stock prices, it helps to view the market as a crazed creature driven by fear, greed, and most of all, stupidity. Of course, everyone but the “theme”-obsessed chimpanzees who purport to manage your money understands that the stock market’s heedless ascent into horrifying news is rock-bottom stupid. In this case, the very bad […]
January 20, 2024 | The Fix is In – Trump Goes to Prison
Let me explain something very important. George Soros’ son has come out and said that Trump would not go away unless he is in prison. I am not at liberty to say at this time, but the FIX IS IN and Trump will be imprisoned in the Washington, DC case. That is the plan. Soros […]
January 20, 2024 | Trading Desk Notes For January 20, 2024
NDVA, MFST and META surge to new all-time highs; various other stocks also rise NVDA is up ~20% since the end of 2023 with a current market cap of ~$1.5 Trillion, or roughly half that of AAPL and MSFT. The powerful rally in Big Cap Tech took the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P to new all-time […]
January 20, 2024 | Employment Cycling Down
Unemployment spikes as recessions begin, but before that, early warning signs are fewer job openings and a shorter work week. The latest December jobs report showed spreading cyclical weakness. Year over year, Indeed job postings fell 15% in 2023. See Finding a New Job is Getting Harder.Under the hood, postings for lower-paying positions increased while higher-paying […]
January 20, 2024 | Tech Talk for Saturday January 20th 2024
The Bottom Line Led by the technology sector, U.S. equity indices (notably S&P 500 Index above 4818.62 and NASDAQ 100 Index above 16,767.86) moved to all-time highs on Friday.
January 19, 2024 | DOJ Admits Laptop From Hell was NOT a Conspiracy
The Department of Justice finally acknowledged that the Laptop From Hell did indeed belong to Hunter Biden. Apple provided the DOJ with information from the laptop years ago after compiling data from Hunter’s iCloud, leading to a multi-year propaganda campaign from the White House. This scandal is far more significant than the president’s son engaging […]
January 19, 2024 | Armed Conflicts Have Yet To Hit Markets
Investors are coping with a high degree of uncertainty in the world, with at least three armed conflicts active now. The Israel/Hamas war was the top concern. But now the Houthi situation in the Red Sea, related to the Gaza conflict, has become top-of-mind. And what about Russia and Ukraine? Will these conflicts spread? How […]
January 19, 2024 | Yield Curve Signals Recession in 2024
The US 10-year Treasury yield has been below the 3-month yield since November 2022 (14 months and counting). This rare yield ‘inversion’ has preceded each recession (grey bars) since 1982, with no false signals. As usual, equity bulls perpetually bet this time will be different. In past cycles, the US Fed stopped hiking when […]