October 21, 2019 @ 6:56 pm | AMZN, Breaking News, Jubak Picks Portfolio, Jubak Top 50 Portfolio, MSFT |
This week brings an earnings “showdown” between Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN) in the cloud space as the two companies report earnings only a day apart (on Wednesday October 23 for Microsoft and Thursday October 24 for Amazon.) Microsoft’s cloud...
October 16, 2019 @ 7:42 pm | AAPL, Breaking News, Jubak Picks Portfolio, Jubak Top 50 Portfolio, MSFT |
The Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) may indeed follow the technology sector of the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index. But don’t expect much in the way of diversification from the ETF. The latest figures on Yahoo Finance show that 19.55% of the...
October 16, 2019 @ 7:35 pm | Breaking News |
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...
October 15, 2019 @ 7:19 pm | AAPL, Breaking News, Volatility |
On October 8 I wrote “Tech is back” led by fact-based speculation that Apple (AAPL) had asked supplier to increase production of components for the iPhone 11 by 10%. That, obviously, was a good sign for Apple, which is set to announce earnings on October...
October 15, 2019 @ 7:08 pm | Breaking News |
Good earnings news from big U.S. banks drove U.S. stocks higher today. As of 3 p.m. New York time, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 1.10% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was ahead 1.03%. The NASDAQ Composite had climbed .28% and the Russell 2000 small...
October 14, 2019 @ 8:00 pm | Breaking News |
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 14, 2019 @ 7:58 pm | Breaking News, EMR, Jubak Picks Portfolio |
On the surface the creeping improvement in the price of Emerson Electric (EMR) shares seems odd. The company is a powerhouse in process manufacturing–you know industrial automation, industrial control and safety, and the Internet of Things. And those...
October 11, 2019 @ 7:49 pm | Breaking News |
We’ve been here before. We’ve had other days and other rallies on news, rumors, speculation that the U.S. and China would reach some kind of deal that amounts to a truce in the two countries’ trade war. We been disappointed in that story before when...
October 10, 2019 @ 7:57 pm | Breaking News |
Overnight financial markets tumbled on fears that U.S.-China talks to end their trade war were looking at failure. Today stocks are up again as hopes for a so-called “mini-deal” have advanced as China signaled that it might be open to such a limited deal,...
October 9, 2019 @ 7:53 pm | Breaking News, Jubak Top 50 Portfolio, Recent Buys, TSM |
It’s hard to get a handle on exactly how big the market called the Internet of Things will be. Bain Capital sats $520 billion by 2021. McKensey, another consulting company, says $11 trillion by 2021. The huge difference is a result of 1) what these...
October 9, 2019 @ 7:38 pm | Breaking News |
Here’s the most important point, to me, from the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s September 18 meeting released today. At the meeting the Fed lowered interest rates by 25 basis points for the second time in 2019. “Several participants suggested that the...
October 8, 2019 @ 7:57 pm | Breaking News |
Today the Trump administration put eight of China’s technology giants on a blacklist over alleged human rights violations against Muslim minorities. And China signaled that it would retaliate over the blacklist. Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told...
October 8, 2019 @ 7:52 pm | Breaking News |
It quacks like quantitative easing. It walks like quantitative easing. But it’s not quantitative easing. According to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell anyway. In a speech today, October 8, to the National Association for Business Economics, Powell said the...
October 7, 2019 @ 7:29 pm | Breaking News |
Busy, busy, busy. Here’s what we know to be on tap for the rest of October as of today October 7. U.S.-China trade talks are set to resume on Thursday, October 10. That means a switch from a period when both nations were issuing statements and policy steps...
October 3, 2019 @ 8:00 pm | Breaking News |
The trend in U.S. financial markets this week has pointed down on data that shows the U.S. economy is slowing. Certainly the disappointing numbers in both the manufacturing and services Purchasing Managers Indexes have supported that conclusion. That could all change...
October 2, 2019 @ 7:55 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
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...
October 1, 2019 @ 6:29 pm | Breaking News, Dividend Income Portfolio |
Today’s weakness in the financial sector on the news that online brokerage Charles Schwab (SCHW) will be cutting commissions on equity and ETF trades to 0% sent the financial sector down to a loss of 2.07% on the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF). That...
October 1, 2019 @ 6:22 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
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...
October 1, 2019 @ 6:17 pm | Breaking News, Jubak Top 50 Portfolio, TSN |
Ok, one lawsuit/investigation/class action action against a company is bad news, usually, for a stock. Two, though? Time to say, Move along. Especially when the company in question shows a remarkable ability to keep getting sued for the same practices. Back in April...
September 30, 2019 @ 7:08 pm | Breaking News |
If you were an investor during the dotcom bubble of 1999 that turned into the dotcom bust of 2000 and then into an extended and painful bear market, then you now what we’re seeing now isn’t a comparable level of distress in the underpinnings of the...
September 27, 2019 @ 7:55 pm | Breaking News |
I think I know where this is coming from but the news certainty hit the market from left field today. Bloomberg is reporting that the Trump administration is discussing ways to restrict portfolio flows into China’s stocks. Chinese companies traded in the United...
September 27, 2019 @ 7:49 pm | Breaking News |
Consumer spending on goods and services, which accounts for about two-thirds of gross domestic product, increased by just 0.1% in August from July, the smallest gain in six months, according to the Commerce Department today. Personal income was up 0.4% in August....
September 26, 2019 @ 5:32 pm | Breaking News, MCD |
We knew this one was coming, right? Today, McDonald’s (MCD) announced that it would begin a test of the PLT, the plant, lettuce and tomato burger, for 12 weeks in 28 restaurants in south-western Ontario. The move mirrors but trails (by six months) the...
September 26, 2019 @ 5:25 pm | Breaking News |
No big bad news story from China this morning, but the news trend continues to emphasize the downside. For example, this morning a U.S. official said the U.S. is unlikely to extend a waiver allowing American firms to supply China’s Huawei Technologies with technology...
September 25, 2019 @ 7:50 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
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...
September 20, 2019 @ 7:38 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
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...
September 18, 2019 @ 7:42 pm | Breaking News |
If $53 billion doesn’t work, try $75 billion more. The Federal Reserve injected $75 billion into U.S. money markets today after yesterday’s injection of $53 billion didn’t solve the problem. The problem is that the big Wall Street banks are finding...
September 18, 2019 @ 7:32 pm | Breaking News |
On Tuesday the Federal Reserve bought $53.2 billion of short-term securities to stabilize the market for money market securities. A funding shortage on Monday and Tuesday had led rates on overnight general collateral repurchase agreements to climb as high as 10% and...
September 18, 2019 @ 7:25 pm | Breaking News |
Today the Federal Reserve lowered its main interest rate another 25 basis points to a range of 1.75% to 2%. To say that the Fed’s Open Market Committee was divided on the decision would be an extreme understatement: Five officials wanted to keep rates unchanged,...
September 16, 2019 @ 7:27 pm | Breaking News |
Oil prices are higher–much higher–today after a drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq processing center knocked out 50% of the country’s oil production. As of 1 p.m. New York time U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate was up 13.58% to $62.30 a...