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...
Riding the Popeye’s chicken sandwich higher; raising target price for Restaurant Brands International
Today I’m raising my target price for Restaurant Brands International (QSR) because I think the new Popeye’s chicken sandwich has legs. A social media storm has accompanied the introduction of a new chicken sandwich at Popeye’s to compete with...
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...
Market rides energy shares higher
This morning the U.S. Energy Information Administration surprised the markets with the report of a bigger than expected decline in oil stockpiles. Crude inventories fell by 10 million barrels for the week ended August 16. The prior week showed a drawdown of 2.7...
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...
Markets try to have it both ways in the morning and then throw in the towel on risk
This morning you could hear the gears whirring as Wall Street strategists tried to position their portfolios so they were hedged against U.S-China trade war risk but also positioned to catch any bounce on good news on the trade front and ahead of the September 18...Other signs of global economic stress keep coming in
The U.S.-China trade war continues to erode business confidence in Germany. Business confidence in the country, home to Europe’s largest economy, fell to its weakest level in almost seven years as a deepening manufacturing slump put the German economy on the...
Is it true and does it matter to the financial markets?
This morning President Donald Trump told reporters at the Group of Seven summit that over the weekend there had been significant progress in negotiations to end the U.S.-China trade war. “We’ve gotten two calls and very, very good calls,” Trump told reporters at the...
As promised: Trump announces retaliation this afternoon to this morning’s new tariffs from China
That didn’t take long. This afternoon President Donald Trump said he would raise tariffs to retaliation to this morning’s move by China to impose a new 10% tariff on $75 billion in U.S. exports to China. Trump’s move would increase tariffs already in...
China retaliates; Trump promises his retaliation to their retaliation this afternoon
Xi Jinping and Donald Trump upstaged Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell this morning. Powell’s Jackson Hole speech this morning was supposed to be the day’s big market event. (More on this speech in a later post.) But this morning China announced that it...
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....
Apple sketches in September product launches–will they be enough?
Two big clouds of doubt hover over shares of Apple (AAPL). First, will the continuing U.S.-China trade war take another bite out of Apple’s China revenue? And/Or disrupt Apple’s China supply chain, saddling the company with higher tariffs on its made in...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...
Sells from my subscription JubakAM.com Special Report Is Your Portfolio Ready for the Next Big One?
As you know from my recent marketing offers for my subscription site JubakAM.com, I’ve put together a Special Report on that site with 5 steps to get your portfolio ready for the big one. I’ve finally finished my complete list of sells in Step #2 of...Market goes to pessimism on trivial Pompeo comments–tells ya something, though
It didn’t take much to end the optimism of the past few days and turn the market at least mildly pessimistic today. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told CNBC this morning that Huawei Technologies isn’t the only Chinese company that poses security risks...
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...
Central banks talk the markets up: Here we go again!
We’ve seen this play before: Financial markets start to tumble and central banks step in–not with actual stimulus quite yet but certainly with talk of stimulus. The European Central Bank and the German government took a turn today. Germany’s Der...
Retail sales stronger than expected–there’s hope yet of fending off a recession
Retail sales in July climbed 0.7% from June. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had predicted a 0.3% climb. Retail sales excluding autos were up 1.0% month over month. Economists had projected a 03% gain. Nonstore retail sales (that is the Internet) were up 2.8%...
Step #1 (of 5) to get your portfolio ready for the Next Big One–Special Report update
Last night on my JubakAM.com subscription site I added Step #1 to my Special Report 5 Is Your Portfolio Ready for the Next Big? The post below is a cut and paste of the material I added to the Special Report. I’m posting it separately here to make it accessible...
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...
Nektar’s plunge is a buying opportunity–so I’m adding more to my Volatility Portfolio
What we know about Nektar Therapeutics (NKTR) is pretty clear. On Thursday of last week, August 8, trading in shares of Nektar were halted on news from the company had manufacturing problems that resulted in some patients enrolled in the clinical trials for the...
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...
Add Brazil to a growing list of economies in recession or near recession
Brazil’s central bank released a key gauge of economic activity today that signaled that it’s likely Brazil fell into recession in the second quarter. The country’s economy activity index, which is a proxy for gross domestic product, fell 0.13% in the...
SolarEdge Technologies hits all time high on earnings beat, raising my target price in my Picks portfolio
Wednesday, August 7, SolarEdge Technologies (SEDG) reported second quarter revenue of $325 million, up 43% from the second quarter of 2018 and ahead of analyst projections of $315.5 million in revenue. Adjusted earnings rose 15% year over year to 94 cents a share,...
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 that yuan devaluation will be orderly
U.S. stocks rallied strongly today, Thursday, August 8, after the People’s Bank of China set its daily reference rate for its currency at 7.0039 to the dollar. That was stronger than the 7.0156 yuan to the dollar overnight estimate of 21 analysts and trader...
A rally in tech shares disguises return to risk off trading
Shares of Apple (AAPL) climbed 0.21% to lead the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) higher by 0.40% as of 2 p.m. trading in New York. That helped disguise what is otherwise a return to the risk off trading of Monday after Tuesday’s rally–although with...
No let up in President Trump’s pressure on the Fed to cut interest rates faster
More tweets today from President Donald Trump in his campaign to pressure the Federal Reserve into more aggressive cuts to interest rates. “Incompetence is a terrible thing to watch, especially when things could be taken care of sooo easily. We will WIN anyway,” the...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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