Indictment of China’s Huawei Technologies comes just days before next round in U.S.-China trade talks
The U.S. Department of Justice filed criminal charges Monday against Huawei Technologies, China’s biggest technology company. The charges include an allegation that the company stole trade secrets from TMobile and that Huawei committed bank fraud by violating...
Apple meeting lowered earnings, revenue expectations–and then guides lower for next quarter
Goes to show you that if you lower expectations enough, you can beat them when you actually report earnings. Even if the earnings report itself is bad news. After the close of the New York market today, Apple (AAPL) reported December quarter earnings of $4.18 a share...
Apple moves big in battery wars
Apple (AAPL) has hired Samsung’s head of global battery development, Soonho Ahn. At Samsung SDI, the battery-producing affiliate of Samsung Electronics, Ahn led development of lithium battery packs and worked on next generation battery technology. Two ways that...
Even as deal is struck to end shutdown, gold soars
Gold hit a seven month high on Friday, gaining more than 1%. Spot gold briefly broke above $1300 an ounce. Gold futures climbed 1.5% to $1,298.30 an ounce. The SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD) climbed 1.46% to $122.86 on volume 10% above the daily average. The 52-week high...
Show me” oil market still getting no evidence of rebalance of supply/demand
Yesterday the American Petroleum Institute reported a surprise increase in U.S. crude oil inventories with a build of 6.55 million barrels for the week ending January 18. Oil analysts had expected a small draw down in crude oil inventories of 42,000 barrels. Today the...
Great day for chip stocks–and then Intel misses
Today’s regular session was great for chip stocks. The Vance Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) was up nearly 6% on the day powered by earnings beats for the quarter from Texas Instruments (TXN) up 6.5%; Xilinx (XLNX) up 17.5%; and Lam Research (LRCX) up 14.8%. And...
“Lower guidance” a theme for tech earnings this afternoon
Most of the major U.S. stock indexes clawed their way back into the green after a mid-day journey into the red. The Standard & Poor’s 500, for example, closed the day up 0.22% (at 2638) from the Tuesday close. But that was still below the 2641 the index...Today it’s a battle between positive earnings and negative China trade sentiment
And, as of 12:30 p.m. New York time, negative trade sentiment was winning. The day started off with positive earnings reports–earnings beats and positive guidance–from IBM (IBM), Procter & Gamble (PG), and United Technologies (UTX). In premarket...
They’re back! Fears of a slowdown in growth in 2019, that is
Remember last week? Markets were running over with optimism that growth in the U.S. and global economies continue strong in 2019, that the U.S.-China trade war was headed to a resolution, that earnings growth in reports for the fourth quarter would be above...
Why I can’t put away my bear market worries #4: Consumer sentiment is becoming more negative
Most of the recent sentiment surveys show the same result: While sentiment about current conditions–AKA the present–remains strong, sentiment about conditions 6 to 12 months out is sliding in a pessimistic direction. The recent Bloomberg Consumer Comfort...
Why I can’t put away my bear market worries #3: Money flows that look like a bounce and not like a rally
Rallies share one very important pattern. In a rally more investors and traders want to jump in as prices rise. They’re convinced that rising prices mean that prices will climb even more in the future and so they buy, driving prices higher. Bounces follow a...
Why I can’t put away my bear market worries #2: Financials to tech earnings transition
The big banks have delivered to start off earnings season. And the financial sector has been a key source of strength for the uptrend in stocks since January 3. Over the last month, the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF) is up 5.4% as of the close on January 17....
Why I can’t put away my bear market worries: #1 Hong Kong overnight
Did you see what happened in Hong Kong overnight? The major Hong Kong Index, the Hang Seng was down slightly, dropping 0.54% on the session. But a smaller group of stocks in the Hong Kong market got slaughtered. Jiayuan International Group, Sunshine 100 China Holdings...
Trump administration economists double estimates of shutdown costs
Yesterday, President Donald Trump’ economic advisers more than doubled their estimate of the damage to the U.S. economy by the shutdown of parts of the U.S. government affecting some 800,000 federal workers. The Council of Economic Advisers now calculates the...
China promises to cut taxes, increase spending to stimulate economy
China will cut taxes by $300 billion (or about 1.2% of GDP according to JPMorgan) in an effort to increase growth in a slowing economy, deputy central bank governor Zhu Hexin, assistant finance minister Xu Hongcai, and Lian Weiliang, vice chairman of the National...
China data nudge to global growth fears
Overnight, China reported as larger than expected December trade surplus ($57.06 billion against an expected $51.53 billion) but a December year over year 7.6% drop in imports that argued for a slowdown in China’s domestic economy. Economists had expected a 5%...
Citigroup begins fourth quarter earnings season with a revenue miss
This morning Citigroup (C) kicked off earnings season for the big banks and stocks in general with a report that first, argued that the banking sector hasn’t fixed its big problem–no toppling revenue growth–and, second, that those traders and...Estimates for bank earnings continue to move lower ahead of next week’s earnings reports
Bank stocks aren’t doing badly today ahead of the start of earnings reports from the biggest banks starting on Monday. But to me it looks like today’s slightly upward bias is a bet not on good earnings but that analysts have gone too far with their cuts to...
Danaher gives upbeat guidance at JPMorgan healthcare conference
Danaher (DHR) upped its revenue guidance for the fourth quarter on January 8. The company is scheduled to report fourth quarter earnings on January 29. At the conference the company said that its core revenue growth for 2018 to date was 6%. Core operating margins were...
Bad retail sales results from Macy’s fail to dent stocks
Big-box retailer Macy’s (M) cuts its guidance for comparable store sales, earnings, and revenue for fiscal 2019 on weaker than expected holiday sales. Kohl’s (KSS) reported a 1.2% increase in holiday comparable store sales. The company said that fiscal...
Initial enthusiasm at Fed minutes from December fades in afternoon
So what, exactly, didn’t the markets like about the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s December meeting? After an initial spike to the day’s high at 2595 at 2:09 p.m. New York time, nine minutes after the 2:00 p.m. release of the minutes, the Standard &...
Fed members talk up flexibility on interest rates; odds of an increase rise from 0%
In the last few days the heads of the Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, St.Louis, Dallas, and Cleveland Federal Reserve Banks have all said that the Federal Reserve will be patient on any interest rate increases in 2019 with even the most hawkish officials, such as...
What a difference a week makes for biotech stocks
Last week the biotech sector seemed in freewill. Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY) had made a deal to buy Celgene (CELG) at a whopping 54% premium to Wednesday’s close and the sector dropped on the news. The prevailing theory was that the deal removed one hungry big...
Samsung echoes Apple’s revenue warning; tech sector shrugs
Overnight Samsung Electronics announced that for the quarter that ended in December quarterly profit and revenue missed estimates on sputtering demand for memory chips. Operating income fell to 10.8 trillion ($9.6 billion) won for the South Korean giant. That was well...
Testing, testing: Bounce, rally, or retreat?
U.S. stocks moved toward a key test today with the Standard & Poor’s 500 approaching the 2550 to 2600 level that signals the top of the recent volatility range and likely technical resistance. If the index breaks above this level, the market could run...
How good is Fed chair Jerome Powell at herding cats?
It’s an extraordinarily busy week for the Federal Reserve–verbiage wise. Saturday, January 5, John Williams, head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Raphael Bostic of the Atlanta Fed, and Mary Daly of the San Francisco Red all spoke. Today, January 7,...
Stocks rally on huge job gains; acceleration in wage growth puts Fed betwixt and between
The U.S. economy added 312,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department reported this morning. The government statisticians also revised November’s report to show the addition of 176,000 jobs instead of the prior report of 155,000. Economists surveyed by...
China ends its freeze on new game titles–good for Tencent soon-ish
China’s media regulators have ended a nine-month freeze on the approval of new video games in the $30 billion Chinese market. Global industry (and Chinese market leader) Tencent Holdings (TCEHY) didn’t have a title among the 80 new games approved, but the...
Adding yen exposure to Jubak Picks and Volatility Portfolios
On December 27 I switched to the  Invesco Currency Shares Japanese Yen ETF (FXY) from the Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF (VEA) in my Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio (on my subscription sites JugglingWithKnives.com and JubakAM.com) in an effort to get more yen exposure...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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