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...
U.S. stocks take a beating as weak manufacturing index follows on Apple sales warning
Last night’s warning from Apple that sales for the December quarter would be well below the company’s earlier guidance bled into a weaker than expected reading this morning  from the Purchasing Managers Index for the Manufacturing sector. The ISM...
Apple cuts revenue forecast, drops 7.6% in after-hours trading
Will Apple’s (AAPL) warning spook stocks tomorrow, Thursday, January 3, to a degree that bad economic news out of China didn’t today? After the close in New York Apple CEO Tim Cook dramatically lowered the company’s estimates for sales in the...
Why no big drop on truly bad China economic news? Look to the bond market
China and other export-oriented Asian economies delivered really grim news on growth last night and yet U.S. stocks have refused to move into the red. As of 2:20 p.m. New York time on Thursday the Standard & Poor’s 500 index was up 0.07% The NASDAQ...
Asian manufacturing data spur stock tumble
It’s not just China anymore. Unfortunately. The Caixin Media and IHS Markit Purchasing Managers Index for China’s manufacturing sector fell to 49.7 in December  from 50.2, its lowest reading since May 2017. That confirms a trend seen in the official...
Why predicting a bottom for this bear is so hard: More lessons from the charts
Once stocks have wound up in the jaws of a bear market, the most pressing question is when/where will it end? Which is tough to predict because we have a relatively small data set to project from–we’ve only had 12 bear markets (using the 20% drop from a...
MGM Resorts International: That’s one ugly chart (and what that means for the market as a whole)
If you’re thinking of doing some bottom fishing in a belief that the bear market might be nearing a bottom or that the recent Santa Claus rally could last into the first half of January, I’d suggest you take a look at some charts, either of individual...
Here’s how on my paid sites I’m using Put Options in AMZN, NFLX, and BA to hedge against the bear
I don’t use options on this site or in any of the Jubak Picks portfolios. But I do in the Volatility Portfolio on my paid JugglingWithKnives.com and JubakAM.com paid sites. This week I’ve bought Put Options–which go up in price when the underlying...
Here’s how I’ve shifted my ETF portfolio allocations on my paid sites
On my paid sites, JugglingWithKnives.com and JubakAM.com I run and track a simple five ETF portfolio called, immodestly the Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio. In the last week, I’ve made the following shifts: Increasing my allocation to 25% in the Goldshares SPDR ETF...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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