Bank of America struggles after earnings beat, sees some traction today
On Monday Bank of America (BAC) reported first quarter earnings of 62 cents a share, 3 cents a share above Wall Street estimates. Earnings were up 51% year over year on a 4% increase of revenue to $23.1 billion. That was ahead of the consensus at $23.04 billion. Wall...
Raising target price on Danaher after earnings beat today
Danaher (DHR) reported fourth quarter earnings of 80 cents a share before the market opened today, April 19. That was 3 cents a share ahead of Wall Street projections. Revenue climbed 10.9% year over year to $5.09 billion. The Wall Street consensus called for $4.97...
Is Beijing moving to support stocks in Shanghai?
Sure looks like the financial powers in China’s government have one again decided to defend the 3,000 level on the Shanghai Composite Index. The index is down 13% since January 24 and came within 1.4% of the 3,000 level on Wednesday before rallying. That has set...
Oil prices up again on inventories, Middle East fears, OPEC price goals
West Texas Intermediate crude climbed 3.16% today to $68.80 a barrel. Futures for May delivery moved over $68 a barrel for the first time in three years. Yesterday the American Petroleum Institute reported a 1.05 million barrel draw down in U.S. inventories. Today the...
Earnings season “enthusiasm” has kicked in
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index rose 1.07% to the highest level in four weeks, pushing above its 100-day moving average for the first time in a month. The Dow Jones Industrial average closed up 0.87% The gains in the index are in spite of continued...
Monday buy of SolarEdge Technologies in my Jubak Picks portfolio
I’ve been looking for a way out of this investing puzzle for a while and I think I’ve finally found one. SolarEdge Technologies (SEDG). I’m adding these shares to my Jubak Picks Portfolio on Monday. And I’ll be buying call options on these...
Netflix modest earnings beat and big positive after-hours reaction good news for earnings season market
Netflix (NFLX) shares were down 1.24% during the day as investors and traders seemed to be positioning themselves for an earnings miss. (Netflix doesn’t have a record of turning in earning surprises–probably because Wall Street is so positive on the stock....
Are foreign buyers pulling back from Treasuries? Recent auctions say so
It’s a recent development, but it looks like more foreign buyers are sitting out recent Treasury auctions. At Tuesday’s $30 billion auction of three-year notes, foreign buyers accounted for the smallest share of the offering since September. At...
New calculation: Current cash position in Jubak Picks Portfolio
A couple of readers have asked me So what’s the cash position in Jubak Picks now? Very good question to ask at a time when we’re all trying to manage risk in a volatile market. So from here on out I’m going to calculate an approximate cash position...
Was today’s market rally on hopes of avoiding a China/U.S. trade war justified? Here’s the state of what we know
Global financial markets rallied today on a speech by China’s President Xi Jinping at a regional economic meeting that seemed to pull China and the United States back from the cliff and a potential global trade war. Xi promised to open up China’s economy,...
No fade today after market takes off on positive China “feeling”
The market didn’t reverse or fade today. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index hit 2656 by 10:30 and then, despite a dip that took 20 points off the index around 12:30 and a lot of up and downs that ultimately went nowhere, managed to close at 2656...
Monday was not the quiet day it seemed for U.S. stocks–and the intraday collapse wasn’t a good sign
On the surface, nothing much happened in U.S. stocks today. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index closed up 0.33% for the day. Ho hum. But intraday the S&P 500 showed an entirely different story. After opening at 2617–up from Friday’s close...
So how is the economy (remember the economy?) anyway?
Let’s take a look at the economy before this week gets sucked into the black hole of tariffs and trade wars. As you’ll remember when last we left the U.S. economy–on Friday morning–it had just reported a disappointing addition to 103,000 net...
President Trump ends that tariff calm
Just as financial markets were starting to believe that all the bluster about imposing new provocative tariffs on Chinese imports might indeed be just a negotiating ploy as administration officials loudly proclaimed over the last to days, last night President Donald...
Siri hire from Google latest sign of Apple’s new aggressiveness
Yesterday Apple (AAPL) announced that it had hired John Giannandrea, the architect behind Google Assistant, to take its Siri digital assistant from disappointing to amazing again. (Or at least to make it a credible challenger to Amazon’s Alexa and Google...
Back to normal today? And a reminder of what normal is
With all available officials on deck today in Beijing and Washington to talk down fears of a trade war and to talk up prospects for trade talks, the U.S. financial markets have returned to “normal.” And what is “normal” right now? A 0.47% gain...
Stocks rally as markets decide trade talks will head off trade war
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index finished up 1.16% today, closing at 2644.69, as traders and investors decided that the tariff measures targeting China that the Trump administration announced last night and the retaliatory measures announced by China...
Oil prices climb from Monday’s lows but supply worries damp recovery
The financial markets decided that a global trade war wasn’t quite upon us yet this morning. That let stocks and oil bounce back a tad. But it also gave oil traders room to start worrying about oil supply again–after they spent Monday worrying that a...
Selling copper pick Freeport McMoran on fears of U.S./China tariff war
Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold (FCX) was the third and last copper stock I added to my portfolios back in January 12, 2018–after Southern Copper (SCCO) and First Quantum Minerals (FQMLF). I added so much copper since copper prices were soaring in 2017–up...
What President Trump can actually do about Amazon–and what you should do about Amazon
Another day’s worth of tweets by President Donald Trump attacking Amazon (AMZN) and another day of losses for the stock. At 3 p.m. Monday New York time Amazon shares were down another 5.21% (in the midst of a meltdown in the technology sector, I’d note, so...
China retaliates on tariffs; U.S. stocks fall again
It’s always hard to attribute a market move to one particular news event, but today the odds are good that this morning’s plunge in stock prices is in reaction to China’s decision to impose tariffs on 128 U.S. products in response to the Trump...
U.S. stocks rally on good economic news and end of the quarter window dressing
U.S. stocks are up as of 1:30 p.m. today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is ahead 0.95% and the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index is up 1.08%. Two reasons for this, I think, and the second is more important today. First, we had a raft of positive economic...
Little spillover (yet) from Concho acquisition of Permian producer RSPP
Today Concho Resources (CXO) announced the acquisition of RSP Permian (RSPP) to create the biggest  oil and natural gas producer from the shales of the Permian Basin. The $9.5 billion all stock deal represents a 29% premium to the Tuesday close for RSP Permian. That...
Amazon tanks after report that President Trump wants to “go after” the company
Well, why not? Shares of Amazon (AMZN) were down as much as 7.4% after Axios reported that President Donald Trump is “obsessed” with regulating the company and has discussed changing the way the company collects (or doesn’t) sales tax. The stock...
“Smart Money” and shorts are skeptical on Monday rally
The Smart Money Flow Index shows that professional money managers remain skeptical of the rally. The index is near a two-year low and advanced only 1.2% on Monday, a day that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average move up 2.8%. (The Smart Money Flow Index tracks moves...Goldman Sachs turns bullish on gold
Goldman Sachs has turned positive on gold for the first time in five years. Â “Our commodities team believes that the dislocation between the gold prices and U.S. rates is here to say,” Goldman Sachs says. Drivers for higher gold prices include signs of an...
Reasons to worry about this bounce
Of course, it would be great (if you’re long U.S. stocks) if today’s bounce marked the beginning of a recovery to the record highs in place before last week’s plunge. But… It’s very early in this bounce. It’s typical for a bounce to...
Cracking the nutty asset correlations of this market
This morning provided a great example of how confusing and complicated correlations among asset classes are in the current market. Stocks rallied with the Standard & Poor’s 500 up 1.15% as of 11 a.m. New York time and the Dow Industrial Average ahead 1.7%....
Sell the rally is the new Wall Street practice
Twice today investors and traders sold an intraday rally.  Think we might have a pattern here? After hitting a 0.38% gain at 11 a.m. New York time, the Standard  & Poor’s 500 went into a steady decline.  Then, after having rallied by 2 p.m. to just below...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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