“The AI technology will keep you out of harm's way. That is why we believe in an AI car that drives for you.” – Said CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang
Saturday
November 26, 2022
Hello everyone,
We are now into post-Thanksgiving and onto scanning the special Black Friday deals which last throughout the weekend and into Cyber Monday.
As most people’s attention span is fairly limited these days, I’m going to provide a summary of newsworthy topics.
In keeping with sport mad Australia, we must mention the Socceroos defeat of Tunisia 1-0. Now they are into the 16th round. 12-year drought broken. Next, the Aussies play Denmark. Argentina defeated Mexico today 2-0.
Wallets were opened on Black Friday with consumers shelling out a record $9.12 billion in online shopping. Online sales were up 2.3% year-over-year. Buy Now Pay Later payments increased by 78% compared with the past week as consumers continued to come to terms with high prices and inflation.
Some of this year’s hottest items include gaming consoles, drones, Apple MacBooks, Dyson products, and toys like Fortnite, Roblox, Bluey, Funko Pop!, and Disney Encanto. Cyber Monday is expected to drive $11.2 billion in spending. Up 5.1% year-over-year, according to Adobe.
Leading up to Christmas and into the early New Year, the market is likely to rally. However, we may get a short-term pullback before a move higher.
The U.S.$ will most likely continue to fall.
Silver and Gold will continue to rally.
Bitcoin will continue to fall.
By mid-January, the market may take a breather.
It looks like the Australian banks and FTX did not have a close relationship, thankfully. Crypto will be out of favour for a time but will never completely go away. We are waiting for Bitcoin to reach a new low in the next couple of years before it eventually starts to regain a solid foothold and slowly climb higher.
Wishing you all a wonderful week.
Cheers,
Jacque
The purpose of our lives is to be happy. - Dalai Lama
Global Market Comments
November 28, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or LOOKING FOR BIG FOOT),
(NVDA), (VIX), (TLT), (TSLA), (XOM),
(OXY), (TSLA), (SPY), (MA), (V), (AXP)
On October 14, investors finally achieved the portfolios they long desired, not only individuals but institutional ones as well. They got rid of stocks and bonds that had been hobbling them all year and built their cash positions to decade highs.
What happened the next day?
Stocks and bonds went straight up for six weeks. Cash became trash.
For October 14 was the day that the stock market discounted the worst-case economic scenario for 2023, no matter how bad it may get. And it probably won’t get very bad. That’s barring a black swan-type event, like a brand-new global pandemic.
If you think your job can be frustrating, how about mine? If you run with the dumb crowd, the uninformed crowd, the loser crowd, you get your just desserts.
Fortunately, I saw these moves coming a mile off and loaded the boat. I’ve actually made more money on the parabolic move in bonds than some of the enormous moves in stocks. NVIDIA (NVDA) up 50%?
My performance in November has so far tacked on another robust +7.05%. My 2022 year-to-date performance ballooned to +82.42%, a spectacular new high. The S&P 500 (SPY) is down -16.85% so far in 2022.
It is the greatest outperformance on an index since Mad Hedge Fund Trader started 14 years ago. My trailing one-year return maintains a sky-high +94.61%.
That brings my 14-year total return to +594.98%, some 2.60 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period and a new all-time high. My average annualized return has ratcheted up to +45.76%, easily the highest in the industry.
I am going into the month-end surge with a fairly aggressive 40% long, (TLT), (TSLA), 40% short (XOM), (OXY), (TSLA), (SPY), with 20% crash for a totally market-neutral position. We’ve just had a heck of a run, and prices could well stall not far from here for the short term. The post-election rally happened, as predicted in this space.
Like Big Foot, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster, the Fed pivot may soon actually make an appearance. I’m talking months, not years. That’s when our August central bank flips from the most severe tightening of interest rates in history, to a neutral, or one can only pray, an easing stance. This is what the 15% rally in stocks over the last six weeks has been all about.
And here is another old-time worn market nostrum. If investors sense that something is going to happen, they discount it fast, very fast.
Of course, there will be several false starts, denied rumors, and false flags, as there always are. After all, this is my 11th bear market. These will create sudden panic attacks, market selloffs, and Volatility Index (VIX) runs to $30 which are the license to print money for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader. Wait for the market to tell you when to trade. Ignoring it can prove expensive.
As we say here in the west, go off the reservation and you can get a lot of arrows stuck in your back.
How is this even remotely possible with the money supply only at $21.4 trillion, down 2% YOY? That’s a buzz cut from the +30% rate from a year ago.
The answer is that the money is out there, just hiding in different unrecognizable forms. Much of the $4 trillion in pandemic stimulus payments have yet to be spent. Inflation has added $2 trillion in new corporate profits through higher sales prices. Similarly, there is also another $1.5 trillion in pay increases bubbling through the system, also inspired by inflation.
You see this is booming credit card spending, much to the joy of Master Card (MA), Visa (V), and American Express (AXP) and their share price surges we have recently seen.
As I keep telling my Concierge customers on the phone, there is no playbook anymore. All the old ones have been rendered useless by the pandemic. To succeed and make windfall profits like me, you basically have to make it up as you go along.
The Fed Favors the Slowing of Rate Hikes, making a December increase of only 50 basis points a sure thing, according to minutes released on Wednesday for the prior meeting. Housing especially is taking a big hit. All interest rate plays, like bonds, rallied strongly.
Equities See Monster Inflows, some $23 billion in 35 weeks according to the Bank of America (BAC) flow of funds survey. There have been huge cash flows out of Europe looking for a stronger dollar, fleeing WWIII, and collapsing home currencies. The big chase is on. Time to go short? I am. It could be a big bull trap.
Leading Economic Indicators Dive, off 0.8% in October, double the decline expected and the weakest since the pandemic low in April 2020. There has only been one positive number in this data series in 2022. You have to go back to the financial crisis to find numbers this bad.
S&P Global Manufacturing PMI Takes a Hit in November, down to 47.6 from an estimate of 50. Services fell from 48 to 46.1. It’s another coincident recession indicator.
Existing Home Sales Plunge 5.9% in October to an annualized rate of 4.43 million units. It is the slowest sales pace in 11 years. It's not as bad as expected but is still down a horrific 28.4% YOY. Inventory fell to just 1.22 million units, only a 3.3-month supply, supporting prices in a major way. In fact, prices are still rising, up 6.6% annually to $379,100. Housing accounts for about 20% of the US economy, so here is your recession threat right here.
New Home Sales Come in Hot at 632,000, a real shocker with the 30-year fixed at 7.4%. Low-ball seller financing incentives must be a factor where they buy down rates to lower levels. Free upgrades, like those cherry wood cabinets, bonus rooms, and marble kitchen counters, also help. Prices are still up 15% YOY and inventories rose to a once unbelievable 8.9 months.
OPEC Plus Considering a 500,000 Barrels a Day Increase at their coming December meeting, which Saudi Arabia vehemently denied. The comments came out just as West Texas intermediate was barreling in on a new nine-month low. Saudi Arabia can talk all they want, but it’s tough to beat a coming recession, which every other hard asset class and commodity is now confirming.
Disney Axes Chairman, dumping Bob Chapek and bringing back Bob Iger from retirement. Losing $1.5 billion on the Disney Plus streaming service and losing its special tax status from the State of Florida has its costs. (DIS) is also not a stock to buy if we are going into recession. Avoid (DIS), despite the 10% move today. Let’s first see if Iger can cut costs.
My Ten-Year View
When we come out the other side of the recession, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With the economy decarbonizing and technology hyper accelerating, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The America coming out the other side will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 240,000 here we come!
On Monday, November 28 at 8:00 AM EST, the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index for November is out.
On Tuesday, November 29 at 8:30 AM, the S&P Case Shiller National Home Price Index is released.
On Wednesday, November 30 at 8:30 AM, the ADP Private Employment Report for November is published. We also get a number on Q3 US GDP.
On Thursday, December 1 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced. US Personal Income and Spending for October is also out.
On Friday, December 2 at 8:30 AM, the Nonfarm Payroll Report for November is disclosed. At 2:00, the Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count is out.
As for me, by the 1980s, my mother was getting on in years. Fluent in Russian, she managed the CIA’s academic journal library from Silicon Valley, putting everything on microfilm.
That meant managing a team that translated over 1,000 monthly publications on topics as obscure as Artic plankton, deep space phenomenon, and advanced mathematics. She often called me to ascertain the value of some of her findings.
But her arthritis was getting to her, and all those trips to Washington DC were wearing her out. So I offered Mom a job. Write the Thomas family history, no matter how long it took. She worked on it for the rest of her life.
Dad’s side of the family was easy. He was traced to a small village called Monreale above the Sicilian port city of Palermo famed for its Byzantine church. Employing a local priest, she traced birth and death certificates going all the way back to an orphanage in 1820. It is likely he was a direct illegitimate descendant of Lord Nelson of Trafalgar.
Grandpa fled to the United States when his brother joined the Mafia in 1915. The most interesting thing she learned was that his first job in New York was working for Orville Wright at Wright Aero Engines (click here). That explains my family’s century-long fascination with aviation.
Grandpa became a tailer gunner on a biplane in WWI. My dad was a tail gunner on a B-17 flying out of Guadalcanal in WWII. As for me, you’ve all heard of plenty of my own flying stories, and there are many more to come.
My Mom’s side of the family was an entirely different story.
Her ancestors first arrived to found Boston, Massachusetts in 1630 during the second Pilgrim wave on a ship called the Pied Cow, steered by a Captain Ashley (click here).
I am a direct descendant of two of the Pilgrims executed for witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, where children’s dreams were accepted as evidence (click here). They were later acquitted.
When the Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the original Captain John Thomas, who I am named after, served as George Washington’s quartermaster at Valley Forge responsible for supplying food to the Continental Army during the winter.
By the time Mom completed her research, she discovered 17 ancestors who fought in the War for Independence and she became the West Coast head of the Daughters of the American Revolution. It seems the government still owes us money from that event.
Fast forward to 1820 with the sailing of the whaling ship Essex from Nantucket, Massachusetts, the basis for Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby Dick. Our ancestor, a young sailor named Owen Coffin signed on for the two-year voyage, and his name “Coffin” appears in Moby Dick seven times.
In the South Pacific 2,000 miles west of South America, they harpooned a gigantic sperm whale. Enraged, the whale turned around and rammed the ship, sinking it. The men escaped to whaleboats. And here is where they made the fatal navigational errors that are taught in many survival courses today.
Captain Pollard could easily have just ridden the westward currents where they would have ended up in the Marquesas’ Islands in a few weeks. But these islands were known to be inhabited by cannibals, which the crew greatly feared. They also might have landed in the Pitcairn islands, where the mutineers from Captain Bligh’s HMS Bounty still lived. So the boats rowed east, exhausting the men.
At day 88, the men were starving and on the edge of death, so they drew lots to see who should live. Owen Coffin drew the black lot and was immediately shot and devoured. The next day, the men were rescued by the HMS Indian within sight of the coast of Chile, and returned to Nantucket by the USS Constellation.
Another Thomas ancestor, Lawson Thomas, was on the second whaleboat that was never seen again and presumed lost at sea. For more details about this incredible story, please click here.
When Captain Pollard died in 1870, the neighbors discovered a vast cache of stockpiled food in the attic. He had never recovered from his extended starvation.
Mom eventually traced the family to a French weaver 1,000 years ago. Our name is mentioned in England’s Domesday Book, a listing of all the land ownership in the country published in 1086 (click here). Mom died in 2018 at the age of 88, a very well-educated person.
There are many more stories to tell about my family’s storied past, and I will in future chapters. This week, being Thanksgiving, I thought it appropriate to mention our Pilgrim connection.
I have learned over the years that most Americans have history-making swashbuckling ancestors, but few bother to look.
I did.
Stay healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Happy Thanksgiving from the Thomas Family
USS Essex
Thursday
November 24, 2022
Hello everyone
It’s Thanksgiving Day.
So, rather than talk about the market, the economy and the next Fed move, I thought I would give all the Aussies a few insights into this special American day, as it is not something we are familiar with.
What is Thanksgiving?
It is an American holiday that they celebrate annually on the fourth Thursday of November.
Why do Americans celebrate Thanksgiving?
It is commonly known as a way to commemorate the colonial Pilgrims’ harvest meal that they shared with Wampanoag Indians in 1621 (although there is controversy about whether or not the meal was originally intended to be shared). The Wampanoag Indians were key to the survival of the colonists during the first year they arrived in 1620.
When was Thanksgiving first celebrated?
Besides the original meal shared in 1621, Pilgrims held their second Thanksgiving in 1623 to celebrate the end of a long drought. Additional feasts of giving thanks for various reasons were given in subsequent years as well. However, technically, the first official designated Thanksgiving was celebrated much later – in 1789. According to the National Archives, Congress asked President George Washington for a National Day of Thanksgiving. Thursday, November 26, 1789, was, therefore, declared the “Day of Public Thanksgiving.”
What is Thanksgiving all about?
Thanksgiving is all about reflecting on blessings and acknowledging gratitude.
How did Thanksgiving become an annual national holiday?
Americans can thank writer and editor Sarah Josepha Hale, for her successful efforts in establishing Thanksgiving as an annual national holiday. She lobbied officials at both the state and federal levels to create a fixed National Day of Thanks on the last Thursday of November.
When did Thanksgiving become an annual national holiday?
President Lincoln declared on October 3, 1863 that Thanksgiving would be an annual national holiday. He explained that “in the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, the American people should take some time for gratitude.”
Why do Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving?
There are a few explanations for this. Historical letters indicated that turkeys were part of the original meal that was shared between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians. Letters from William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth in 1621, detailed this event.
Turkeys were plentiful which made them a convenient main course.
In her 1827 novel entitled Northwood, Hale explained a New England Thanksgiving in detail, including the description of a roasted turkey “placed at the head of the table.”
Do Indigenous Americans celebrate Thanksgiving?
Native Americans were having harvest feasts long before Pilgrims arrived. Some tribes, like the Sioux, will gather and give thanks for food and life, but others steer clear of marking this specific day as a time of celebration. This is not a surprise as only 16 years after the shared meal between the Native Americans and Pilgrims, over 500 Wampanoags were massacred in a brutal act of retaliation for the murder of one of the settlers who the other settlers believed was killed by the Wampanoags. And the violence did not stop there.
According to History.com, after many raids, land theft, and wars against Native Americans by the “late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 indigenous people remained, a sharp decline from the estimated 5 million to 15 million living in North America when Columbus arrived in 1492.” Facts like this help shed light on why many indigenous Americans observe a different holiday on the exact same day as Thanksgiving – the National Day of Mourning.
What is the National Day of Mourning?
According to NationalToday.com “Every year on the National Day of Mourning, Native American people in New England gather to protest. To them, Thanksgiving serves as a reminder of the unjust treatment that Native Americans have received since the 1620 Plymouth landing.” This observance (sponsored by the United American Indians of New England and attended by many non-native allies) has been happening in Plymouth, Massachusetts, since 1970. During the day, “Native speakers are invited to give these speeches about the past, as well as current obstacles their people have overcome.”
America and Australia have a lot in common in relation to their indigenous populations.
So, now you know all about Thanksgiving. It is a holiday centred around being grateful for your loved ones, appreciating good fortune and creating special memories with your family/friends, being thankful for the food you eat, watching football, and making a Black Friday gameplan (a bit like people plan for the Boxing Day sales).
Finally, let’s enjoy some quotes about Thanksgiving.
"Food is the only universal thing that has the power to bring everyone together." - Guy Fieri
"After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations." - Oscar Wilde
"The more we express thanks, the more gratitude we feel. The more gratitude we feel, the more we express thanks. It’s circular, and it leads to a happier life." - Steve Goodier
"A moment of gratitude makes a difference in your attitude." - Bruce Wilkinson
"Be thankful for what you have. Your life is someone else’s fairy tale." - Wale Ayeni.
"We must find the time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives." - John F. Kennedy.
"I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual." - Henry David Thoreau.
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.
We’re into December next week, the final month of the year.
All the best and take care.
Cheers,
Jacque
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
November 23, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE)
(AAPL), (ARKK), (OECD)
I’m not saying all tech “gurus” are that brain-dead and I’m not saying that all tech companies are that bad, but tech is operating in a middle ground right now between good and bad.
That’s really where we are for tech stocks.
Cathy Wood has reiterated her $1 million per Bitcoin price target for 2030. If you don’t remember who Wood is, she is the tech growth evangelist that presides over a popular tech ETF called ARKK, and the only reason she gets these funds to invest is because of the high inflows of retail investors believing her fantasies like buying Coinbase after systemic risk to crypto increasing wildly.
Betting the farm right now on tech is not the right thing to do.
Tech was supposed to outperform easily, heading into the December 13th CPI report that records inflation, precisely because inflation was the number one risk to the tech market and inflation was creeping lower.
However, arbitrary lockdowns in China have accelerated and the recent weakness in technology stocks implies a global growth scare with reports today of Chinese workers violently protesting at Apple’s main iPhone factory run by Foxconn in Henan province, China.
The global growth scare has frightened off tech investors in the short term.
American tech companies benefit disproportionally globally to other domestic American companies and what goes on outside national borders is completely relevant to the sentiment of Silicon Valley tech stocks.
We are in a weird middle ground where a global growth scare has bolted to the fore, but high inflation is still a wrecking ball to many economies and is slightly ticking down.
In this type of gridlock narrative, the US Central Bank cannot start easing because the economy isn’t weak enough to “save.”
Then to cap it off, to lower rates, the US really needs a recession and while tech has suffered 100s of thousands of job losses so far, the broader economy is holding up quite well, even with a stealth tax called inflation on consumers, and incremental growth is expected for not only the United States in 2023 but the whole world.
The latest OECD report foresees U.S. inflation remaining well above the Fed’s 2% annual target next year and into 2024.
The OECD’s forecast for the 19 European countries expects the eurozone to collectively manage just 0.5% growth next year before accelerating slightly to 1.4% in 2024.
The OECD expects the United States, the world’s largest economy, to grow just 1.8% this year (down drastically from 5.9% in 2021), 0.5% in 2023, and 1% in 2024.
This spells out to me that not much will radically change from 2022.
Barely scraping along and avoiding a recession means that the Fed won’t have a license to suddenly pivot.
That means there will be a delay in introducing meaningful easing and by that, I mean half-point or full-point rate cuts perhaps to the end of 2023 and maybe even 2024.
I believe we are range bound with tech stocks rallying on perceived pivot front-running.
However, any rally will come down to earth with tech earnings decelerating and growth scares occurring periodically.
In short, we are losing precious time for the last gangbuster rally into year-end for tech shares, and it is increasingly probable that the “year-end rally” already took place.
We need a capitulation for things to pick up steam and that obviously won’t happen when Cathy Wood is screaming for $1 million per Bitcoin in the tech sector.
We need to flush out the weak hands first and she’s next on the list after the crypto implosion.
“Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.” – Said the CEO of Twitter Elon Musk
When John identifies a strategic exit point, he will send you an alert with specific trade information as to what security to sell, when to sell it, and at what price. Most often, it will be to TAKE PROFITS, but, on rare occasions, it will be to exercise a STOP LOSS at a predetermined price to adhere to strict risk management discipline. Read more
When John identifies a strategic exit point, he will send you an alert with specific trade information as to what security to sell, when to sell it, and at what price. Most often, it will be to TAKE PROFITS, but, on rare occasions, it will be to exercise a STOP LOSS at a predetermined price to adhere to strict risk management discipline. Read more