Global Market Comments
February 25, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHY US BOND YIELDS ARE GOING TO ZERO),
(TLT), ($TNX)
(TESTIMONIAL)
I just checked my trading record for the past three years and discovered that I have executed no less than 61 Trade Alerts selling short bonds and all but one was profitable. It really has been my “rich uncle” trade.
However, all good things must come to an end.
I have been scanning the horizon for another short bond trade to strap on and I have to tell you that right now, it’s just not there.
Bond volatility has been incredibly low in recent months, with United States US Treasury Bond Fund (TLT) prices trapped in a microscopic and somnolescent $3.5 point range. What’s much worse is that bonds were stuck in an incredibly snug 14 point range for two and a half years with no place to go but sideways.
As a result, the risk/reward for going out one month for a bear but spread in the (TLT) is no longer favorable.
So what was the market trying to shout at us with such boring price action?
That a major upside breakout in prices and downside breakdown in yields was imminent!
As they say in technical analysis land, the longer the base, the bigger the breakout.
It is becoming painfully obvious that since 2016, the bond market hasn’t been putting in a topping process. It is building a long term BOTTOM. That means the next major bond move could be a major RISE in prices and collapse in bond yields.
Let me tell you what is wrong with this picture.
When stocks melted down during Q4 of 2018, bond yield plunged by 65 basis points, as they should have. But what did yields do when the Dow Average rallied by 4,500 points after the Christmas Eve Massacre? Absolutely nothing. Here we are today at a scant 1.35%, exactly where we were at the end of 2018.
If you look at real interest rates we are already below zero. The January Consumer Price Index came in at a lowly 2.5%. Take that from a ten-year US Treasury yield of 1.35% today and we are at negative -1.15%, even worse than Germany!
Not good, not good. As any long term pro will tell you, it is the bond market that is always right.
Yes, the next target in actual bond yields could be ZERO. The 3.25% peak in yields we saw last in September 2018 was probably the top in this economic cycle. That's what my former Berkeley economics professor Janet Yellen thinks. So does Ben Bernanke.
And how much have bond yield dropped during recessions? Some 400 basis points. That's how you get to zero, and possible negative numbers at the bottom of the next cycle.
The reasons for a historically low peak in bond yields are, well, complicated. Past cycles I've seen during my lifetime's yields peak anywhere from 6%-12%.
For a start, after waiting for a decade for inflation to show, it never did. Wages, far and away the largest component of inflation, are only growing at a 3.1% annual rate according to the January Nonfarm Payroll Report, and even they are rolling over now.
The harsh reality is that companies have been able to cap labor costs with technology improvements, and that trend looks to accelerate, not slow down. Falling rates are not so much an indicator of an impending recession as they are hyper accelerating technology.
There is no way that wages are going to increase with malls emptying out and businesses moving online. Tesla’s recent parabolic move is only the latest in a long term trend.
Yes, the rise of the machines is happening.
I thought that the $1 trillion tax stimulus package would provide a steroid shot to an already hot economy and fuel inflation. But I was wrong. Instead, tax savings and cash repatriated from abroad went almost entirely into share buybacks and the bond market, not capital spending as promised.
And what do the wealthy do with new cash flow? They buy more bonds, not invest in job-creating start-ups or other high-risk plays.
The Fed has become a willing co-conspirator in the zero rate scenario. Governor Jay Powell has made abundantly clear that rate rises are on hold for the foreseeable future and that there may not be any at all this year. In fact, the next Fed move may be a cut rather than a rise.
The Fed’s policy of quantitative easing, or QE, is also reaccelerating. Instead of unwinding its balance sheet back to the $800 million last seen in 2008, which was the original plan when QE started a decade ago, it is back to pedal to the metal. The coronavirus pandemic is pouring more gasoline on this fire. That will give our nation’s central bank far less flexibility with which to act during the next recession.
Did I just say the “R” word?
It’s become clear that the tax package and $2 trillion in new government debt bought us exactly two quarters of above-average economic growth. Since Q2 2018, the GDP growth rate has plunged from a 4.2% annualized rate to an expectation of well under 2% for Q1 2020.
That's an eye-popping decline of more than 76% in the US growth rate in two years. If the Fed is truly data-dependent, and they tell us every day of the year that they are, these numbers have to be inciting panic in Washington. Hence the sudden, out of the blue clamor for more stimulus from Washington.
If ten-year yields truly go to zero, what would they do to the (TLT)? That would take them from today’s $122 to over $200. There they will be joined by the industrialized countries that are already there, with German ten-year bunds yielding -0.48% and ten year Japanese government bonds at -0.06%.
Where will that take home mortgage rates? Oh, to about 2%, where they already are in Europe now. We may be on the refinance opportunity of the century.
That is if you still have a job.
The Last Time Real Rates Were Zero
I have been in the money management business for 35 years and really enjoy your service.
I just want to say that the way you handled the start of the year which was a combination of exploiting opportunities from an oversold market combined with your overall risk mitigation strategies was not only brilliant but profitable as well.
I am up on the year and glad to have not participated in the insanity of a market short-term meltdown.
Moreover, one of the reasons I like your service so much is I am prohibited from making specific stock buys/sells without permission from our trading desk in NY and that can take time as well as prohibitions within days of earnings announcements or if the firm is buying/selling.
So using market indices through ETFs is not only helpful and productive, but outright brilliant.
So a million thanks again!
Bill
Cleveland, Ohio
Global Market Comments
February 24, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or THE WAKE-UP CALL)
(SPY), (AAPL), (MSFT), (UAL), (CCL), (WYNN), (TLT)
After weeks of turning a blind eye, poo-pooing, and wishfully ignoring the global Coronavirus pandemic, traders are finally getting a wake-up call.
It turns out that the prospect of a substantial portion of the world’s population dying over the next few months cannot be offset by quantitative easing after all.
At least for the short term.
This weekend we learned that all Asian cruises have been cancelled. More factories in South Korea have been shut down for the lack of Chinese parts. Technology conferences in San Francisco have been cancelled. Some 80% of all Chinese flights are grounded.
GM assembly lines in Michigan are slowing, both from missing parts and customers. And we have just learned that a section of Italy near Milan has been quarantined, thanks to a major outbreak there.
I learned the true severity of Corona a week ago when I ended up sitting next to a research doctor who worked for San Francisco-based Gilead Sciences (GILD) on a first-class flight from Melbourne, Australia to San Francisco.
He was returning from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the virus. Since all flights from China to the US are now banned, he had to route his return home via Australia.
What he told me was alarming.
The Chinese are wildly understating the spread of the Coronavirus by perhaps 90% to minimize embarrassment to the government, which kept the outbreak secret for a full six months.
Bodies are piling up outside of hospitals faster than they can be buried. Police are going door to door arresting victims and placing them in gigantic quarantine centers. Every covered public space in the city is filled with beds and the roads are empty. Smaller cities and villages have set up barriers to bar outsiders.
He expected it would be many months before the pandemic peaked. It won’t end until the number of deaths hits the tens of thousands in China and at least the hundreds in the US.
The frightening close in the S&P 500 (SPY) on Friday and the horrific trading in futures overnight in Asia suggest that the worst is yet to come.
Since the beginning of 2019, we have been limited to mere 5% downturns in the major indexes, creating a parabola of euphoric share prices. This time, we may not get off so lightly.
There is no doubt that Corona will take a bite out of growth this year. The question is how much. Central banks could well dip in for yet another round of QE to save the day.
The bigger question for you and me is whether investors are willing to look through to the other side of the disease and use this dip as an opportunity to buy. If they are, we are looking another 5% draw down. If they aren’t, then we are looking for 10%, or even more.
Then there is the worst-case scenario. If Corona reaches the proportion of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic where 5% of the world’s population died, then we are looking at a global depression and an 80% stock market crash.
Hopefully, modern science, antibiotics, and rapid response research teams will prevent that from happening. We already have the Corona DNA sequence and several vaccines are already in testing. In 1918, they didn’t even know what DNA was.
The disease could well be peaking now as the course of the last surprise epidemic, that of Ebola in 2014, suggests (see chart below). Until then, we shall just have to hope and pray.
In addition to praying, I’ll be raising cash and adding hedges just in case providence is out of range.
30-Year Treasury Bond Yields (TLT) hit all-time lows following on from the logic above, calling for a melt-up of all asset prices. Collapsing interest rates doesn’t signal an impending recession but a hyper-acceleration of technology wiping out jobs by the millions and capping any wage growth. I’m looking for 1.00% on the ten-year. Money will remain free as far as the eye can see.
Apple tossed Q2 guidance, giving up most Chinese sales because of the big Coronavirus shutdown. The stores have been closed. The stock dives overnight, down $10. Shutdown of its main production factory at Foxconn didn’t help either. Nintendo is also struggling with production of its wildly popular Switch game. When you lose the leader, watch out for the rest of the market.
Massive Chinese Stimulus should head off any sharp downturn in the economy. Will an interest rate cut and a huge dose of QE be enough to offset the deleterious effects of the Coronavirus? Ask me again in another month.
Expats fled Asia and are not returning until the epidemic is over. My plane on the way home was full of Americans taking families home to avoid the plague. It’s yet another drag on the global economy.
Housing Starts plunged 3.6% in January, while permits hit a 13-year high. It’s all a giant interest rate play fueled by massive liquidity.
US Existing Home Sales faded in January, down 1.3%, to a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.46 million units. Inventories are down to an incredible 3.1 months, near an all-time low. I guess consumers don’t want to rush out and buy a new home if they are about to die of a foreign virus.
The Fed Minutes came out and it looked like the central bank wanted to keep American interest rates unchanged. The January meeting showed a stronger forecast for the economy, so no chance of another interest rate cut here. Even last month, Coronavirus was becoming an issue.
Leading Economic Indicators soared, up 0.8%, versus 0.4%. It’s the highest reading in 2 ½ years. If Coronavirus is going to hurt our economy, it’s not evident in the numbers yet.
The Philly Fed was also red hot, at 36.7. It’s another non-confirmation of the Corona threat.
Despite the fact that we may be facing the end of the world, the Mad Hedge Trader Alert Service managed to maintain new all-time highs. I used the steadily falling prices and sharply rising volatility Index of last week to scale into an aggressive long position from 100% cash.
I bought deep in-the-money call spreads in FANG stocks like (AAPL) and (MSFT) I also picked up additional positions in shares most affected by the Coronavirus, like Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL), United Airlines (UAL), and Wynn Resorts (WYNN), which are all down 25% from recent peaks.
My Global Trading Dispatch performance rose to a new all-time high at +359.73% for the past ten years. February stands at +0.69%. My trailing one-year return is stable at 46.61%. My ten-year average annualized profit ground back up to +35.38%.
All eyes will be focused on the Coronavirus still, with deaths over 2,000. The weekly economic data are virtually irrelevant now. However, some important housing numbers will be released.
On Monday, February 24 at 8:30 AM, the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index is published.
On Tuesday, February 25 at 8:30 AM, the S&P Case Shiller National Home Price Index for December is out .
On Wednesday, February 26, at 8:00 AM, January New Home Sales are released.
On Thursday, February 27 at 8:30 AM, the government announced the second look at Q4 GDP. Weekly Jobless Claims are also out at 8:30.
On Friday, February 28 at 9:45 AM, the Chicago Purchasing Manager Index is printed.
The Baker Hughes Rig Count follows at 2:00 PM.
As for me, we have just suffered the driest February on record here in California, so I’ll be reorganizing my spring travel plans. Out goes the skiing, in comes the beach trips. Such is life in a warming world.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
"Getting information off the Internet is akin to trying to sweep back the ocean with a broom," said Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google.
Global Market Comments
February 21, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(ON EXECUTING MY TRADE ALERTS),
(TEN REASONS WHY STOCKS CAN’T SELL-OFF BIG TIME),
(SPY)
From time to time, I receive emails from a subscribers telling me that they are unable to get executions on trade alerts that are as good as the ones I get.
There are several possible reasons for this:
1) Markets move, sometimes quite dramatically so. That’s why I include a screenshot of my personal trading account with every trade alert to reliably source the price for the readers.
2) Your Trade Alert email was hung up on your local provider’s server, getting it to you late. This is a function of your local provider’s lack of adequate capital investment and is totally outside our control.
3) The spreads on deep-in-the-money options spreads can be quite wide. This is why I recommend readers to place limit orders to work in the middle market. Make the market come to you. Never buy at market or pay the offered side of the market.
4) Hundreds of market-makers read Global Trading Dispatch and many have attached algorithms to my service. The second they see one of my Trade Alerts, they adjust their markets accordingly.
This is especially true for deep-in-the-money options. A spread can go from totally ignored to a hot item in seconds. I have seen daily volume soar from 10 contracts to 10,000 in the wake of my Trade Alerts.
On the one hand, this is good news, as my Trade Alerts have earned such credibility in the marketplace, with a 90% success rate. On the other hand, it is a problem for readers encountering sharp elbows when attempting executions in competition with market makers.
5) Occasionally, emails just disappear into thin air. This is cutting-edge technology, and sometimes it just plain doesn’t work.
This is why I strongly recommend that readers sign up for my free Text Alert Service as a backup. Trade Alerts are also always posted on the website as a secondary backup and show up in the daily P&L as a third. So, we have triple redundancy here.
The bottom line for all of this is that the prices quoted in my Trade Alerts are just ballpark ones with the intention of giving traders some name-picking and directional guidance.
You have to exercise your own judgment as to whether the risk/reward is sufficient with the prices you are able to execute yourself.
Sometimes it is better to pay up by a few cents rather than miss the big trend. The market rarely gives you second chances.
Good luck and good trading.
John Thomas
Global Market Comments
February 20, 2020
Fiat Lux
SPECIAL FANG ISSUE
Featured Trade:
(FINDING A NEW FANG),
(FB), (AAPL), (NFLX), (GOOGL),
(TSLA), (BABA)
We all love our FANGS.
Not only have Facebook (FB), Apple (AAPL), Netflix (NFLX), and Alphabet (GOOGL) been at the core of our investment performance for the past decade years, we also gobble up their products and services like kids eating their candy stash the day after Halloween.
Three of the FANGs have already won the race to become the first $1 trillion in history, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft.
In fact, the FANGs are so popular that we need more of them, a lot more. So how do we find a new FANG?
Here is where it gets complicated. None of the four have perfect business models. All excel in many things but are deficient at others.
So, there are at least four different answers as to what makes a FANG. A more accurate answer would probably be 4 squared, or four to the tenth power.
I will list the eight crucial elements that make a FANG.
1) Product Differentiation
In medieval times, location was the most important determinant of business success. If you owned Ye Olde Shoppe at the foot of London Bridge, you prospered.
Then, great distribution was crucial. This occurred during the 19th century when the railroads ran the economy.
Products followed with the automobile boom of the 20th century, when those who dreamed up 18-inch tailfins dominated. This strategy was applied to all consumer products.
The Financial age came next, when cheap money was used to assemble massive conglomerates that was the primary determinant of success.
The eighties and nineties spawned the era of global brands, be it Coca Cola, MacDonald’s, Lexus, or Gucci.
Today, the global economy is ruled by those who can provide the best services. Facebook offers you personal access to a network of 1.5 billion. Apple will sell you a phone that can perform a magical array of tricks.
Netflix will stream any video content imaginable with lightning speed. Alphabet will deliver you any piece of information you want as fast as you can type, but charges advertisers hundreds of billions of dollars to get in your way.
This has created what I call an “Apple” effect. It stampedes buyers to pay the highest premiums for the best products, assuring global dominance.
While Apple accounts for less than 10% of the smart phone market, it captures a stunning 92% of the net profits. Everyone else is just an “also ran.”
Instead of driving my car into a dingy dealership every few months to get ripped off for a tune up, Tesla (TSLA) does it remotely, online, while I sleep, for free.
Unlike battling for a smelly New York taxi cab in a snow storm, a smiling Uber driver will show up instantly, know where to go, automatically bill me at a discount price, and even give me restaurant recommendations in Kabul.
And you all know what Amazon can do. It beats the hell out of looking for a parking space at a mall these days, only to be told they don’t have your size (48 XLT).
2. Visionary Capital
If you have a great vision, you can get unlimited financing free from investors anywhere. That puts those who must pay for expensive external financing for growth at a huge disadvantage.
Have a great vision, and the world is your oyster.
Elon Musk figured this out early with Tesla. By promising a “carbon-free economy,” he has been able to raise tens of billions of equity capital even though his firm has never made a real profit.
Alphabet is “organizing the world’s information”, while Facebook is “connecting the world.”
Chinese Internet giant Alibaba (BABA) invented a holiday from scratch, “Singles Day,” November 11, which has quickly become the most feverish shopping day in history. In 2019, they booked an unbelievable $30.8 billion in sales in a single 24 hours period, up 27% from the previous year.
And you know the great thing about visions? Not only do venture capitalists and consumers love them, so do stock investors.
3) Global Reach
You have to go global or be gone. A company with 7 billion customers will beat one with only 330 million all day long.
Go global, and economies of scale kick in enormously. This is only possible if you digitize everything from the point of sale to the senior management. Some two-thirds of Facebook users are outside the US, although half its profits are homegrown.
By the way, the Mad Hedge Fund Trader is global, with readers in 135 countries. Our marginal cost of production is zero, and the entire firm is run off my American Express card. It’s a great business model. And boy, do I get a ton of frequent flier points! Whenever I board Virgin Atlantic’s nonstop from San Francisco to London, the entire crew stands up to salute.
4) Likeability
Who doesn’t like Mark Zuckerberg, with his ever-present hoodies, skinny jeans, and self-effacing demeanor. And who did Facebook send to Washington to testify about internet regulation but the attractive, razor-sharp, and witty Sheryl Sandberg? The senators ate out of her hand.
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer? Not so likable. Their arrogance invited a ten-year antitrust suit against Microsoft (MSFT) from the Justice Department which half the legal profession made a living off of.
And here’s the thing. If people like you, so will consumers, regulators, and yes, even equity investors. It makes a big difference to the bottom line and your investment performance.
5) Vertical Integration
Crucial to the success of the FANGs is their complete control of the customer experience through vertical integration.
When FANGs don’t manufacture their own products, as Apple does, they source them, rebrand them, and sell them as their own, like Amazon.
The return on investment for advertising is plummeting. Just ask the National Football League. So, it has become essential for companies to keep a death grip on the customer the second they enter your site.
Some, like Amazon again, will keep chasing you long after you have left their sites with special offers and alternative products. Even if you change computers they will hunt you down.
One of my teenaged daughters used my computer to buy a swimsuit last summer, and let me tell you, booting up in the morning has been a real joy ever since.
This was the genius of the Apple store network. Buy one Apple product and they own you for life, like an indentured servant. They all integrate and talk to each other, a huge advantage for a small business owner. And they are cool.
No pimple-faced geeks wearing horn-rimmed glasses here. Get your iPhone fixed and you don’t talk to a technician, but a “genius.” It’s all about control.
Expect other strong brands to open their own store chains soon.
6) Artificial Intelligence
There is probably no more commonly known but least understood term in technology today. It’s like counting the number of people who have finished Dr. Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” (I have).
A trillion-dollar company absolutely must be able to learn from human data input and then use algorithms to analyze it. Data has become the oxygen of the modern economy.
The company then use other algos to predict what you’re most likely buying next and then thrust it in front of your face screaming at the top of its lungs.
This has been evolving for decades.
First, there was demographic targeting. White suburban middle-class guys have all got to like Budweiser, right?
This turned into social targeting. If two friends “liked” the same brand, regardless of their demographics, they should be targeted by same advertisers.
Now we live in the age of behavioral targeting. There is no better predictor of future purchases than current activities. So, if I buy a plane ticket to Paris, offerings of Paris guidebooks, tours, French cookbooks, French dating services, and even seller of discount black berets suddenly start coming out of the woodwork.
It would be a vast understatement to say that behavioral targeting is the most successful marketing strategy ever invented. So, guess what? We’re going to get a lot more of it.
As depressing as this may sound, the number one goal of almost all new technological advancements these days is to get you to buy more stuff.
Better to use the public computer at the library to buy your copy of “50 Shades of Gray.”
7) Accelerant
If you want to throw gasoline on the growth of a company, you absolutely have to have the best people to do it. The companies with the smartest staff can suck in free capital, invent faster, develop speedier services, and always be ahead of the curve when compared to the competition.
This has led to enormous disparities in income. Companies will pay anything for winners, but virtually nothing for losers.
I’ll never forget the first day I walked on to the trading floor at Morgan Stanley (MS). I am 6’4” and am used to towering over those around me. But at Morgan, almost all the salesmen were my height or a few inches shorter.
The company specifically selected these people because they delivered better sales records. Height is intimidating, especially to short customers.
And that’s what the FANGs have, the programming equivalents of a crack all-6’4” sales team.
A few years ago, my son got a job as the head of International SEO at Google. He was rare in that he spoke fluent Japanese and carried three passports, US, British, and Japanese (born in London with a Japanese mom and American dad).
However, when he met his team, they all spoke multiple languages, were binational, and were valedictorians, National Merit Scholars, and Eagle Scouts to boot!
This is why immigration is such a hot button issue in Silicon Valley these days. If you can’t get a work visa for a graduating PhD in Computer Science from Stanford, he’ll just go back to China or India to start a local competitor that may someday eat your lunch.
By the way, if you get a FANG on your resume, even for a short period, you are set for life. Oh, and by the way, Apple gets 100,000 resumes a month!
8) Geography
It all about location, location, location. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley took root near two world class universities, the University of California at Berkeley (my alma mater), and the godless heathens at Stanford across the bay.
When the pioneers moved west in covered wagons in 1849, they came to a fork in the road. The god fearing families went right to the verdant farmland of Oregon, while young men cashing in on the latest get-rich-quick scheme chose left for the gold fields of California. Nothing has changed since.
Cal in particular was the recipient of massive government funding for the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb during WWII. The tailwind lingers to this day. The world’s first cyclotron still occupies a local roundabout.
Universities provide the raw materials essential to create hot house local economies like the San Francisco Bay Area. And as much as every region in the US or country in the world would like to do this, none have been able to.
There is only one place in the world were a company can hire 1,000 engineers from scratch on short notice, and that is the Bay Area.
Also, innovation is city centered. Some two-thirds of future GDP growth will emanate from cities.
So, if you want to move your career forward, you better count on spending some serious time in Silicon Valley, New York, London, and Tokyo.
I’ve done all four and it paid handsomely.
So there you have it. Now we know what makes a FANG. I’ll be addressing who the most likely FANG candidates are in a future letter.
I want to thank my friend, Scott Galloway of New York University’s Stern School of Business for some of the concepts in this piece. His book, “The Four” is a must read for the serious tech investor.
