I have to tell you that this has been a really good week to be John Thomas.

The accolades have been pouring in. During February, my followers have made the most money in their lives, including myself. NVIDIA (NVDA), up 110% in four months, is now the largest position in everyone’s portfolios, if not because of my prodding, then through capital appreciation alone.

Institutions limited to keeping single holdings to 5% or 10% got away with delaying their rebalancing as long as possible.

Is it 1995 for 2,000? I vote for the former, meaning that the current melt-up could have five more years to run with occasional breaks.

Exploding corporate profits and rocketing share capitalizations have replaced the Federal Reserve as a new endless source of liquidity, as I knew it would.

Who needs the Fed? Who needs interest rate cuts?

Best of all, this new source of super liquidity isn’t at the whim of a single man, nor subject to politics of any kind. It has in fact become its own self-fulfilling prophecy.

Dow 240,000 here we come, as I have been endlessly repeating for years!

It says a lot that hedge funds, the “smart money,” are heavily overweight the Magnificent Seven, while retail mutual funds, the “dumb money” are underweight. The technology they are overweight is mostly in Apple, that great backward-looking company. This implies that to catch up mutual funds are going to have to buy hundreds of billions of Mag Seven stocks and sell their Apple to pay for the move.

The largest single source of demand for stocks will be the $1.25 trillion in corporate buybacks. What will they buy? Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT), the three largest purchasers of their own stocks.

When the leader of the fastest-growing, best-performing company with the top-performing stock speaks, you have to pay attention. The next $1 trillion build-out in AI infrastructure is here, says NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, now one of the richest men in the world.

Have a good week! I’ll be spending my time shoveling snow.

In February, we closed up +7.42%. My 2024 year-to-date performance is at +3.14%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +7.33% so far in 2024. My trailing one-year return reached +55.73% versus +42.04% for the S&P 500.

That brings my 15-year total return to +679.77%. My average annualized return has recovered to +51.30%.

Some 63 of my 70 trades last year were profitable in 2023. Some 9 of 13 trades have been profitable so far in 2024.

I used the ballistic move-in (NVDA) to take profits in my double long there. I am maintaining a single long in (AMZN) and Snowflake (SNOW) and am 80% in cash given the elevated level of the markets.

Core PCE Comes in Cool, at 2.8%, as expected. The personal consumption expenditures price index excluding food and energy costs increased 0.4% for the month and 2.8% from a year ago, as expected. Stocks and bonds liked it, but the US dollar hated it.

Snowflake Crashes, down 20%, on weak guidance. CEO Frank Slootman is retiring. This is the third company he has taken public and it’s time to retire. He will stay on as chairman. This is one of the best cloud plays out there, and now you have a chance to buy it close to the October bottom. Buy (SNOW) on dips.

Weekly Jobless Claims Pop, up 13,000 to 215,000. However, continuing claims, which run a week behind, rose to just above 1.9 million, a gain of 45,000 and higher than the FactSet estimate of 1.88 million.

Apple Pulls the Plug on EV Project, wrong product at the wrong time. AI is where the action is. We may have to wait until the summer for this company when it starts to discount the next-generation iPhone release in the fall. Tesla can now sleep easy. Avoid (AAPL) and buy (TSLA) on dips.

Berkshire Hathaway to Top $1 Trillion in a Year, up from the current $900 billion, according to UBS analyst Brian Meredith. I think that’s a low target. Buy (BRK/B) on dips.

Boeing Hit by Damning Report, faulting the company for ineffective procedures and a breakdown in communications between senior management and other members of staff, according to an FAA report. The report is the latest to find fault with safety at Boeing, which suffered its latest blow when a panel covering an unused door flew off during an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5. Buy (BA) on dips.

Warren Buffet Says Their Nothing to Buy, in his annual letter to shareholders. The few targets left are few and far between and heavily picked over. (BRK/B) has also lost the advice of its principal mentor, Charlie Munger at the age of 99. Last year Berkshire acquired Dairy Queen and Berkshire Energy. But with $905 billion in assets, those will hardly move the needle on his incredible track record. The 93-year-old Buffet has outperformed the S&P 500 by 141:1 since 1964.

CEO Jamie Diamond Sell $150 Million in (JPM) Shares, cashing in on the historic “BUY” he had at the 2009 market bottom. He earned a 36X gain on that trade. (JPM) remains the “must-own” bank for most institutional investors.

New Home Sales Weaken, curbed by frigid weather, but demand for new construction remains underpinned by a persistent shortage of previously owned homes. New home sales increased 1.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 661,000 units in January. Economists had forecast new home sales rising to a rate of 680,000 units.

Another Regional Bank is in Trouble. Commercial real estate lender New York Community Bancorp said it discovered “material weaknesses” in how it tracks loan risks, wrote down the value of companies acquired years ago, and replaced its leadership to grapple with the turmoil. The stock plunged. Expect this to be a recurring problem. The US banking system is in the process of consolidating from 4,236 banks to six. Buy (JPM), (BA), and (C) on dips.

Millennials are Becoming the Richest Generation in History. The so-called greatest generation — those typically born from 1928 to 1945 — and baby boomers — born between 1946 and 1964 — will hand over the reins to those born from 1981 to 1996 when they pass on their property- and equity-rich assets. In the U.S. alone, the shift would see $90 trillion of assets move between generations.

My Ten-Year View

On Monday, March 4, nothing of note is announced.

On Tuesday, March 5 at 8:30 AM EST, ISM Services are released.

On Wednesday, March 6 at 2:00 PM, the Jolts Job Openings Report is published

On Thursday, March 7 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced.

On Friday, March 8 at 2:30 PM, the Nonfarm Payroll Report for February is published. At 2:00 PM the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.

As for me, I’ve found a new series on Amazon Prime called 1883. It is definitely NOT PG rated, nor is it for the faint of heart. But it does remind me of my own cowboy days.

When General Custer was slaughtered during his last stand at the Little Big Horn in 1876 in Montana, my ancestors spotted a great buying opportunity. They used the ensuing panic to pick up 50,000 acres near the Wyoming border for ten cents an acre.

Growing up as the oldest of seven kids, my parents never missed an opportunity to farm me out with relatives. That’s how I ended up with my cousins near Broadus, Montana for the summer of 1966.

When I got off the Greyhound bus in nearby Sheridan, I went into a bar to call my uncle. The bartender asked his name and when I told him “Carlat”  he gave me a strange look.

It turned out that my uncle had killed someone in a gunfight in the street out front a few months earlier, which was later ruled self-defense. It was the last public gunfight seen in the state, and my uncle hasn’t been seen in town since.

I was later picked up in a beat-up Ford truck and driven for two hours down a dirt road to a log cabin. There was no electricity, just kerosene lanterns, and a propane-powered refrigerator.

Welcome to the 19^th century!

I was hired as a cowboy, lived in a bunk house with the rest of the ranch hands, and was paid the pricely sum of a dollar an hour. I became popular by reading the other cowboys' newspapers and their mail since they were all illiterate. Every three days we slaughtered a cow to feed everyone on the ranch. I ate steak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

On weekends, my cousins and I searched for Indian arrowheads on horseback, which we found by the shoe box full. Occasionally we got lucky finding an old rusted Winchester or Colt revolver just lying out on the range, a remnant of the famous battle 90 years before. I carried my own six-shooter to help reduce the local rattlesnake population.

I really learned the meaning of work and developed callouses on my hands in no time. I had to rescue cows trapped in the mud (stick a burr under their tail and make them mad), round up lost ones, and sawed miles of fence posts. When it came time to artificially inseminate the cows with superior semen imported from Scotland, it was my job to hold them still. It was all heady stuff for a 15-year-old.

The highlight of the summer was participating in the Sheridan Rodeo. With my uncle being one of the largest cattle owners in the area, I had my pick of events. So, I ended up racing a chariot made from an old oil drum, team roping (I had to pull the cow down to the ground), and riding a Brahman bull. I still have a scar on my left elbow from where a bull slashed me, the horn pigment clearly visible.

I hated to leave when I had to go home and back to school. But I did hear that the winters in Montana are pretty tough.

It was later discovered that the entire 50,000 acres was sitting on a giant coal seam 50 feet thick. You just knocked off the topsoil and backed up the truck. My cousins became millionaires. They built a modern four-bedroom house closer to town with every amenity, even a big-screen TV. My cousin also built a massive vintage car collection.

During the 2000s, their well water was poisoned by a neighbor’s fracking for natural gas, and water had to be hauled in by truck at great expense. In the end, my cousin was killed when the engine of the classic car he was restoring fell on top of him when the rafter above him snapped.

It all gave me a window into a lifestyle that was then fading fast. It’s an experience I’ll never forget.

Good Luck and Good Trading,

John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader