Global Market Comments
September 1, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trades:
(AUGUST 30 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(AMZN), (NVDA), (AAPL), (GOOG), (TSLA), (TLT), (TSLA), (FXI), (GOLD), (WPM), (AMC), (MSFT), (CCJ)
CLICK HERE to download today's position sheet.
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the August 30 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA.
Q: I have a question about NVDA. While NVIDIA is a top-of-the-line chip company, there are many companies, i.e., Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and of course, China (FXI), that are looking to get into the arena and build their own chips-cutting into (NVDA) space. How soon do you think this will happen and how good will those chips be?
A: NVIDIA is ahead now because of decisions on software and platforms they made 20 years ago. As all the important employees are also shareholders with minimal cost there is no way you’re going to pry them away to another company. You can’t copy NVIDIA with a simple cut-and-paste operation as you can with most other companies and the market has figured this out. (NVDA) has a moat that will remain unassailable for years. Now they have the AI turbocharger. My short-term target is $1,000 and it probably goes much higher. I reiterate my strong “BUY” issued in 2015 at $15.
Q: Why do you think the demise of crypto is coming?
A: Not so much a demise as a long nuclear winter. The SEC has declared war on all the intermediaries, and if you don’t have intermediaries you can’t trade. That shrinks the market to hot wallets only, which only computer programmers can do. That is much smaller than the current market. The other reason is that crypto prospered when we had a cash surplus and an asset shortage. We had to invent new assets to soak up all that cash—that's what Bitcoin did, it soaked up about $2 trillion dollars. Now we have the opposite: a cash shortage thanks to high-interest rates and an asset oversupply—all of the busted stocks that emanated from crypto, all the SPACS, the ETFs, and so on, where people lost 90%-100% of their money. #3, there is still a massive fraud and theft problem with crypto running in the hundreds of billions of dollars. I’d rather just buy Apple (AAPL) or Google (GOOG) or Tesla (TSLA) with my money. Those are cheaper alternatives than existed 18 months ago.
Q: Will iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) visit the $92.25 low or have yields peaked?
A: I hope it visits the $92 low—I’m going to be buying my pants off if we get that low, plus issuing two-year LEAPs with 100% returns. So absolutely, yes. (TLT) is bottoming here and starting to discount interest rate cuts which will begin in March or June.
Q: What do you think of sells on Tesla (TSLA)?
A: I ignore all sells on Tesla, as I have done for the last 13 years. Keep in mind that Tesla has always had one of the largest short interests in the market, and will continue to do so as many people don’t buy the hype, or the vision.
Q: Why haven’t we gotten any trade alerts on gold and silver?
A: We sent out trade alerts for the concierge customers on gold (GOLD) and silver (WPM), and if we see another good entry point we’ll send those out also to the regular Global Trading Dispatch customers.
Q: When you say dip, how much of a dip do you mean?
A: We’ve really only had a 7% dip in the S&P 500 (SPY) this summer top to bottom. Usually, you get 10%, but with $5.6 trillion in cash on the sideline and with AI and multiple other technologies accelerating, people are just not willing to wait. When you throw cold water on the market, as we have been doing all summer, you buy the heck out of it.
Q: Will China’s (FXI) real estate collapse cause a black swan for US markets? Will China go the way of Japan?
A: No, the Chinese real estate market is almost completely isolated from the rest of the global economy. Additionally, most of the Chinese debt is owned by a dozen or so government-controlled banks. So, real estate prices there can implode and have virtually no effect on anywhere else. I’m not worried about that at all. You might get a down day of a few hundred points when one of the biggest companies goes under, but no more than that, and it doesn’t affect China’s trading economy at all. On a list of things to worry about, that’s probably number 100.
Q: It’s said a lot of the recent gains in the market are from short covering—how do you determine the number of shorts out there?
A: Well, most short interest in stocks is in the public domain; all you have to do is Google the term “how many Tesla shorts,” and you’ll get a number—it’ll be like 20-25% of the outstanding shares. For some companies, like AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC), the short interest can be 50% or more. So, it’s easy to find out; however, you want to buy the market before people start covering shorts, not after, because that buying power is then already in the market, and that would have been a couple of months ago. For any of the big hedge funds, almost none of them were shorting stocks. All of them were looking to buy on any declines; that’s what they’ve been doing all summer, and that's why the market was unable to appreciably fall.
Q: Outlook on Microsoft Corp (MSFT)?
A: Double in the next 3 years, as is the case with all of big tech.
Q; What about my iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) 2024 LEAPS?
A: I think we will get enough of a rally in TLT by January for all of those Jan 2024 LEAPS to expire at max profit. They’re only $4 points away from max profit for the $95/$100s and $9 points away for the $100/$105s, and that is entirely doable if the Fed stops raising interest rates or even cuts them. At one point these LEAPS were up 70% from cost so that might have been a great time to take profits.
Q: Is your AI product different from the one offered by Tradesmith?
A: Yes, we have completely different trade alerts than Tradesmith has; and they are using different algorithms than we are, so, totally they’re different services. If you have the Tradesmith product, just keep watching it and see if it performs. Usually, it takes six months to decide whether a new service is worth renewing, so I would keep watching it. Also, Tradesmith has a ton of analytical tools which we don’t offer. They made a massive seven-year investment in their own AI tools, which are completely different than ours. They disclose some of theirs, but we don’t. Why give away the keys to the kingdom? We’ll just send you our trade alerts, which by the way have been 100% profitable.
Q: Whatever happened to meme stocks like AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC)? Should I look at these?
A: Absolutely not—they’re pure gambling. You’re better off just buying a New York lottery ticket. No fundamentals; I’m amazed AMC is even still in business. I went to the movies a few weeks ago and I was the only person in the theater. I went to see the Oppenheimer movie, which I highly recommend by the way. I’m still radioactive from when I worked with his lot.
Q: Credit card debt has spiked to historic levels—will this eventually come back to haunt the US economy?
A: Not really, it really doesn’t translate to lower consumer spending or a weaker economy yet. My bet is these people get bailed out by falling interest rates again as they always are. Consumer Spending Rocketed in July, up a monster 0.8%, the second-best number of the year, in further evidence of improving economic growth. Never underestimate the ability of Americans to spend money
Q: Can we access recordings of these webinars?
A: Yes, we post them on the website in your members' section two hours after it’s recorded. Just log into madhedgefundtrader.com, go to your membership section, and it’ll list webinars as one of the services you have purchased and have access to.
Q: How will markets respond if Trump gets back in the White House?
A: Major market crash—that’s an easy one. The Trump who won in 2016 is not the same Trump as today.
Q: What will happen to the price of EVs when the world runs out of lithium?
A: The world will never run out of lithium, it’s one of the world's most abundant elements. The bottleneck is in lithium processing, and there are multiple lithium processing facilities using new technologies under construction around the country. That gets you around that bottleneck, and you also free yourself from Chinese sources of processed lithium. Elon Musk planned all this out 25 years ago when he first started Tesla. He planned for a 20 million unit/year scale-up and has locked up the lithium supplies to accommodate that level of construction, leaving the rest of the world in the dust.
Q: Would you comment on the potential of new EV car batteries to enhance travel distances?
A: Tesla has a new solid-state battery that increases battery ranges from 10 times to 20 times, but it hasn’t been able to economically produce them in large enough numbers to put them in new cars. That’s in the wings. If that happens, Tesla will be able to cut costs by $10,000 per car and shrink the battery size from 1,000 pounds to 50 pounds, which would be revolutionary and absolutely wipe out Detroit, China, and Japan. That would allow Tesla to take over the entire global car market. So, yes, when you consider all that, it makes my current forecast of $1,000 for Tesla look stupidly conservative.
Q: What’s your take on the state of the Russia/Ukraine war?
A: Ask me in three weeks, when I will be in Ukraine seeing the actual state of the war, visiting the front lines, delivering doctors and supplies to children’s hospitals, and doing assorted odd jobs that have been requested of me. You’ll get the full read on Ukraine then. For now, I can tell you that Ukraine is still winning, but 18 months in, the people are getting tired. The people in my team in Ukraine who are organizing this trip sometimes break down in tears from the sheer weight of the war on them. Of course, being bombed every day doesn’t help your sleep either. So be prepared for my report and video of the century on the Ukraine war.
Q: Stanley Druckenmiller has a big position in Cameco Corp (CCJ).
A: That’s absolutely true, and I’d be a LEAPS buyer there on any kind of pullback. Stanley is a billionaire for a reason.
Q: What happens to gold at the introduction of the US government's digital currency?
A: It probably goes up. Actually, it’ll probably have no impact, but if it’s going to do anything it’ll make gold go up because people who are frightened of digital currencies will buy gold as a safe haven. I happen to know a few of those who have millions of dollars worth of gold stashed away under their mattresses for this purpose.
To watch a replay of this webinar with all the charts, bells, whistles, and classic rock music, just log in to www.madhedgefundtrader.com, go to MY ACCOUNT, click on GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH, then WEBINARS, and all the webinars from the last 12 years are there in all their glory.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
2023 in the Naval & Military Club in London
“I’m just watching in astonishment at the SPAC market. There are companies that I passed on for $5 billion now selling for $20 billion with 1% gross margins in completely undefendable businesses with competitors eating their lunch,” said investor Barry Sternlicht.
Mad Hedge Biotech and Healthcare Letter
August 31, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(A ‘FRESH FACE’ IN THE DIVIDEND ARISTOCRATS INDEX)
(KVUE), (JNJ)
The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Index has recently added a significant name to its ranks: Kenvue (KVUE).
Though referring to Kenvue as a 'newcomer' might seem paradoxical, given its impressive roster of iconic brands such as Tylenol and Band-Aid. This company has a remarkable 135-year history to its credit.
Brought to the market through a strategic spinout by Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Kenvue debuted on the NYSE this past May, proudly showcasing a market capitalization nearing $79 billion. This masterstroke funneled a substantial $13.2 billion into JNJ's reservoir, an outcome of both debt offerings and the subsequent IPO.
The move emphasizes the strategic rationale behind the future plans of both companies: prioritizing agility, enhancing flexibility, and ensuring concentrated success.
It's then no coincidence that Kenvue soon found itself part of the portfolio of noteworthy ETFs such as ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats (NOBL) and FT Cboe Vest S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats (KNG). This recognition aligns with JNJ's established reputation as a dividend aristocrat.
A critical insight from S&P Global (SPGI), the guardian of this index, indicates an intriguing approach for the next two years: dividends from both parent JNJ and offspring Kenvue will be combined to determine their collective eligibility for this esteemed group. Post this period, while the specifics of S&P’s plan remain under wraps, indicators point towards Kenvue maintaining its prestigious position, especially if its revenue trajectory remains positive.
Meanwhile, Kenvue announced a promising 20-cent per share dividend as its introduction. Meanwhile, with JNJ's anticipated $1.11 quarterly payout and a bullish forecast for its 2024 free cash flow pegged at an impressive $26 billion, the emphasis on consistent, growing dividends is clear. JNJ's recent dividend of $1.19 per share, reflecting its progressive trend, further cements this.
Moreover, Kenvue's current dividend yield stands at 3.5%, impressively outperforming the average aristocrat yield of 2.5%.
In the valuation spectrum, Kenvue's shares are positioned at 17.9 times the projected 2024 earnings. While some might express skepticism over its valuation due to its newcomer status, Kenvue's robust financials and upward cash flow trajectory suggest a poised path for significant growth in the future.
Looking into its trajectory, it’s safe to say that the stock is reasonably priced. However, a thorough analysis mandates acknowledging potential headwinds.
Consider the challenges posed by an exceptionally strong 2022 cold and flu season. Moreover, we can't ignore the looming legal complications tied to talcum powder disputes.
A sigh of relief, though, is that the brunt of these talc-related litigations rests with JNJ, evident from its near-$9 billion settlement in April. Thus, concerns over Kenvue's liquidity and cash flow might be somewhat overblown.
JNJ's recent financial projections indicate an optimistic 12.5% growth in its 2023 adjusted earnings per share, year-on-year. They've also strategically classified their consumer health segment as "discontinued operations," anticipating a robust $20 billion boost in Q3, courtesy of the spinoff.
Evidently, this stock isn't just turning heads because of its dividend - though that's certainly a feather in its cap.
With a stable and progressively growing income stream, Kenvue stands resilient against economic headwinds and the erratic dance of market volatility. In the vast sea of the consumer healthcare industry, Kenvue is sailing strong. The currents are in its favor: an aging global population and a swelling demand for self-care products are the tailwinds pushing it forward.
To sum it up, Kenvue is presenting an intriguing cocktail of value, consistent income, and potential growth. For those with an eye on both income and value, Kenvue should certainly be on the radar.
Global Market Comments
August 31, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trades:
(THE GOVERNMENT’S WAR ON MONEY)
(TESTIMONIAL)
CLICK HERE to download today's position sheet.
(THE COST OF CANCELLING OUT THE NOISE OF THE WORLD)
August 30, 2023
Hello everyone.
They are everywhere you look. People are wearing them. I’m not talking about the latest sneakers or the ubiquitous wristbands, I’m talking about headphones or earbuds. On public transport – trains, buses, planes, and even on scooters and bicycles, this piece of equipment is attached to the human ear. And even people just going about their daily lives in shopping centres, at the grocer, at the gym, or on a jog in the park, you can see these devices firmly nestled in the ear or over the ear, so the noise of the world is stopped, like it has become an offensive intrusion in our lives.
Where once the sounds of the world were considered benign and/or an unavoidable distraction, big business has now wrapped up noise and marketed it as a hazard to our health. I know excessive and prolonged noise is not healthy. What I am saying is that silence is now big business. Globally, the noise-canceling headphones market generated $13.1bn in 2021, a figure that is expected to more than triple to $45.4 bn by 2031, according to Allied Market Research data.
In Australia, Google searches for “noise-cancelling” and "earplugs” have steadily risen in Australia in the last five years. Earplug brands are now targeting parents by suggesting that their device will help prevent “burnout” while caring for children.
Are they helpful, and what are the costs of long-term use?
The technology that cancels out noise was first developed in the 1950s to reduce cockpit noise for pilots. Bose released the first commercially available headset in 1989, and this was also marketed for aviation. The headphones use a technology known as active noise control: a microphone picks up ambient sounds and an amplifier produces sound waves that are exactly out of phase. The result, when the opposite sound waves collide, is a canceling out of noise. They appear to work best for low-frequency sounds less than 1kHz, such as the roar of an airplane engine, the drone of road traffic, or the hum of an air conditioning unit.
We all know that too much noise is harmful to hearing, but it is also harmful to our broader physical health. Long-term pollution has been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack deaths and depressive symptoms. Strict guidelines stipulate that workers should not be exposed to more than the average of 85dB of noise – think of the noise of a blender – over eight hours.
Of course, there are certain settings where earplugs are necessary to prevent hearing loss, such as on building sites, in the military, at concerts, or in very loud work environments.
But in a recreational use setting, headphones can contribute to hearing loss when listening volumes are too high. As yet, we don’t have any regulations about the use of headphones or earbuds around recreational noise. Without us even realizing it, we may be damaging the neurons that attach to the sensory cells in the ear. These nerves that transmit information about listening in noise are the first to be damaged …. And research shows that a clinical audiogram may not detect this.
Many studies have shown that constant earplug wearing can result in new-onset tinnitus. It was found in one experiment that the tinnitus people developed was felt as “high-pitched”, which corresponded to the range the earplugs were blocking. Professor David McAlpine, academic director of Macquarie University Hearing in Australia argues that if you “stop putting sound into your ears… your brain overcompensates by turning up its internal gain.” Furthermore, McAlpine comments that “it completely alters your neural pathways.” So McAlpine sets us straight by saying that “monkeying around with the sound energy going into your ears is monkeying around with what your brain evolved to be doing.”
Workplaces are often noisy environments and pose a distraction to many employees. The pandemic forced many of us to work from home, and we came to realize how much noise we had been putting up with. But simply wearing noise-cancelling headphones at work should not be the broad solution to work noise. The design of the workplace needs to be addressed to incorporate areas where focused work can be done in quiet zones, while collaborative work can be done in other zones. We do have the “quiet carriage” on trains, so why not in offices and workplaces?
Much more research needs to be done in this area, but it seems to me that when we start to interfere with nature and how the human body is meant to work, negative consequences can manifest. Whether or not these devices do us harm, big business will still market them as a way to deal with the noise in our modern world and profit from it.
Cheers,
Jacquie
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
August 30, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(BULLISH SIGNS FOR 2024)
(AMZN), (GDP), ($COMPQ)
In a fireside chat with some of Amazon’s (AMZN) key lieutenants, CEO of Amazon Andy Jassy ran out of patience.
It’s the end of the line for many.
Critical members of Amazon are still holding onto the rose-colored fantasies of the lockdown era, where workers made their living wearing pajamas all day and took snoozes whenever they wanted.
Not anymore was the message from Jassy.
Enough is enough.
Employees usually don’t have the 30,000-foot view that executives like Jassy have even if they pretend to sometimes.
The paradigm has shifted to the point where management wields all the bargaining power as tech companies trim the fat off their business model.
This spat epitomizes where we are right now in the tech cycle and the wider US economy as a whole.
Tech ($COMPQ) is in a holding pattern where the biggest and best are utilizing a strong balance sheet, but they aren’t doing something so amazing where we chase the hot money with more hot money.
Ironically enough, the US GDP annualized rate just got revised down from 2.4% to 2.1% as spiking interest rates and high inflation eat into growth.
Although companies like Amazon are still doing ok, it’s not to the point where key members of staff can lounge in their sleeping gowns and work one hour per day.
There is resistance from higher management demanding Amazon workers come back to the office.
The deeper underlying message here is that the US economy is still growing buoyantly enough and that signals strength going into 2024 for tech stocks.
There is a better than 50% chance that the US economy won’t enter a recession next calendar year and the tech sector will benefit as it grinds higher.
An important trend I have noticed is that tech shares can absolutely march higher in lockstep with accelerating bond yields.
Many believed this was counterintuitive and I admit, traditional orthodoxy has taught us to respect this inverse correlation.
However, this time-honored belief has come unstuck this year and fighting the Fed has been the tech trade of the year.
What’s next for Amazon?
This is a stark change from February this year when Jassy said he had "no plan" to force workers back.
But now, Jassy reportedly reiterated a rhetoric that has emerged in more recent months: don't comply with return to office, face the consequences.
In July, Amazon employees would be forced into a "voluntary resignation" if they refused to return unless they were one of the rare few who had obtained permission from the company's leadership—internally named the S-team.
Former Twitter CEO Elon Musk was the first tech executives who started this fad by firing 80% of Twitter’s staff when he acquired the company.
That philosophy has really gutted the bottom of the chain in tech companies and shares of tech firms will benefit from this through 2024.
Instead of paying for expensive workers to sit at home, tech management are summoning up shareholder returns in the form of dividends and share buybacks to extend the tech bull market to the end of 2024.
I am still bullish tech stocks moving forward and algos are still programmed to bet on a Fed pivot. Tech goes up until the Fed pivots.
"The rich invest in time, the poor invest in money." – Warren Buffett
