Global Market Comments
June 1, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(JOIN THE JUNE 4 TRADERS & INVESTORS SUMMIT),
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or THE COUNTRY THAT IS FALLING APART),
(SPX), (INDU), (TLT), (TBT), (GLD),
(AAPL), (FB), (JPM), (BAC)
Tag Archive for: (BAC)
Out of quarantine, into curfew.
Yes, we here at Incline Village, Nevada have received a “stay at home” order because we are in Washoe County, the same county as Reno, where police tear-gassed rioters assaulting a police station yesterday.
I now have the challenge of commuting between two cities that are curfewed, Oakland, CA and Incline Village, NV.
I wonder if this is turning into another 1968, but with a pandemic? That is when casualties peaked from the Vietnam War and there were national race riots and political assassinations.
I hope not.
I’m really getting into this pandemic thing. That’s because people tell me that I am better looking with a mask on. But then I’ve grown a long grey beard since I was locked up three months ago, so maybe less is better.
The great American talent for creativity, which I always knew was lurking under the surface, and exploded into the open.
High-end restaurants are now placing dressed up dummies at every other table to enforce social distancing rules. At one table, a man is on his knee proposing marriage to his girlfriend. At another, an older couple is arguing. Click here for a laugh.
An enterprising dad has captured 2 million YouTube views describing how to perform tasks only dads can do, like jump-starting a car and fixing toilets. If you need his help ask “Dad, How Do I” by clicking here.
Only in America.
In the meantime, the stock market had one of the best weeks of the year in the face of the worst economic data in history. The (SPY) broke the 200-day moving average to the upside as the newly unemployed topped a staggering 41 million. Buyers rotated into recovery stocks as Covid-19 deaths exceeded 100,000.
All of the super smart traders I know who went into cash or strapped on short positions at the end of January are doing the same now. When markets detach from reality, I detach myself from risk. Almost all of my positions are now very low risk, have extremely small deltas, and expire in 14 trading days. The risk/reward for stocks now is terrible. The Mad Hedge Trade Alert Service delivered a stunning 27% profit off the March bottom.
By the way, in 1968 when the country was last falling apart, the Dow Average rose by 4.3% as part of one long 20-year sideways move. Brokers were forced to drive taxi cabs. I went to Tokyo for better fish to fry, and then Cambodia, Laos, and Burma. I came back 20 years later with an ample collection of lead stuck in various parts of my body.
Pending Home Sales fell down 21.8%, in April, and off 33.8% YOY on a signed contract basis. These are the worst numbers since the data series started. The West was hardest hit, down 50%. No wonder I’ve seen so many real estate agents at the beach. We already know that a sharp rebound is underway as Millennials move to the burbs and flee Corona-infested cities. Home prices will be up this year.
Easy In, Easy Out. The Fed pumped $3 trillion into the economy, and exactly $3 trillion has gone into stocks since the March bottom. There is a 90% correlation between stock prices and the direction of the Fed balance sheet. Stimulus checks went straight into day trading accounts as soaring online stock and option volumes show. In the meantime, Q2 GDP estimates have fallen to the -40%-50% range. What happens when the Fed stops buying? The M2 Money Supply (remember that?) is growing at an 80% annual rate. Buy gold (GLD).
Weekly Jobless Claims came in at 2.4 million, meaning that 41 million, or one out of four Americans out of work. That’s worse than seen during the Great Depression. Recent surveys show employers will hire back only 80% of those laid off, meaning that the Unemployment rate could stay above 10% for years. The future is being pulled forward fast and that means far fewer brick and mortar jobs. Only the large and the digital will survive.
The Market Has Flipped, from chasing big tech to chasing reopening stocks. It’s the only place where value is left. Out with (AAPL) and (FB) and in with (JPM) and (BAC). If it lasts, we’re going to new highs.
The China Trade War heats up, with 33 new companies banned from doing business with the US. You can cut global growth forecasts even more as international trade accelerates its decline. Where was Trump when tens of thousands demonstrated for democracy last fall? Wasn’t China’s President Xi Jinping his friend who did a great job controlling Covid-19?
Stocks are the most overbought in 20 years, since the top of the Dotcom bubble. Risk is extreme for new longs. Almost all S&P 500 stocks are trading above 50-day moving average.
Monster market short could force a short squeeze, with trend following commodity trading advisors boasting the biggest bearish bets in five years. The 200-day moving average at (SPX) $2,999.72 could be a real make or break, only 45 points away. The falling Volatility Index (VIX) is priming the pump for a downside collapse.
New Home Sales were up a stunning 0.6% in April versus an expected -21.9% loss, totaling 623,000 units on a signed contract basis only. The premium is now on new, clean, virus-free homes where you don’t die from a model home. Median home prices plunged from $339,000 to $309,000, down 8% YOY. It’s clear that a lot of speculative buying took place at the market bottom.
US Mortgage Applications up for 6th week, surging 54% since April. My forecast that your home will be your best performing asset of 2020 is coming true. I’m hearing stories of bidding wars again. It’s tough to beat a huge Millennial tailwind and record low-interest rates.
When we come out on the other side of this, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates at zero, oil at $0 a barrel, and many stocks down by three quarters, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 400% or more in the coming decade.
My Global Trading Dispatch performance was unchanged on the week, my downside hedges costing me money in a steadily rising, but wildly overbought market. We stand at an eleven year all-time high of 366.23%. It has been one of the most heroic performance comebacks of all time. We have gained an eye-popping 27.03% since the market bottom despite being hedged all the way up.
My aggressive short bond positions are still delivering some nice profits even though we only have 14 days to expiration, despite the fact the bond market went almost nowhere. That’s because time decay is really starting to kick in.
That takes my 2020 YTD return up to +10.32%. That compares to a loss for the Dow Average of -10.93%. My trailing one-year return exploded to 51.09%, nearly an all-time high. My eleven-year average annualized profit exploded to +34.87%.
The only numbers that count for the market are the number of US Coronavirus cases and deaths, which you can find here.
On Monday, June 1 at 10:00 AM EST, The US Manufacturing PMI for May is published.
On Tuesday, June 2 at 10:30 AM EST, weekly EIA Crude Oil Stocks are released.
On Wednesday, June 3, at 8:15 AM EST, The ADP Private Employment Report is announced.
On Thursday, June 4 at 8:30 AM EST, Weekly Jobless Claims are announced. I’ll be busy all day with the Mad Hedge Traders & Investors Summit.
On Friday, June 5, at 8:30 AM EST, the May Nonfarm Payroll Report is out. It may be the worst on record.
The Baker Hughes Rig Count follows at 2:00 PM EST.
As for me, my original plan this summer was to take a one-week cruise in Tahiti, lead an expedition to excavate more dog tags from Marines missing in action on Guadalcanal, perform a one-week roadshow for clients in New Zealand and Australia, Fly to South Africa for a one-week safari with my kids, and then cool my heels climbing the Matterhorn and thinking great thoughts at my summer home in Zermatt, Switzerland.
This will be the first time in eight years I have not climbed the great mountain. Don’t worry, I have already emailed the Zermatt Mountain Rescue Service and told them I won’t be able to help out this year because the town is closed.
Covid-19 had other ideas.
Instead, I will be commuting back and forth between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe by Tesla Model X, writing four newsletters a day, issuing uncountable trade alerts, and then taking a daily ten-mile hike to the Tahoe Rim Trail with a 40-pound backpack. Safer and much cheaper.
There’s no rest for the wicked. There’s always next year.
Stay healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Back Into Storage for Next Year
Global Market Comments
April 6, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or MAD HEDGE GOES POSITIVE ON THE YEAR)
(INDU), (SPY), (VIX), (VXX), (AMZN), (MSFT), (BAC), (JPM)
There is no doubt that the Corona pandemic will be the WWII challenge of our generation. Since we are Americans, we will rise to the task. We all have our jobs to do, being it working as a front-line medical professional, or simply staying at home.
We will get through this.
I was standing in front of a Reno gun store yesterday waiting my turn to enter. Under Nevada’s strict shelter-in-place rules, only one person is allowed to enter a store at a time. I needed some ammo and black powder for my 1860 Army Colt revolver, which is hard to find in California.
I struck up a casual conversion about the pandemic with other waiting customers on a clear, brisk Nevada morning. A blue-collar worker with an AR-15 said he really wasn’t paying attention to it. A latino gang member with a heavily tattooed neck and fingers looking for a box of 9mm Glock shells confessed he hadn’t heard about it. A white nationalist with a heavily militarized SUV argued that the whole thing was a left-wing conspiracy meant to discredit Donald Trump.
Which can only mean one thing.
The worst days of the of the pandemic are ahead of us, as are the consequences for the stock market. Remember, 40% of the country don’t read newspapers or watch the news and are only barely aware of the seriousness of the disease.
The White House us currently forecasting 12 million cases and 250,000 deaths. That’s just an optimistic guess. Only one third of the country started their shutdowns early, one third were late, and the last third not at all. This means that the highest death rates will be in southern and midwestern states that are following the presidents advance and dismissing the pandemic out of hand, refusing to wear face masks.
So, we are really looking at a potential US 120 million cases and 2.4 million deaths. On that scale the food distribution system will start to break down for shear lack of workers. No one really knows how effective shelter-in-place will be, although the early data is encouraging. We are all living in one giant experimental petri dish right now.
And we will be the lucky country. Deaths in the Southern Hemisphere, which is just going into the winter, will be much higher.
Anytime I consider adding a long position, I first ask myself how it will stand up against a picture on the front page of the New York Times showing a pile of a thousand bodies outside a local hospital. I saw that sort of thing in Asia a half century ago. Markets will crash.
The game we are now in for the coming weeks is to trade an $18,000 to $22,000 range in the Dow Average. The sharp selloff in the Volatility Index (VIX) last week, which we caught with both hands, suggests that the next retest of the $18,000 low will be successful.
Further down the road, I’m not so sure. Any prediction beyond tomorrow in this environment is dubious at best. The world is moving on fast-forward now and the unbelievable is happening every day.
But here’s a shot. If the $18,000 to $22,000 range doesn’t hold, then we are moving to a $15,000 to $18,000 range. If that fails, then we are looking at $12,000 to $15,000 range. Then we will be looking at Great Depression levels of stock market sell-off, with a total corporate capitalization loss of an eye-popping $17 trillion.
The great challenge here is to buy your best stocks and LEAPs as low as possible before an unprecedented $6 trillion in federal stimulus that is coming our way. There will be the $2 trillion in jobs and corporate bailout money already passed, a $2 trillion infrastructure bill coming, and a second jobs and bailout bill that will be needed. On top of that, the Federal Reserve has committed to $8 trillion backstopping of the financial.
And here is the problem. Trump has spent the last three years shrinking the government. The pandemic is a very large government event. So, the Feds may simply not have enough bodies in place to spend, or to lend, all the money that has already been authorized.
That is your economic and market risk.
There is no doubt that the next month will be grim. The U-6 Unemployment Rate published on Friday was 8.9%, indicating the total number of jobless is already at 14.4 million. If the Fed is right and we soon hit 32%, total joblessness will soar to 52 million. During the Great Depression, that unemployment rate peaked at only 25%, throwing 20 million out of work. We could exceed those levels in the coming week!
Dr. Fauci predicts 200,000 US deaths. I think that’s a low number, given that 100 million Americans are still not sheltering-in-place. Corona is starting to take its toll on Wall Street, claiming the life of the Jeffries CFO, Peg Broadbent. Every state and city should prepare for a New York-style spike in cases.
The Fed is expecting 47 million unlucky individuals to lose jobs. This week, Macy’s (M) chopped 150,000, while Tillman Fertitta laid off 40,000 restaurant workers in place like Morton’s Steakhouse and the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. Many more are to come. Weekly Jobless Claims have already exploded to 6.64 Million. That is three full recessions worth of job losses in two weeks.
The March Nonfarm Payroll Report was a disaster. Here is another number to put in your record book of awful numbers, the report showing 701,000 job losses in March. It’s the first negative number since 2010. Leisure & Hospitality fell by a staggering 459,000.
A second Corona wave might arrive in the fall, warns JP Morgan (JPM). We may not have visited the Volatility Index at $80 for the last time. I’m setting up more (VXX) shorts if we do revisit there. Sell all substantial stock market rallies.
It’s worse than you think. Brace yourself. Bank of America (BAC) has come out with the first GDP forecast I’ve seen that factors in a second wave of Coronavirus cases in the fall. It is not a pretty picture. They see every quarter of 2020 as coming in negative. These easily takes US GDP back to levels not seen since the Obama administration. The only consolation is that (BAC) has never been that great at forecasting the economy, basically leaving it to a bunch of kids. Here they are:
2020 Q1 -7%
2020 Q2 -30%
2020 Q3 -1%
2020 Q4 -30%
Oil rich countries will have to dump $225 billion in stocks, thanks to the collapse of oil to a once impossible $20 a barrel. An 80% plunge in national revenues is forcing asset sales at fire sale prices to avoid a brewing revolutions. They don’t retire former heads of states to golf clubs in the Middle East, they stand them up in front of a firing squads.
Oil Hit an 18-year low at $19.30 a barrel and it could get a lot worse. All of the world’s storage is full, so producers might have to PAY wholesalers to take Texas tea off their hands. Yes, negative oil prices are possible. Otherwise, producing wells will be permanently damaged with a total shutdown. Most of the industry has a negative net worth, save the majors. I told you to stay away!
China PMIs turn positive, coming in at 52 versus an expected 45 indicating a recovering economy. Watch the Middle Kingdom’s economic data more than usual. US PMIs are still in free fall. However, consumers still are staying at home. Their economy went first into the pandemic and will be the first out. There’s hope for us all the quarantine is working.
A $2 trillion infrastructure budget is in the works, and the Democrats will support it because the money won’t be spent until they get control of government in 2021. With most of the construction industry closed, the government’s cumbersome bidding process can’t even start until the summer.
You wonder how that last $2 trillion rescue package got done in five days? This will take us to Great Depression levels of bailout spending. The Fed balance sheet has exploded from $3.5 trillion to $5 trillion in weeks. I know 10,000 bridges that need to be fixed.
When we come out the other side of this, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates at zero, oil at $20 a barrel, and many stocks down by three quarters, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 400% or more in the coming decade.
My Global Trading Dispatch performance had a spectacular week, blasting my performance back to positive numbers for the year. That is thanks to the ten-point collapse in the Volatility Index (VIX) on Thursday and Friday, which had a hugely positive effect on all our positions.
We are now up an amazing +11.02% for the first three days of April, taking my 2020 YTD return up to +2.60%. We are a mere 68 basis points short of an all-time high. That compares to an incredible loss for the Dow Average of -28.8%, with more to go. My trailing one-year return was recovered to 46.74%. My ten-year average annualized profit recovered to +34.85%.
My short volatility positions (VXX) are almost back to cost. I used every rally in the Dow Average to increase my short positions in the (SPY) to almost obscene levels. Now we have time decay working big time in our favor. These will all come good well before their ten-month expiration.
I bought two very deep in-the-money, very short-dated call spreads in Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT), the two safest companies in the entire market, betting that we don’t go to new lows in the next nine trading days.
At the slightest sign of a break in the pandemic, the economy and shares should come roaring back. Right now, I have a 30% cash position.
All economic data points will be out of date and utterly meaningless this week. The only numbers that count for the market are the number of US Coronavirus cases and deaths, which you can find here at https://coronavirus.jhu.edu
On Monday, April 6 at 6:00 AM, the Consumer Inflation Expectations for March are out.
On Tuesday, April 7 at 9:00 AM, the US JOLTS Job Openings Report is published.
On Wednesday, April 8, at 2:00 PM, the Fed Minutes for the previous meeting six weeks ago are released.
On Thursday, April 9 at 8:30 AM, Weekly Jobless Claims are announced. The number could top 3,000,000 again.
On Friday, April 10 at 7:30 AM, the US Core Inflation is released. The Baker Hughes Rig Count follows at 2:00 PM. Expect these figures to crash as well.
As for me, I have temporarily moved back to Oakland to retrieve my printer. As I left, my Tahoe neighbors told me I was nuts to go back to a big city. I then drove across an almost totally vacated Golden State, emptied by a pandemic.
With my free time, I have planted a victory garden. I managed to obtain tomatoes, eggplants, chili peppers, strawberries, lettuce, and bell peppers from the nearest Home Depot (HD) garden center. In two weeks, I should have something new to eat.
Stay healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Still Sheltering in Place
Global Market Comments
October 17, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(UPDATING THE MAD HEDGE LONG TERM MODEL PORTFOLIO),
(USO), (XLV), (CI), (CELG), (BIIB), (AMGN), (CRSP), (IBM), (PYPL), (SQ), (JPM), (BAC), (EEM), (DXJ), (FCX), (GLD)
Global Market Comments
October 14, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or UNICORNS AND CANDY CANE)
(AAPL), (FDX), (SPY), (IWM), (USO), (WMT), (AAPL), (GOOGL),
(X), (JPM), (WFC), (C), (BAC)
I have to tell you that flip-flopping from extreme optimism to extreme pessimism and back is a trader’s dream come true. Volatility is our bread and butter.
Long term followers know that when volatility is low, I struggle to make 1% or 2% a month. When it is high, I make 10% to 20%, as I have for two of the last three months.
That is what the month of October has delivered so far.
To see how well this works, the S&P 500 is dead unchanged so far this month, while the Mad Hedge Fund Trader alert service is up a gangbuster 10% and we are now 70% in cash.
While the market is unchanged in two years, risk has been continuously rising. That's because year on year earnings growth has fallen from 26% to zero. That means with an unchanged index, stocks are 26% more expensive.
Entire chunks of the market have been in a bear market since 2017, including industrials, autos, energy, and retailers. US Steel (X), which the president’s tariffs were supposed to rescue, has crashed 80% since the beginning of 2018.
The great irony here is that while the Dow Average is just short of an all-time high, all of the good short positions have already been exhausted. In short, there is nothing to do.
So, the wise thing to do here is to use the 1,200-point rally since Thursday to raise cash you can put to work during the next round of disappointment, which always comes. If we do forge to new highs, they will be incremental ones at best. That’s when you let your passive indexing friends pick up the next bar tab, who unintentionally caught the move.
In the meantime, we will be bracing ourselves for the big bank earnings due out this week which are supposed to be dismal at best. JP Morgan (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Citigroup (C) are out on Tuesday and Bank of America (BAC) publishes on Wednesday.
That’s when we find out how much of this move has been about unicorns and candy canes, and how much is real.
Trump demoed his Own trade talks, creating a technology blacklist and banning US pension investment into the Middle Kingdom. He also hints he’ll take a small deal rather than a big one. Great for American farmers but leaves intellectual property and forced joint ventures on the table, throwing the California economy under the bus. I knew it would end this way. It’s very market negative. Without a trade deal, there is no way to avoid a US recession in 2020.
The Inverted Yield Curve is flashing “recession.” The three-month Treasury yield has been above the 10-year bond yield since May, and that always says a downturn is coming. The time to batten down the hatches is now.
US Producer Prices plunged in September, down 0.3%, the worst since January. It’s another recession indicator but also pushes the Fed to lower rates further.
Inflation was Zero in September, with the Consumer Price Index up 1.8% YOY. Slowing economy due to the trade war gets the blame, but I think that accelerating technology gets the bigger blame.
New Job Openings hit an 18-month low, down 123,000 to 7.05 million in August, as employers pull back in anticipation of the coming recession. Trade war gets the blame. The smart people don’t hire ahead of a recession.
FedEx (FDX) is dead money, says a Bernstein analyst, citing failing domestic and international sales. No pulling any punches, he said “The bull thesis has been shredded.” Not what you want to hear from this classic recession leading indicator. Nobody ships anything during a slowdown.
Loss of SALT Deductions cost you $1 trillion, or about 4% per home, according to an analysis by Standard & Poor’s. Quite simply, losing the ability to deduct state and local tax deductions creates a higher after-tax cost of carry that reduces your asset value. If you bought a home in 2017 you lost half of your equity almost immediately. The east and west coast were especially hard hit.
Fed to expand balance sheet to deal with the short-term repo funding crisis, which periodically has been driving overnight interest rates up to an incredible 5%. Massive government borrowing is starting to break the existing financial system. What they’re really doing is trying to head off to the next recession.
The Fed September minutes came out, and traders seem to be expecting more rate cuts than the Fed is. Trade is still the overriding concern. The next meeting is October 29-30. It could all end in tears.
Apple (AAPL) raised iPhone 11 Production by 10%, to 8 million more units, according Asian parts suppliers. Great news for its $1,089 top priced product ahead of the Christmas rush. It turns out that an Apple app is helping Hong Kong protesters manage demonstrations. I’m keeping my long, letting the shares run to a new all-time high. Buy (AAPL) on the dips.
The Mad Hedge Trader Alert Service has blasted through to yet another new all-time high. My Global Trading Dispatch reached new apex of +347.48% and my year-to-date accelerated to +47.24%. The tricky and volatile month of October started out with a roar +9.82%. My ten-year average annualized profit bobbed up to +35.64%.
Some 26 out of the last 27 trade alerts have made money, a success rate of 94%! Underpromise and overdeliver, that's the business I have been in all my life. It works. This is rapidly turning into the best year of the decade for me. It is all the result of me writing three newsletters a day.
I used the recession fear-induced selloff after October 1 to pile on a large aggressive short-dated portfolio which I will run into expiration. I am 60% long with the (SPY), (IWM), (USO), (WMT), (AAPL), and (GOOGL). I am 10% short with one position in the (IWM) giving me a net risk position of 50% long. All of them are working.
The coming week is pretty non-eventful of the data front. Maybe the stock market will be non-eventful as well.
On Monday, October 14, nothing of note is published.
On Tuesday, October 15 at 8:30 AM, the New York Empire State Manufacturing Index is released. JP Morgan (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Citigroup (C) kick off the Q3 earnings season with reports.
On Wednesday, October 16, at 8:30 AM, we learn the September Retail Sales. Bank of America (BAC) and CSX Corp. (CSX) report.
On Thursday, October 17 at 8:30 AM, the Housing Starts for September are out. Morgan Stanley (MS) reports.
On Friday, October 18 at 8:30 AM, the Baker Hughes Rig Count is released at 2:00 PM. Schlumberger (SLB), American Express (AXP), and Coca-Cola (KO) report.
As for me, I’ll be going to Costco to restock the fridge after last week’s two-day voluntary power outage by PG&E. Expecting Armageddon, I finished off all the Jack Daniels and chocolate in the house. We managed to eat all of our frozen burritos, pork chops, steaks, and ice cream in a mere 48 hours. But that’s what happens when you have two teenagers.
Hopefully, it will rain soon for the first time in six months bringing these outages to an end.
Good luck and good trading.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
October 9, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(HOW FINTECH IS EATING THE BANKS’ LUNCH),
(BAC), (C), (WFC), (SQ), (PYPL),
(WCAGY), (FISV), (INTU), (BABA),
It was another dreadful DAY for the banks. All bank shares are now down in 2019 with the sole exception of JP Morgan, which is up a modest 10% since January 1. Although their core business is good, the share price hasn’t even bothered to mail it in.
So, I thought it would be time to take another look at what is disrupting the 200-year-old business model of this sector. And that would be Fintech, shorthand for Financial Technology.
To say that fintech was gobbling up the financial industry’s lunch would be a vast understatement. But here’s the problem. Fintech is taking over the world one transaction at a time in an industry that sees billions of transactions a year. The change is almost invisible. If someone were blowing up bank branches on a large scale this would be a far easier trend to see, but the net effect is the same.
The potential market is enormous. While the world’s physical money totals $5 trillion, actual assets controlled by banks today total a staggering $90 trillion.
Why this is all happening now is due to a confluence of several independent technologies. The number of people on the Internet has soared from 1.8 billion in 2010 to 4 billion today, to 8 billion by 2024.
Smartphone usage is diffusing at a similar rate. The roll out of 5G wireless assures that all communications will occur seamlessly, quickly, including financial transactions. Blockchain is enabling encryption on an industrial scale.
This has enabled the rise of a number of online firms over just the last few years that are rapidly taking over a number of traditional banking functions.
So far, the greatest impact has been overseas. Many countries that lack banking infrastructure are leapfrogging straight to mobile. It makes a ton of sense. Poor countries lack the capital to build expensive branch networks to raise fund, and the expertise on how to invest the deposits once in hand.
Good Money (https://goodmoney.com ) is an example of the new online banks that have burst onto the scene. The company offers depositors a generous 1.8% interest rate on overnight funds. Legacy banks are still paying close to zero, even though the Fed has raised rates seven times in three years.
US banks charge an average of $400 in fees a year for a full-service account. Good Money charges nothing.
You will never know where the money goes when you place it with Citibank (C), Bank of America (BAC) or Wells Fargo (WFC). At Good Money, you can specify that your funds be lent to a certain industry or even a specific company. While this means nothing to you or me, it is important issue to oriented Millennials.
Such efforts are called Crowdlending. It first took off in the US with startups like Prosper and Lending Club in the mid 2000s. We’re not talking small potatoes here, or a market that might develop someday. In 2018, some 22,000 businesses extended $380 billion in such loans.
There are other big markets ripe for disruption. I had to pay a Filipino developer $500 for some work he did on my website. Wells Fargo wanted to charge me $50 and the wire transfer would have taken a week. An outfit called Payoneer, Israel-based, did it for $5 and it took 5 seconds.
Wire transfer fees are in fact a global industry worth billions of dollars a year that is there for the taking. The SWIFT international transfer network alone processes some 24 million transactions per day.
It may not surprise many of you that China already has a huge lead in this area. It’s logical since their established banking system is primitive at best. China has three times more mobile phones than the US, five times more Internet customers, sees 10 times more eat-out orders, and 50 times more mobile transactions. In a future where data is currency, this is huge.
Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba (BABA), is in the forefront, facilitating an eye-popping $8 trillion worth of transactions in 2017. Using artificial intelligence to scour public records for past borrowing, income, education, web surfing preferences, and even political leanings, smart finance can use artificial intelligence to gin up a quickie FICO score and generate a new $200 micro loan in as little as eight seconds.
Bank of America eat your heart out.
What gives the Chinese such an advantage here is their huge market, with some 800 million online participants. The money Ant Financial makes isn’t important now. It’s the digitized data they’re collecting and the way it can be manipulated with artificial intelligence. That gives them immense market power. Remember, in the new world, data is the new currency and the Chinese are creating more than we ever will.
The problem with early, under-the-radar but broad-ranging trends, it can be tough to flesh out pure investment plays. Listed liquid tradable stocks are few and far between. You can simply go out and buy Square (SQ) and PayPal (PYPL) and you’d be half the way there in getting some good exposure.
Here’s the problem with that plan. PayPal has tripled in the last two years, while Square has gone ballistic with a 2,000% gain. I expect further appreciation from here, but those ships have already sailed.
A better way to participate might be the Global X Fintech Thematic ETF (FINX), granted you have all the usual problems with specialized ETFs here such as liquidity, high management fees, and tracking error. But you do get exposure to a number of companies that are either domiciled abroad or are not yet publicly listed.
The five largest holdings of (FINX) include Square (SQ), Wirecard AG (WCAGY), Temenos Group AG, Fiserve Inc (FISV), and Intuit (INTU).
You could also simply buy Alibaba. However, as long as America’s trade war with China continues, all Chinese stocks will perform poorly. Given the stubbornness of both sides, the earliest that can happen is January, 2021.
To learn more about (FINX), please go to the manager’s website by clicking here.
Days Gone By
Global Market Comments
September 9, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or SAVED BY A HURRICANE)
(FXB), (M), (XOM), (BAC), (FB), (AAPL),
(AMZN), (ROKU), (VIX), (GS), (MS),
