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The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Goldilocks is Back!

After too long of an absence, Goldilocks has moved back in once again. She arrived with Santa Claus too, a month ahead of schedule.

Can life get any better than that, Goldilocks and Santa Claus?

Santa confused Thanksgiving with Christmas this year. I saw it coming a mile off, and it’s not because my failing eyesight has suddenly improved.

Since October 26, Mad Hedge followers have earned an impressive 25%. We are on track to top an 86.5% profit for 2023, the best in the 15-year history of the service.

Concierge members who own our substantial LEAPS portfolio, now at 33 names, are up much more.

I hate to boast but let me take my victory lap. I earned it.

Stocks and bonds should continue rising but at a much slower rate. More likely is the diversification of the rally from Big Tech and big bonds (TLT) to medium tech, commodities (FCX), industrials (CAT), junk bonds (JNK), (HYG), and REITS (NLY).

Buy everything on dips.

And here are your assumptions. Collapsing energy prices will lead the inflation rate down to the Fed’s well-publicized 2% inflation rate target in the coming months. Accelerating technology and AI will reign in this year’s runaway wage increases, if not reverse them.

The UAW’s 25% salary increase over four years will only hasten the demise of General Motors (GM), as well as their own. Interest rates have to take a swan dive, supercharging all risk assets.

Goldilocks is not moving in for a fling, but a long-term relationship. Your retirement funds will love it.

Last spring, with 75 feet of snow over the winter, the rivers pouring out of the High Sierras were at record levels. That brought the solo hobbyist gold miners out in force.

It is widely believed that the 1849 gold rush extracted only 10% of the gold in the mountains and the remaining 90% is still up there. Heavy rainfalls like we received last winter flushed out some of the rest.

Rounding a turn in the river, I spotted a group of modern-day 49ers equipped with shoulder-high waders and inner tubes floating pumps and sluice boxes. So I parked the car and waded out in the freezing, fast-running water to get an update on this market.

One man proudly showed off a one-ounce gold nugget that he had found only that morning worth about $1,800. Nuggets are worth more than spot gold because they attract a collector’s market.

A record eight-ounce nugget was discovered in a river near Merced the week earlier. This year, the state government in Sacramento issued a record number of gold mining licenses.

I explained to my newfound friend that he should hang on to his gold because it would be worth a lot more the following year. Inflation was falling and that would eventually induce the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates sharply.

That meant less interest rate competition for gold and silver, which yielded nothing taking prices upward. Personally, I think this gold could hit $3,000 an ounce and silver $50 an ounce in 2025.

In addition, there was a constant bid from Russia, China, and North Korea looking to dodge financial sanctions. Money managers are also picking up the yellow metal as a hedge against any unanticipated volatility in 2024.

My friend looked at me quizzically, wondering if perhaps I was some kind of nutjob who had waded out mid-river to rob him of his prized nugget.

I’ll do anything to gain a trading edge, even freezing off my cajones.

It was a tough week for 90- and 100-year-olds with the passing of Charlie Munger, Henry Kissinger, and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. I had the privilege of knowing all three.

I was in the White House Press Room one day when the press secretary James Brady asked if any of the press could ride a horse. Sheepishly, I was the only one to raise a hand.

I was ordered to pick up my riding boots and report to the White House Stables on 17^th Street. I had no idea why. Back then, even the press didn’t ask some questions.

When I arrived, I understood why. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was already there kitted out ready to ride. It turns out that the justice from Arizona rode weekly with Ronald Reagan. This week, an international crisis prevented the president from doing so. I was the fill-in escort.

We talked about growing up in the Colorado Desert, and pre-air conditioning, as we enjoyed a peaceful ride along the Potomac River. A security detail kept a safe distance.

A lot of history is being in the right place at the right time.

The clock is ticking.

November closed out at +15.54%. My 2023 year-to-date performance is still at an eye-popping +81.71%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +19.73% so far in 2023. My trailing one-year return reached +80.80% versus +18.19% for the S&P 500.

That brings my 15-year total return to +678.90%. My average annualized return has exploded to +52.26%, another new high, some 2.48 times the S&P 500 over the same period.

I am 90% fully invested, with longs in (MSFT), (NLY), (BRK/B), (CCJ), (GOOGL), (SNOW), (CAT), and (XOM). I have one short in the (TLT). I took profits on (CRM) on Friday.

Some 56 of my 61 trades this year have been profitable this year.

My Ten-Year View

When we come out the other side of the recession, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age or the next Roaring Twenties. The economy decarbonizing and technology hyper-accelerating, creating enormous investment opportunities. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The new America will be far more efficient and profitable than the old.

Dow 240,000 here we come!

On Monday, December 4, at 8:30 AM EST, the US Factory Orders are out.

On Tuesday, December 5 at 2:30 PM, the JOLTS Job Openings Report is released.

On Wednesday, December 6 at 8:30 AM, the ADP Private Employment Report is published.

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

On Friday, December 8 at 2:00 PM the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed and at 2:30 PM, the November Nonfarm Payroll Report is published.

As for me, back in the early 1980s, when I was starting up Morgan Stanley’s international equity trading desk, my wife Kyoko was still a driven Japanese career woman.

Taking advantage of her near-perfect English, she landed a prestige job as the head of sales at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

Every morning we set off on our different ways, me to Morgan Stanley’s HQ in the old General Motors Building on Avenue of the Americas and 47^th street and she to the Waldorf at Park and 34^th.

One day, she came home and told me this little old lady living in the Waldorf Towers needed an escort to walk her dog in the evenings once a week. Back in those days, the crime rate in New York was sky-high, and only the brave or the reckless ventured outside after dark.

I said “Sure” “What was her name?”

Jean MacArthur.

I said THE Jean MacArthur?

She answered “Yes.”

Jean MacArthur was the widow of General Douglas MacArthur, the WWII legend. He fought off the Japanese in the Philippines in 1941 and retreated to Australia in a dramatic night PT Boat escape.

He then led a brilliant island-hopping campaign, turning the Japanese at Guadalcanal and New Guinea. My dad was part of that operation, as were the fathers of many of my Australian clients. That led all the way to Tokyo Bay where MacArthur accepted the Japanese in 1945 on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri.

The MacArthur then moved into the Tokyo embassy where the general ran Japan as a personal fiefdom for seven years, a residence I know well. That’s when Jean, who was 18 years the general’s junior, developed a fondness for the Japanese people.

When the Korean War began in 1950, MacArthur took charge. His landing at Inchon Harbor broke the back of the invasion and was one of the most brilliant tactical moves in military history. When MacArthur was recalled by President Truman in 1952, he had not been home for 13 years.

So it was with some trepidation that I was introduced by my wife to Mrs. MacArthur in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria. On the way out, we passed a large portrait of the general who seemed to disapprovingly stare down at me taking out his wife, so I was on my best behavior.

To some extent, I had spent my entire life preparing for this job.

I had stayed at the MacArthur Suite at the Manila Hotel where they had lived before the war. I knew Australia well. And I had just spent a decade living in Japan. By chance, I had also read the brilliant biography of MacArthur by William Manchester, American Caesar, which had only just come out.

I also competed in karate at the national level in Japan for ten years, which qualified me as a bodyguard. In other words, I was the perfect after-dark escort for Midtown Manhattan in the early eighties.

She insisted I call her “Jean”; she was one of the most gregarious women I have ever run into. She was grey-haired, petite, and made you feel like you were the most important person she had ever run into.

She talked a lot about “Doug” and I learned several personal anecdotes that never made it into the history books.

“Doug” was a staunch conservative who was nominated for president by the Republican party in 1944. But he pushed policies in Japan that would have qualified him as a raging liberal.

It was the Japanese that begged MacArthur to ban the army and the navy in the new constitution for they feared a return of the military after MacArthur left. Women gained the right to vote on the insistence of the English tutor for Emperor Hirohito’s children, an American Quaker woman. He was very pro-union in Japan. He also pushed through land reform that broke up the big estates and handed out land to the small farmers.

It was a vast understatement to say that I got more out of these walks than she did. While making our rounds, we ran into other celebrities who lived in the neighborhood who all knew Jean, such as Henry Kissinger, Ginger Rogers, and the UN Secretary-General.

Morgan Stanley eventually promoted me and transferred me to London to run the trading operations there, so my prolonged free history lesson came to an end.

Jean MacArthur stayed in the public eye and was a frequent commencement speaker at West Point where “Doug” had been a student and later the superintendent. Jean died in 2000 at the age of 101.

I sent a bouquet of lilies to the funeral.

Kyoko passed away in 2002.

In 2014, Chinas Anbang Insurance Group bought the Waldorf Astoria for $1.95 billion, making it the most expensive hotel ever sold. Most of the rooms were converted to condominiums and sold to Chinese looking to hide assets abroad.

The portrait of Douglas MacArthur is gone too. During the Korean War, he threatened to drop atomic bombs on China’s major coastal cities.

Good Luck and Good Trading,

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

November 27, 2023

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
November 27, 2023
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or MELT UP),
(MSFT), (NLY), (BRK/B), (CCJ), (CRM), (GOOGL), (SNOW), (CAT), (XOM), (TLT)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Melt Up

Diary, Newsletter

If you think the market performance for the past month has been spectacular, you have seen nothing yet. We have two major positive catalysts that are about to hit stock prices.

On December 10, we will see a lower-than-expected Consumer Price Index, driving yet another stake through the heart of inflation. On December 13, we will also be greeted with a Federal Reserve decision to keep interest rates unchanged, as they will do over the next several meetings.

“Higher for shorter” is about to become the new market mantra.

That will give the market the shot in the arm it needs to reach my $4,800 yearend target, which was precisely the goal I laid out on January 1. Caution has been thrown to the wind and hedging downside risks has become a distant memory. One of the fastest market melt-ups in 100 years will do that. Complacency is the order of the day.

Equity-oriented mutual funds have seen $43 billion in inflows so far in November. Commodity Trading Funds, or CTA’s, have seen a breathtaking $60 billion piled into long equity strategies.

Hedge funds flipped from short to long and now have the most aggressively bullish positions in 22 years, mostly in big tech. All of this has taken the Volatility Index (VIX) down to a subterranean $12 handle. Bears are suddenly lonely….and afraid.

Yes, 55 years of practice makes this easy.

On October 28, it turns out that we reached a decade-high peak in bond investment when Treasuries were flirting with new highs in yields. With perfect rear-view mirror hindsight that’s when many investors cut stock holdings to the bone. They will spend the next several months desperately trying to get back in.

Oh yes, and Company buybacks are about to surge as companies race to pick up their own stocks before the yearend deadline. Apple is the top buyback stock followed by Alphabet (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT). Heard these names before?

And while big tech is starting to look expensive, they are cheap when you factor in the trillions of dollars in profits that are headed their way over the next decade.

That’s what always happens.

What could pee on my victory parade? Ten-year US treasury bonds revisiting a 5.08% yield, crude oil popping back up to $100 a barrel, oil another new blacking swan alighting out of the blue, like a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, or Russia retaking the Baltic states. That’s all.

Avoid these and stocks will continue to rise, as will your retirement funds.

The Magnificent Seven will continue to lead, as will big financials, which are still at bargain-basement levels. Energy and commodities are already posting January sale prices, discounting a 2024 recession that isn’t going to happen. This is fertile LEAPS territory.

Weekly Jobless Claims Drop 24,000, to 209,000 in one of the sharpest declines this year. It makes last week’s jump look like an anomaly.

Consumer Inflation Expectations Rise, to 3.2%, a 12-year high. They are counting on a 4.5% in 2024. They are now looking at gasoline prices. There’s your mismatch. Any decline in inflation will be viewed as a shocker and drive share prices to new all-time highs.

US Gasoline Prices Hit Three-Year Low, on recession fears and replacement concerns by EVs. Energy stocks are tracing the downside tic for tic, pulling down all other commodities. Don’t buy this dip.

Pending Home Sales Plunge to 13-Year Low, down 4.1% in October, on a signed contracts basis. Sales were down 14.6% year over year. The median price of an existing home sold in October was $391,800, an increase of 3.4% from October 2022. These are the last poor sales numbers before the collapse in interest rates. At the end of October, there were 1.15 million homes for sale, down 5.7% from a year earlier. This is about half as many homes as were available for sale pre-Covid. At the current sales pace, that represents a 3.6-month supply. A six-month supply is considered a balanced market between buyer and seller.

Monster Pay Hikes Will Lead to Strong Japanese Yen, with whiskey maker Suntory offering 7% pay hikes. The prospect of falling US interest rates adds fuel to the fire. Buy (FXY) on dips.

Starship Two Blows Up, two minutes or 92 miles after launch. The test fire of the 33-engine spacecraft was considered a success. The massive 397-foot tall, 30-foot-wide rocket, the largest ever built, is crucial for the NASA moon launch in 2025 and the SpaceX Mars trip further down the road.

NVIDIA (NVDA) Beats, with a profit triple, but that stock sells off 6% on the news. It was a classic buy the rumor, sell the news move. Future earnings increases will not be as big. Keep "buy (NVDA) on dips" as a must-own.

Famed Short Seller Jim Chanos shut down after a massive short in Tesla shares blew up. His funds under management have plunged from $6 billion to $200 million since (TSLA) went public. Chanos had a few big wins, notably Enron in 2001. But he was also seen as a hedge against other long positions.

So far in November, we are up +12.62%. My 2023 year-to-date performance is still at an eye-popping +78.79%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +19.73% so far in 2023. My trailing one-year return reached +81.00% versus +18.91% for the S&P 500.

That brings my 15-year total return to +675.98%. My average annualized return has exploded to +48.57%, another new high, some 2.49 times the S&P 500 over the same period.

I am 100% fully invested, with longs in (MSFT), (NLY), (BRK/B), (CCJ), (CRM), (GOOGL), (SNOW), (CAT), and (XOM). I have one short in the (TLT).

Some 66 of my 61 trades this year have been profitable.

My Ten-Year View

On Monday, November 27, at 8:30 AM EST, the New Home Sales are out.

On Tuesday, November 28 at 2:30 PM, the S&P National Home Price Index is released.

On Wednesday, November 29 at 8:30 AM, the Q2 GDP Growth Rate is published.

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

On Friday, December 1 at 2:30 PM, the October ISM Manufacturing Index is published. At 2:00 PM the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.

As for me, When I landed in Tokyo in 1974, there were very few foreigners in the country. The WWII occupation forces had left, but the international business community had yet to arrive. You met a lot of guys who used to work for Douglas MacArthur.

There was only one way to stay more than 90 days on the standard tourist visa. That was to get another visa to study “Japanese culture.” There were only two choices: flower arranging or karate.

Since this was at the height of Bruce Lee’s career, I went for karate.

It was not an easy choice.

World War II was not that distant, and there were still hundreds of army veterans missing limbs begging for money under railroad overpasses. Some back then were still fighting on remote Pacific islands.

Many in the karate community believed that the art was a national secret and should never be taught to foreigners. So those who entered this tight-knit community paid the price and had the daylights beaten out of them. I was one of those.

To this day, I am missing five of my original teeth. There is nothing like taking a kick to the mouth and watching your front teeth fly across the dojo, skittering on the teak floor.

We trained three hours a day, five days a week. It involved punching a bloody hardwood makiwara at least 200 times. The beginners were paired with black belts who thoroughly worked us over. Then the entire class met up at a nearby public bath to soak in a piping hot ofuro. You always hurt.

During the dead of winter, we ran five miles around the Imperial Palace in our karate gi’s barefoot in freezing temperatures daily. Then we were hosed down with cold water and trained for three hours.

During this time, I was infused with the spirit of bushido, the thousand-year-old Japanese warrior code. I learned self-discipline, stamina, and concentration. In the end, karate is a form of meditation.

Knowing you’re indestructible and unassailable is not such a bad thing, especially when you’re traveling in some of the harsher parts of the world. When muggers in bad neighborhoods see me late at night, they cross the street to avoid me. I am not a guy to mess with. Utter fearlessness is a great asset to possess.

The highlight of the annual training schedule was the All-Japan Karate Championship held in the prestigious Budokan, headquarters of all Japanese martial arts near the ghostly Yasukuni Jinja, Japan’s National Cemetery. By my last year in Japan, I had my black belt, and my instructor, Higaona Sensei, urged me to enter.

Because I had such a long reach, incredibly, I made it to the finals. I was matched with a very tough-looking six-footer who was fighting for Japan’s national prestige, as no foreigner had ever won the contest.

I punched, he kicked, fist met foot, and foot won. My left wrist was broken. My opponent knew what happened and graciously let me fight on one hand for another minute to save face. Then he knocked me out on points.

The crowds roared.

It’s all part of a full life.

Losing the All-Japan National Karate Championship

1974 Higaona Sensei

Stay Healthy,

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

November 13, 2023

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
November 13, 2023
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or THE YEAREND RALLY CONTINUES!)
(TSLA), (F), (MSFT), (NLY), (BRK/B), (TLT), (CCJ), (CRM)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or The Yearend Rally Continues!

Diary, Newsletter

Last week saw the best week for stocks in two years. As I expected, big tech led the charge and will continue to do so well into next year. Bonds (TLT) stabilized.

It looks like Mad Hedge followers will get to ring the cash register one more time in 2023!

However, we face a couple of speed bumps this coming week. On Tuesday, we get the Consumer Price Index which will tell us if inflation is well and truly dead….or not. On Wednesday, we get the Producer Price Index. And then on Friday, the US government shuts down for lack of funding.

Oops!

There have been some 92 government shutdowns in the last 50 years. Since then, the Dow Average has rocketed by 60 times.

So, I am not worried about the long-term effect on your retirement portfolio. When voters see the gravy train from Washington cut off, not to mention Social Security checks, military pay, and air traffic controller salaries, Congressmen can suddenly become very agreeable.

The short term is another story.

If House recalcitrance triggers a 500 or 1,000-point swan dive in stocks, you want to pile into the big tech leaders I have been begging you to buy for the past three weeks and fill your boots. And while 2023 was a hell of a year to make money in stocks (Mad Hedge has made only 73% so far in 2023, a three-year low), 2024 is looking much, much better.

Think falling inflation, stabilizing wages, fading interest rates, recovering profits, expanding price earnings multiples, and soaring stocks and bonds. The traditional 60/40 portfolio will come back with a vengeance.

I caught up with my old friend Ron Barron the other day, who I talked into buying Tesla shares in 2014. He got in late, at about $100 a share, or 25 times my own original split-adjusted $2.50 cost. But when you’re running big money as Ron, you can’t afford to buy the kind of wild insane risks that buying Tesla in 2010 entailed.

I can.

Ron is now the largest outside shareholder in both Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX. Tesla is so far ahead of the competition that he expects to hold the shares for the rest of his life. Ford Motors (F) now loses $36,000 for each EV it sells, while Tesla earns a profit of $8,000, down from $15,000 a year ago.

Ford spends $7 billion to build a new factory which generates a miniscule $15 million, or 0.2%. Tesla earns 114% profit on every $7 billion factory it builds.

It's no contest.

During the 1950s, Detroit went all out to earn short-term profits by outsourcing its supply chain. Virtually every one of those third-party companies went bankrupt, irreparably harming their business models. Tesla makes virtually all of its parts in-house, including the Panasonic batteries.

Tesla is learning 100 million miles of data per day from its fleet of 6 million cars. No one else has anything close to this. In 18 months, (TSLA) will have the world’s largest computing ability, which Elon Musk refers to as “Dojo” (karate school in Japanese), which Morgan Stanley estimates will add $500 million to the value of the company.

There are 1.5 billion internal combustion engines in the world that need to be replaced. The present replacement rate is only 80 million cars a year and only 10% of these are EVs. Eventually, 100% will be EVs. Detroit carmakers don’t want to sell EVs because they require no service whereas local dealers make all their money. EVs require no service beyond changing tires every two years,

And while President Biden recently suggested that the UAW targets Tesla for unionization, they don’t have a chance. Tesla workers are by far the highest-paid auto workers in the world with the best benefits. They also own stock, many at my own $2.50 adjusted share cost. Elon was sitting pretty during the recent 46-day UAW nationwide walkout.

Buying Tesla today does not mean you are investing in the achievements of the past, which are formidable. It means that you are buying the new Cybertruck which is rolling out now and offers a new platform with many new technological leaps forward.

More importantly, you are betting on the new $25,000 Model 2 due out in 2025, where Tesla plans to build 5 million a year. Then the EV competition will well and truly be gone.

That makes my $1,000 a share target then $10,000 look extremely modest.

Don’t kid yourself. Tesla can still add to the 35.6% decline it has suffered since July 17. We could go as low as $150, a 50% hickey. This is the most volatile major stock in the market. It always goes down more than you think. But if we do, you want to take a second mortgage out on your home and put it all into Tesla. It’s going up 67 times from there.

I just thought you’d like to know.

So far in November, we are up +7.32%. My 2023 year-to-date performance is still at an eye-popping +73.49%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +7.89% so far in 2023. My trailing one-year return reached +74.44% versus +15.78% for the S&P 500.

That brings my 15-year total return to +670.78%. My average annualized return has rocketed to a new all-time high at +51.26%, another new high, some 2.58 times the S&P 500 over the same period.

Some 57 of my 62 trades this year have been profitable.

I went pedal to the metal last week, taking profits on my last three November positions in (TLT), (BRK/B), and (NVDA) that maxed out profits and piling in new December longs in (MSFT), (NLY), (BRK/B), (TLT), (CCJ), (CRM). That’s how you hit new all-time highs every day.

Berkshire Hathaway Knocks it Out of the Park, with a 41% gain in operating earnings from companies like BNSF Railroad, Geico, and Precision Castparts. But Warren Buffet was noted more for what he didn’t own than what he did. He unloaded $5 billion worth of global stocks in Q3, taking his cash position up to a record $157 billion. He can now earn a staggering $8.6 billion in interest in the coming year. He explains that stocks never really got cheap this year and high rates were just too attractive. Keep buying (BRK/B) on dips.

China EV Maker BYD is Building its First European Car Factory, in a clear threat to European car makers. They picked Hungary, one of the lowest-waged countries on the continent. BYD (BYDFF) which I recommended back in 2012 after visiting the factory in China is now the largest EV maker there knocking out 250,000 units this year. Is Tesla worried?

Investors Poured $5 Billion into Bond ETFs in October. Institutional investors were happy with the 5.0% yield last month and if they rose, they would simply buy more. It’s another sign that the bottom for all fixed-income prices is at hand. Buy (TLT), (JNK), and (NLY).

China Lends $1.34 Trillion for Belt and Road Initiative, from 2000 to 2001 to dominate Asian and African infrastructure. Good luck getting it back and good luck foreclosing. In the meantime, China suffered its first-ever deficit in foreign direct investment as the West de-risks from the Middle Kingdom.

Oil Hits a four-month low at $75 a Barrel, down 4% as the shine comes off the energy sector. The Gaza boost is gone. Fears of a global economic slowdown are mounting. China’s exports have fallen for six consecutive months, the world’s largest importer. Biden is back in the oil business, provided a floor bid from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at $79.

Most 2023 Stock Gains Happened in 8 Days, up some 14% since January 1. If you are a day trader, you most likely missed all of this. This is despite stocks going up 113 days versus 102 down days. Making matters more difficult is that only seven stocks accounted for most of the increase. Talk about a narrow market!

A Soft Landing is Now More Likely, says Bank of America CEO Moynihan. Inflation is falling and could lead to Fed interest rate cuts in H2 2024. Stocks and bonds will love it.

NVIDIA is Designing Dumbed Down Chips for China, to bypass government sanctions. It’s an opportunity to recover some lost market share. Keep buying (NVDA) on dips, up 20% in two weeks. It has an impassable moat.

Weekly Jobless Claims dropped from 3,000 to 217,000. It’s still unusually low. Hiring slowed in October as the economy slowed.

My Ten-Year View

On Monday, November 13, bond markets are closed for Veterans Day. I will be leading the local parade wearing my new Medal from the Ukraine Army.

On Tuesday, November 14 at 2:30 PM EST, the Core Inflation Rate is released.

On Wednesday, November 15 at 8:30 AM, the Producer Price Index is published.

On Thursday, November 16 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced.

On Friday, November 17 at 2:30 PM the US Building Permits are published. At 2:00 PM the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.

As for me, few Americans know that 80% of all US air strikes during the Vietnam War originated in Thailand. At their peak in 1969, more US troops were serving in Thailand than in South Vietnam itself.

I was one of those troops.

When I reported to my handlers at the Ubon Airbase in northern Thailand for my next mission, they had nothing for me. They were waiting for the enemy to make their next move before launching a counteroffensive. They told me to take a week off.

The entertainment options in northern Thailand in those days were somewhat limited. Phuket and the pristine beaches of southern Thailand where people vacation today were then overrun by cutthroat pirates preying on boat people who would kill you for your boots.

Life was cheap in Asia in those days, especially your life. Any trip there would be a one-way ticket.

There were the fleshpots of Bangkok and Chang Mai. But I would likely contract some dreadful disease there. I wasn’t really into drugs, figuring whatever my future was, it required a brain. Besides, some people’s idea of a good time there was throwing a hand grenade into a crowded disco. So, I, ever the history buff, decided to go look for The Bridge Over the River Kwai.

Men of my generation knew the movie well, about a company of British soldiers who were the prisoners of bestial Japanese. At the end of the movie, all the key characters die as the bridge is blown up.

I wasn’t expecting much, maybe some interesting wreckage. I knew that the truth in Hollywood was just a starting point. After that, they did whatever they had to do to make a buck.

The fall of Singapore was one of the great Allied disasters at the beginning of WWII. Japanese on bicycles chased Rolls Royce armored cars and tanks the length of the Thai Peninsula. Two British battleships, the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, were sunk due to the lack of air cover with a great loss of life. When the Japanese arrived at Singapore, the defending heavy guns were useless as they pointed out to sea.

Some 130,000 men surrendered, including those captured in Malaysia. There were also 686 American POWs, the survivors of US Navy ships sunk early in the war. Most were shipped north by train to work as slave labor on the Burma Railway.

The Japanese considered the line strategically essential for their invasion of Burma. By building a 258-mile railway connecting Bangkok and Rangoon they could skip a sea voyage of 2,000 miles in waters increasingly dominated by American submarines.

Some 12,000 Allied troops died of malaria, beriberi, cholera, dysentery, or starvation, along with 90,000 impressed Southeast Asian workers. That earned the line the fitting name: “Death Railway.”

The Burma Railway was one of the greatest engineering accomplishments in human history, ranking alongside the Pyramids of Egypt. It required the construction of 600 bridges and viaducts. It crossed countless rivers and climbed steep mountain ranges. The work was all done in 100-degree temperatures with high humidity in clouds of mosquitoes. And it was all done in 18 months.

One of those captured was my good friend James Clavell, who spent the war at Changi Prison, now the location of Singapore International Airport. Every time I land there, it gives me the creeps.

Clavell wrote up his experiences in the best-selling book and movie King Rat. He followed up with the Taipan series set in 19th-century Hong Kong. We lunched daily at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan when he researched another book, Shogun, which became a top TV series for NBC.

So I navigated the Thai railway system to find remote Kanchanaburi Province where the famous bridge was said to be located.

My initial surprise was that the bridge was still standing, not destroyed as it was in the film. It was not a bridge made of wood but concrete and steel trestles. Still, you could see the scars of Allied bombing on the foundations, who tried many times to destroy the bridge from the air.

That day, the Bridge Over the River Kwai was a quiet, tranquil, peaceful place. Farmers wearing traditional conical hats made of palm leaves and bamboo strips called “ngob’s,” crossed to bring topical fruits and vegetables to market. A few water buffalo loped across the narrow tracks. The river Kwai gurgled below.

Once a day, a train drove north towards remote locations near the Burmese border where a bloody rebellion by the indigenous Shan people was underway.

The wars seemed so far away.

The only memorial to the war was a decrepit turn-of-the-century English steam engine badly in need of repair. There were no tourists anywhere.

So I started walking.

After I crossed the bridge, it wasn’t long before I was deep in the jungle. The ghosts of the past were ever present, and I swear I heard voices. I walked a few hundred yards off the line and the detritus of the war was everywhere: abandoned tools, rusted-out helmets, and yes, human bones. I didn’t linger because the snakes here didn’t just bite and poison you, they swallowed you whole.

After the war, the Allies used Japanese prisoners to remove the dead for burial in a nearby cemetery, only identified by their dog tags. Most of the “coolies” or Southeast Asian workers were left where they fell.

Today, only 50 miles of the original Death Railway remain in use. The rest proved impossible to maintain, because of shoddy construction, and the encroaching jungle.

There has been talk over the years of rebuilding the Burma Railway and connecting the rest of Southeast Asia to India and Europe. But with Burma, today known as Myanmar, a pariah state, any progress is unlikely.

Maybe the Chinese will undertake it someday.

Every Christmas vacation, when my family has lots of free time, I sit the kids down to watch The Bridge Over the River Kwai. I just wanted to pass on some of my experiences, teach them a little history, and remember my old friend Clavell.

Good Luck and Good Trading
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Walking the Bridge Over the River Kwai in 1976

November 3, 2023

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
November 3, 2023
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(NOVEMBER 1 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(BRK/B), (TSLA), (LLY), (SNOW), (BIB), (BIB), (CCJ), (FXA), (FXB), (FXE), (EEM), (GLD), (SLV) (UNG), (LNG)

November 1 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Diary, Newsletter

Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the November 1 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Boca Raton.

Q: Earlier you said that the bull market should start from here—are you sticking to that argument?

A: Yes, there are all kinds of momentum and cash flow indicators that are flashing “buy right now.” The market timing index got down to 24—couldn’t break below 20. Hedge fund shorts: all-time highs. Quant shorts: all the time highs, creating a huge amount of buying power for the market. And, of course, the seasonals have turned positive. So yes, all of that is positive and if bonds can hold in here, then it’s off to the races.

Q: Do you have a year-end target for Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/B)?

A: Up. They have a lot of exposure to the falling interest rate trade such as its very heavy weighting in banks; and if interest rates go down, Berkshire goes up—it’s really very simple. You can’t come up with specific targets for individual stocks for year-end because of the news, and things can happen anytime. I love Berkshire; it's a very strong buy here.

Q: Tesla (TSLA) is not doing well; what's the update here?

A: It always moves more than you think, both on the upside and the downside. Last year, we thought it would drop 50%, it dropped 80%. Suffice it to say that, with the price war continuing and Tesla determined to wipe out the 200 other new entrants to the EV space, they’ll keep price cutting until they basically own that market. While that’s great for market share, it’s not great for short-term profits. Yes, Tesla could be going down more, but from here on, if you’re a long-term investor in Tesla, as you should be, you should be looking to add positions, not sell what you have and average down. Also, we’re getting close to Tesla LEAPS territory. Those have been huge winners over the years for us and I’ll be watching those closely.

Q: Any trade on the Japanese yen?

A: We broke 150 on the yen—that was like the make-or-break level. I’m looking at a final capitulation selloff on the yen, and then a decade-long BUY. The Bank of Japan is finally ending its “easy money” zero-interest-rate policy, which it’s had for 30 years, and that will give us a stronger yen when it happens, but not until then. So watch the yen carefully, it could double from here over the long term, especially if it’s the same time the US starts cutting its interest rates.

Q: What do you think about Eli Lilly (LLY)?

A: We love Eli Lilly; they’re making an absolute fortune on their weight loss drug, and they have other drugs in the pipeline being created by AI. This is really the golden age for biotech because you have AI finding cures for diseases, and then AI designing molecules to cure the diseases. It’s shortened the pipeline for new drugs from 5-10 years to 5-10 weeks. If you’re old and sick like me, this is all a godsend.

Q: Do you like Snowflake (SNOW)?

A: Absolutely, yes—killer company. Warren Buffet loves it too and has a big position; I’d be looking to buy SNOW on any dip.

Q: Would you do LEAPS on Netflix (NFLX)?

A: I would, but I would go out two years, and I would go at the money, not out of the money, Even then you’ll get a 100-200% return. You’ll get a lot even on just a 6-month call spread. These tech stocks with high volatility have enormous payoff 3-6 months out.

Q: Projection for iShares 20 Plus Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) in the next 6 months?

A: It’s up. We could hit $110, that would be my high, or up $25 points or so from here.

Q: Would you buy biotech here through the ProShares Ultra Nasdaq Biotechnology (BIB)?

A: Probably, yes. The long-term story is overwhelming, but it’s not a sector you want to own when the sentiment is terrible like it is now. I guess “buy the bad news” is the answer there.

Q: What did you learn from your dinner with General Mattis?

A: Quite a lot, but much of it is classified. When you get to my age, you can’t remember which parts are classified and which aren't. However, his grasp of the global scene is just incredible. There are very few people in the world I can go one on one with in geopolitics. Of course, I could fill in stuff he didn’t know, and he could fill in stuff for me, like: what is the current condition of our space weaponry? If I told you, you would be amazed, but then I would get arrested the next day, so I’ll say nothing. He really was one of the most aggressive generals in American history, was tremendously underrated by every administration, was fired by both Obama and Trump, and recently is doing the speaker circuit which is a lot of fun because there’s no question he doesn’t know the answer to! We actually agreed to do some joint speaking events sometime in the future.

Q: I have some two-year LEAPS now but I’m worried about adding too much. Could we get a final selloff in 2024?

A: The only way we could get another leg down in the market is number one if the Fed raises interest rates (right now, we’re positioned for a flat line and then a cut) or number two, another pandemic. You could also get some election-related chaos next year, but that usually doesn’t affect the market. But for those who are prone to being nervous, there are certainly a lot of reasons to be nervous next year.

Q: What iShares 20 Plus Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) level would we see with a 5.2% yield?

A: How about $79? That’s exactly why I picked that strike price. The $76-$79 vertical bill call spread in the (TLT) is a bet that we don’t go above 5.20% yield, and we only have 10 days to do it, so things are looking better and then we’ll see what’s available in the market once our current positions all expire at max profit.

Q: The first new nuclear power plant of 30 years went online in Georgia. Do you see more being built in the future?

A: It’s actually been 40 years since they’ve built a new plant, and it wasn’t a new plant, it was just an addition to an existing plant with another reactor added with an old design. I think there will be a lot more nuclear power plants built in the future, but they will be the new modular design, which is much safer, and doesn’t use uranium, by the way, but other radioactive elements. If you want to know more about this, look up NuScale (SMR). They have a bunch of videos on how their new designs work. That could be an interesting company going forward. The nuclear renaissance continues, and of course, China’s continuing to build 100 of the old-fashioned type nuclear power reactors, and that is driving global uranium demand.

Q: Would you hold Cameco Corp (CCJ) or sell?

A: I would keep it, I think it’s going up.

Q: How to trade the collapse of the dollar?

A: (FXA), (FXB), (FXE), and (EEM). Those are the quick and easy ways to do it. Also, you buy precious metals—gold (GLD) and silver (SLV) do really well on a weak dollar.

Q: Conclusion on the Ukraine war?

A: It will go on for years—it’s a war of attrition. About half of the entire Russian army has been destroyed as they’re working with inferior weapons. However, it’s going to be a matter of gaining yards or miles at best, over a long period of time. So, they will keep fighting as long as we keep supplying them with weapons, and that is overwhelmingly in our national interest. Plus, we’re getting a twofer; if we stop Russia from taking over Ukraine, we also stop China from invading Taiwan because they don’t want to be in for the same medicine.

Q: If more oil is released from the strategic petroleum reserve, what is our effect on security?

A: Zero because the US is a net energy producer. If our supplies were at risk, all we’d have to do is cut off our exports to China and tell them to find their oil elsewhere—and they’re obviously already trying to do that with the invasion of the South China Sea and all the little rocks out there. So, I am not worried. And also remember, every year as the US moves to more EVs and more alternatives, it is less and less reliant on oil. I would advise the administration to get rid of all of it next time we go above $100 a barrel. If you’re going to sell your oil, you might as well get a good price for it. If you look at the US economy over the last 30 years, the reliance of GDP on oil has been steadily falling.

Q: Are US exports of Cheniere Energy (LNG) helping to drive up prices here?

A: I would say yes, it’s got to have an impact on prices. We’re basically supplying Germany with all of its natural gas right now. We did that starting from scratch at the outset of the Ukraine war, and it’s been wildly successful. That avoided a Great Depression in Europe. Europe, by the way, is the largest customer for our exports. That was one of the arguments for us going into the United States Natural Gas (UNG) LEAPS in the first place.

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, select your subscription (GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH, TECHNOLOGY LETTER, or Jacquie's Post), then click on 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 Krakow Poland

September 1, 2023

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

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.

August 30 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Diary, Newsletter

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