Global Market Comments
November 20, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or THE WEEK THAT WAS)
(SPY), (TLT), (JNK), (NLY) (BA), (UUP),
(TLT), (FCX), (GLD), (GDX), (GOLD)
Tag Archive for: (GDX)
In the long history of stock markets, last week will be viewed as one of the pivotal ones of the 21st century. That was when investors flipped from anticipating the end of interest rate rises to the beginning of interest rate cuts.
That is a big deal.
I have been anticipating this for months, putting all my chips on the most interest rate-sensitive sectors: US Treasury bonds (TLT), Junk bonds (JNK), REITS (NLY), and big tech. The payoff has been huge, with some followers calling me up daily with literal tears of joy. They have just made the most money in their lives.
November has been the best month of the year, up 10% from the October low, and it's only half over.
And here is the good news. We are not only in the first inning of a new bull market for all risk assets but also the first pitch of the first at-bat of the first inning. 2024 should be one of the easiest trading years in a decade. This could go on for a decade.
This is how things will play out.
After the hottest quarter of GDP growth in three years at 4.9% in Q3, the economy is slowing. Virtually every business sector is seeing sales weaken, especially real estate and EVs.
That sets up a sharp drop in the inflation rate from the current 3.2% to the Fed’s target of 2%. Get a few months of that and the Fed starts cutting interest rates from the current 5.25%-5.5%. Fed futures are currently indicating a 40% probability that will happen in March.
We could be at 4.0% overnight interest rates by the end of 2024 and 3.0% by the end of 2025 when they stabilize. Stocks and bonds will eat this up.
Better hope that the Fed stays data dependent as promised, because coming data is weak, even if it doesn’t arrive for months. We only need one weak quarter to kill off inflation, and that quarter began on October 1.
Priority One is for the Fed to de-invert the yield curve or get short-term interest rates below long rates. For encouragement, the Fed should look at the most rapidly shrinking money supply in history, which I have been glued to.
There has been no monetary growth for two years, and zero bank deposit growth for three years. The Fed's balance sheet has plunged by $1.5 trillion in 18 months. Fed quantitative tightening continues at $120 billion a month. This is unprecedented in economic history.
The biggest risk to markets is that Powell delays cutting rates as much as he delayed raising rates two years ago. This is a very slow-moving, backward-looking Fed.
If you have a ten-year view of the markets, as I do, this is all meaningless. You need to buy stocks right now. If the Fed does play hardball and rigidly holds to the 2% target it risks causing a recession.
If you see any reasons to shoot down my bull case please, please email me. I’d love to hear them.
It’s not that stocks are expensive. 2024 S&P 500 (SPY) earnings are now 18X. If you take out the Magnificent Seven, they are at 15X earnings, close to the 2008 crash low. Small cap stocks are at a bargain basement 12X earnings and are already priced for recession.
So a strong case for a new decade-long bull market is there. All you have to do is believe it. To see how this will play out look at the chart below as tech stocks are now extremely overbought short term. We no longer have the luxury of waiting for big dips. Small ones will have to do.
So far in November, we are up a breathtaking +12.59%. My 2023 year-to-date performance is still at an eye-popping +78.76%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +18.42% so far in 2023. My trailing one-year return reached +85.42% versus +20% for the S&P 500.
That brings my 15-year total return to +675.95%. My average annualized return ballooned to +48.57%, another new high, some 2.52 times the S&P 500 over the same period.
Some 60 of my 65 trades this year have been profitable.
CPI Comes in Flat at 3.2%, much weaker than expected. This is a game-changer. The first Fed rate cut has been moved up to May. Stocks and bonds loved it, taking ten-year US Treasury yield down to a six-week low at 4.44%. Shelter prices, which make up about a third of the overall CPI index, climbed 0.3%, half the prior month’s pace. Taking profits on my long in (TLT).
Fed to Cut Interest Rates as Early as March, or so says the futures market, which gives this a 40% probability. The (TLT) should top $100 and stocks will rocket, especially the interest sensitives. The most recent indications on the CME Group’s FedWatch gauge point to a full percentage point of interest rate cuts by the end of 2024.
Weekly Jobless Claims Hit Three Month High, up 13,000 to 231,000, as the US economy backs off from the superheated Q3. The path for a lower inflation rate is opening up. Do I hear 2%.
PPI Fell by 0.5% in October, a much bigger than expected drop, a three-year low. Inflation is fading fast. YOY came in at 1.3%. Stocks loved the news. 2024 is shaping up to be a great year for risk after two miserable ones.
Government Shutdown Delayed Until 2024, with the passage of a temporary spending bill by the House. It looks like there is a new coalition of the middle of both parties, as the bill passed with 339 votes, topping a two-thirds majority. The Johnson bill would fund some parts of the government through Jan. 19 and others through Feb. 2, setting up the possibility of yet another shutdown deadline on Groundhog Day.
The US Dollar (UUP) Takes a hit as the falling interest rate scenario starts to unfold. Even the Japanese yen rose. This could be a new decade-long trade. Currencies with falling interest rates are always the weakest.
Goldman Sachs Goes Bullish on Gold. The investment bank expects the S&P GSCI, a commodities markets index, to deliver a 21% return over the next 12 months as the broader economic environment improves, OPEC moves to support crude prices as refining is tight and with energy and gold acting as hedges against supply shocks. Buy (GLD), (GDX), and (GOLD) on dips.
Copper Bull Predicts 80% Gain in the Coming Decade, to $15,000 per metric tonne, up from $8,277 says Trafigura’s Kotas Bintas, the world’s largest metal trader. Exploding demand from EV makers is the reason, set to hit 20 million vehicles a year. Electrification of global energy sources is another. Buy (FCX) on dips.
Boeing Lands Monster Order, some $52 billion from Emirates Airlines for 90 new 777x’s and five 787’s. The stock rose 5% on the news. A giant China order is also lurking in the wings. Buy (BA) on dips.
Moody’s Rating Service Downgrades the US, citing deteriorating fiscal conditions and worsening chaos in Washington. However, it maintained its AAA Rating. Oh, and the government shut down on Friday. Buy (TLT) on the dip. Where else are investors going to go for quality?
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, November 20, no data of note were published.
On Tuesday, November 21 at 11:00 AM EST, the Minutes from the previous Fed meeting are released.
On Wednesday, November 22 at 8:30 AM, the Durable Goods are published.
On Thursday, November 23 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced.
On Friday, November 24 at 2:30 PM the November S&P Flash PMI’s are published and the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.
As for me, I was invited to breakfast last week at the Incline Village Hyatt Hotel and was told to expect someone special, but they couldn’t tell me who for security reasons.
I was nursing a strong black coffee when a bulky figure with white hair wearing a Hawaiian shirt and thermal vest sat down at the table. It was Mike Love, lead singer of the Beach Boys.
During the 1950s, Mike’s dad was a regular visitor to Lake Tahoe, bringing his family up to camp on the then-vacant beaches. My family couldn’t have been far away.
When Mike made his fortune with one of the top rock groups of the 1960s, the natural thing to do was to buy an estate high up the mountain in Incline Village, Nevada with a great lake view. Like me, Mike fell for crystal-clear lake views in summer and spectacular snow-covered mountain vistas in winter. Local real estate agents refer to it as a “poor man’s Aspen.”
Mike ended up raising a family here, his kids eventually growing up and heading out to start their music groups. One was Wilson Phillips, made up of two of Mike’s daughters and the daughter of John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, who I taught how to swim at summer camp one year.
But Mike stayed. He loved the lake too much to leave so he made Incline his base for a touring schedule that ran up to a punishing 200 gigs a year.
Mike’s residence was something of a Tahoe insider’s secret. Those who knew where he lived kept the closely guarded secret. We have plenty of celebrities here, Larry Ellison, Mike Milliken, and Peoplesoft’s David Duffield, but Mike is the one everyone loves.
Mike, now 82, is not your typical rock star and I have known many. He is humble, self-effacing, and an alright guy. He avoided drugs and smoking to preserve his voice. He is a health fanatic. He has also been fighting a lifelong battle with depression which kept him off the touring circuit for years at a time and led to contemplations of suicide.
The Beach Boys formed in Hawthorne, California, a beachside suburb of Los Angeles in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. They were the original garage band. Together they created one of the greatest vocal harmonies of all time.
In 1963, the band enjoyed their first national hit with “Surfin USA”, beginning a string of top ten singles that reflected a southern California youth culture of surfing, cars, and teenage romance dubbed the “California sound.”
Those included "I Get Around", "Fun, Fun, Fun", "Help Me Rhonda", "Good Vibrations" and "Don't Worry Baby, which I’m sure you remember well. If you don’t, look them up on iTunes. Their 1966 album “Pet Sounds” was considered one of the most innovative ever produced.
I remember it like it was yesterday. They were one of the few groups that could stand up to the Beatles, who they became friends with. The Beach Boys were regulars on my car’s AM radio.
Buzz kill: the Beach Boys didn’t know how to surf.
All of the early Beach Boys songs were inspired by the Southern California beaches, but only half the country had beaches. So a new manager encouraged them to sing about cars, extending the life of the group by another decade. That is how we got “Little Deuce Coup,” and “409.” After all, the entire country owned cars.
The Beach Boys would eventually sell 100 million records second only to the Beatles. They were also one of the first groups to wrest production control away from the studios, a revolution for the industry that opened doors for generations of successive musicians.
In the late 1960s, the group took a religious bent, traveling to India to study under the celebrity guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Mike has since been practicing transcendental meditation, and it probably saved his life.
By the 1970s, the California sound faded and was eventually killed off by disco. Their last album together was Endless Summer in 1974.
There are only three original Beach Boys left, and Mike Love alone is still touring. In 1983, Dennis Wilson drowned in a boating accident which is thought to be drug-related. In 1998, Carl Wilson died of lung and brain cancer after years of heavy smoking.
Mike was pleased that I recalled his 1980 London concert at Wembley Stadium. I had front-row seats; unaware that I would meet Mike 43 years later. In 1988, Mike was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Mike was very annoyed by the pandemic shutdown in 2020 because it prompted the cancelation of over 200 concerts worldwide. He still thinks Covid was fake. He doesn’t need to work as his royalties from 60 years of work are worth a fortune. He tours simply for the love of it.
Mike is now touring with a reconstituted Beach Boys. For their tour schedule, please click here. On November 17, 2023, Love released a special double album entitled “Unleash the Love” featuring 13 previously unreleased songs and 14 Beach Boys classics.
It was a pleasant way to spend a morning recalling the 1960s. It’s a miracle we both survived. It’s all proof that if you live long enough, you meet everyone.
Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
June 8, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trades:
(WHY GOLD IS GOING TO A NEW HIGH),
(GLD), (GOLD), (NEM), (GDX)
CLICK HERE to download today's position sheet.
Global Market Comments
April 14, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(APRIL 12 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(GLD), (GDX), (GOLD) (MSFT), (JPM), (BAC), (C), (BRK/B), (TLT), (FLIN), (EPI), (INDA), (FXI), (UNG), (FRC)
CLICK HERE to download today's position sheet.
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the April 12 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Incline Village, CA.
Q: Should I “Sell in May and go Away”
Why wait until May? Up 49% YTD, we’ve already picked the low hanging fruit for 2023. The market is now at the top end of the range in the face of a weakening economy. Maybe there is another 100 points of upside potential in the market versus 400 points of downside risk. The markets have pulled forward not only the first quarter’s performance, but possibly that for the entire year. That’s what an $18 (VIX) is telling you. The game from here is to buy the next bottom in big technology stocks for an explosive second half move up to (SPY) $4,800. This is a short-term call only. Keep all your one- and two-year LEAPS. The market won’t fall enough to justify a round trip in these illiquid positions.
Q: How do I avoid assignment risk with these call spreads and put spreads?
A: You don't want to avoid it. You want to be exercised early on the short leg of your call spreads because it allows you to take 100% of the profits well before expiration day. Some people were getting called on the banking call spreads last week because dividends were imminent and I had to explain how lucky they were. The reason hedge funds call away these options is that they want to buy the stock one, two, or three days before the stocks go ex-dividend, so they can get an immediate payoff and then get rid of the position. In the case of JP Morgan (JPM), they paid out a $1 dividend on Monday last week, so we had a lot of exercises right before that. All you have to do is call your broker (they’re not allowed to do this unless you call them), tell them to exercise your long option to meet your short, and you’re out of the position at max profit and you get the money immediately. So that is the issue. Only stocks that pay dividends or interest get called away, so the high dividend things like the banks or the iShares 20 Plus Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) will get called away. Zero dividend stocks almost never get called away unless someone is trying to cover a short in aftermarket hours. My experience is that only 1% of your positions ever get called away.
Q: What are your thoughts on the bottom for United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG) and what will trigger the reversal on it?
A: The bottom is somewhere around here—we’re very close to or even below some of the historic bottoms for natural gas over the last 20 years, which is around $2/MM BTU for natural gas. We could bounce around here for a while. The trigger for the recovery will be a stronger economic recovery in China, which is the world's largest natural gas importer. When the Ukraine War broke out, a lot of that gas got diverted to Germany. Those contracts are now expiring and we’re in a position now where we can start re-exporting that gas to China. They’ll take all we can produce. So that should be positive for Nat Gas. Also, because of the damage caused by the explosion at the Cheniere Energy (LNG) export facilities in Texas, our capacity to exported was impaired for many months. Those are coming back online now. This is why you look at Nat Gas now, and is why I put on a two-year LEAPS instead of a one-year.
Q: Would I go into cash with my favorite stocks?
A: Yes, for the short term. No, for the long term. All of my stocks are great long-term holds, but if you’re day trading or weekly trading or monthly trading, now is not a bad place to go cash so you have lots of dry powder on the next meltdown, especially with 90-day T-bills giving you 5%.
Q: Should we purchase gold bullion as a small percentage of our portfolio?
A: Better to buy gold stocks like SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX), and Barrick Gold (GOLD) and Newmont Mining (NEM). Gold bullion is expensive to store, is heavy, takes up a lot of space in your safe deposit box, and it can be stolen—that is the problem with physical assets. I prefer the financial assets, the gold miners, to the underlying metal, which should perform at 4x the rate of actual gold.
Q: Have you changed your December 2024 view on bank stocks?
A: No.
Q: Is it true that Warren Buffet thinks the banking crisis is not over?
A: Yes it is, but it will be confined to smaller banks, which are losing their deposits to larger banks like JP Morgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Citibank (C), and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/B). It’s the regional banks that are going to have a much more difficult time rolling over real estate loans that are coming due. You have a $1.5 trillion of commercial real estate loans coming due in the next year, and these loans originally were taken out at 0% or 2% or 3%. They’re now going to have to refinance at 7%, 8%, 9% or 10%, and that will create a problem because a lot of their borrowers don’t qualify for their loans anymore. That’s going to be a drag but it’s going to hit the Midwest in one-off situations that can be easily ring-fenced. The net effect of the regional banking crisis is going to be to suck money out of the middle part of the US and park it on the coasts where the big banks are, mostly on the east coast.
Q: Based on your view, the market is due for a short-term correction, would you keep long-term LEAPS on the banks?
A: Absolutely yes. First off the banks have already had their correction, thanks to the regional banking crisis. If you have any downside in banks it will be minimal, the upside is maybe 10x greater than the downside in banks. So yes, you keep your LEAPS, and that’s why you have long-term LEAPS—to take the long-term view and just forget about them, don’t even look at them day to day because they won’t change. The time value on those long-dated options is so great that you get very little day-to-day movement in the actual price.
Q: How are you going to be successful with AI?
A: Well you hire only the absolute best software engineers, which we have here in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. How to invest in AI is much harder; there are no pure AI plays. Microsoft bought the frontrunner for $13 billion, ChatGPT, and any other participants in cutting edge AI are all giant companies where it’s just a small part of their business. However, down the road, like in a year or two or three, you will be invited to buy pure AI spinoffs at tremendously inflated multiples, and that will be the only way to get in. That might be the top for the stock. I’ve only seen this happen like 100 times before, why should AI be any different? The best way to benefit from AI is to use it yourself, just like when Microsoft brought out Office—there was no way to get a pure play on Microsoft Office other than buying Microsoft (MSFT) itself. You did a lot better using the apps for your own business and your own investment styles. The big view on AI is that it will double the value of all existing companies that you already own by cutting costs and improving service value. That part of my Dow 240,000 call.
Q: Do you like Chinese solar stocks?
A: No, China has its own unique political risks which I don’t want to get involved with right now. And even the solar companies in the US are hugely overbought. Great long-term businesses for all of these companies, but the stocks have already discounted a decent chunk of that, there are better fish to fry, like bank stocks for example. The best way to play China is to buy the surrounding emerging countries (EEM) it buys from, not China itself.
Q: I hear that India is the next China. How best to play it?
A: That’s true, India is the next China; but it won’t grow at the peak rate that China did in its best days in the 2000s, which is a growth rate of around 13% a year. India might do half of that, and the simple answer is that China is a dictatorship and could order what they needed to do to max out growth. India is a democracy and can’t do things like arbitrary land seizures or big infrastructure projects and so on. So, that will cut the growth rate in India by half but that’ll still be double America’s long term growth rate, which is a mature economy. And the ETFs to play there in India are (FLIN), the (EPI), and the (INDA). Those are three good index ETFs in India.
Q: Do you expect a 2.5% US Treasury yield by year-end?
A: Yes, and in fact we’ve already done half of that move from the 4.60% yield that we have at the peak last October. So yes, the trend is our friend, and the hard thing to do in the bond market is to get into it, because everybody in the world is now expecting lower interest rates.
Q: What options spreads would you do on the iShares 20 Plus Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT)?
A: Well here, none, because we’re at a high for the year, but wait for a $5 point selloff and then do $5 points in-the-money. That’s what I do like clockwork, don’t even think about it. If we drop more that $5 I’ll just buy more.
Q: Do you expect Natural Gas (UNG) to be higher by the end of the year for the current price?
A: Absolutely, yes, 8 months is more than enough time to get China online again and buying all the natural gas they can get their hands on unless they invade Taiwan.
Q: Any interesting LEAPS on First Republic Corporation (FRC)?
A: You can buy the July 2023 $22.500$25 vertical bull call debit spreads LEAPS for 60 cents and see it expire at $2.50 in 15 months. With an incredible implied volatility at 177% that’s the furthest option maturity that is trading. I think the better trade here is just to buy the stock. You’re going to be limiting your upside with a LEAPS. With a “BUY” in the stock here, you’re looking at 2, 3, 4 times upside potential in a recovery—and remember this thing’s trading at $14, it used to be trading at $100 a month ago. So, don’t limit your upside with an options trade on something that’s clearly extremely oversold after a 90% down-move in a month. That's a rare situation. Full disclosure: I own (FRC). I bought some at $15 and I bought more at $12, just as a go-crazy trade—but I know the (FRC) bank and the management.
Q: How to buy Natural Gas?
A: You buy (UNG), the ETF, to make it really easy. Just remember you have a -35% one-year contango on that so it’s got to go up more than 35% in a year for you to make money.
Q: Any risk of holding banks and brokers through earnings?
A: I would say not much. If they announce surprise losses, they’ll be small. The first quarter was actually a very good quarter for banks and brokers because they made tons of money on their options business, where the volumes have doubled. And the banking crisis didn’t really kick in during the first quarter, at least from a business point of view. So, I don’t expect downside surprises—if there are, it will be small ones, not worth selling and trying to get back in because you’ll just end up paying a higher price.
Q: Are we building new nuclear plants?
A: No, but we had the first expansion in 7 years of the exiting Vogtle plant in Georgia which added a new reactor. The real demand will come from new designs of nuclear plants and the US modernizing its nuclear weapons designs. All of the nuclear fuel that we bought from the Soviet Union after its collapse 30 years ago has all been used up. It ran all of the nuclear power plants in the US for 20 years. That has run out and the prospects of resupplying from Russia now are zero.
Q: Do you foresee China invading Taiwan?
A: Never going to happen. If China (FXI) does invade Taiwan they 1.) lose their entire foreign food supply from the US and 2.) lose all their trade with the US that they need to earn the money to pay for food from other sources like Australia and Russia. So, never going to happen, but they will keep bluffing all year, as they have done continuously since 1949.
Q: Could commercial real estate be a problem for large insurance companies?
A: Only if the default rate goes up; and again, it’s going to be a case-by-case basis where they invested—is it Manhattan or San Francisco where the vacancy rates are at all-time highs at 30%, or is it the Midwest, where the credit quality has deteriorated the most, and is looking at the higher default rates? What is more likely is that interest rates will fall sharply by 2024 bailing these companies out.
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 or TECHNOLOGY LETTER 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
1976 in Laos
Global Market Comments
January 13, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(JANUARY 11 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A)
(ROM), (FCX), (QQQ), (VIX), (TSLA), (TLT), (MSFT), (RIVN), (VIX), (BRK/B), (RTX), (LMT), (FXI), (UNG), (GLD), (GDX), (SLV), (WPM)
Below please find the subscribers’ Q&A for the January 11 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar broadcast from Silicon Valley in California.
Q: In your trade alert you expected that the (TLT) might go up as much as 30% this year. But in your latest newsletter, you mentioned that the chaos in the US House of Representatives would greatly raise the risk of a default on US government debt by the summer and certainly cast a shadow over your 50% long bond position. Is it still a good idea to hold on to the (TLT) ETF over the next 2-6 months?
A: It is. The extremists who now control the House are not interested in governing or passing laws but gaining clicks, raising money, and increasing speaker’s fees. It may have converted (TLT) from a straight-up trade to a flat-line trade. We will still make the maximum profit on call spreads and LEAPS but with greater risk. But even chaos in the House can’t head off a recession, which the bond market seems intent on pricing in by going up. However, if you depend on government payments for any reason, be it Social Security, a government salary, a tax refund, or a payment for a contract, expect delays. The housing market also ceases because closings can’t take place during government shutdowns. Also, 30% of my bond longs expire in four trading days, and the remainder on February 17.
Q: Is it wise to sell the 2X ProShares Ultra Technology ETF (ROM) now or keep holding?
A: I think the (ROM), NASDAQ, and technology stocks in general may make several runs at the lows over the next six months but won’t fall much from here. A recession is priced in. Once we get through this, you’re looking at doubles and triples for the best names. So, the risk/reward overwhelmingly favors holding on to a one-year view.
Q: would you buy Tesla (TSLA) here?
A: I would start scaling in. The bad news is about to dry up, like Twitter, the recession, the pandemic in China, and Elon Musk selling shares. Then we face an onslaught of good news, like the new Mexico factory announcement, the Cybertruck launch, solid state batteries, and annual production hitting 2 million. At this level, the shares are priced in multiple worst-case scenarios. It is selling at 10X 2025 earnings, half the market multiple. At the end of the day, Tesla has an unassailable 14-year start over the rest of the industry and is the only company in the world that makes money on EVs. There’s an easy 10X here on two-year LEAPS.
Q: I’m in the Freeport McMoRan (FCX) January 25 2-year LEAP approaching the upper end of the 42/45 range. If it crosses 45, do we close the position?
A: Sell half, take your profit. If you’re in the LEAP, my guess is you probably have a 500% profit here in only 3 months, which is not bad. And then you keep the remaining half because you’re then playing with the house's money, and Freeport has a shot of going all the way to $100 a share by the 2025 expiration, and that will get you your full 1,000% return on the position. It’s always nice to be in a position where it’s impossible to lose money on a trade, and that certainly is where you are now with your (FCX) LEAP and everybody else in the FCX LEAP in October also.
Q: As a member of the Florida Retirement System, I’m curious how Blackrock (BLK) and other firms are dealing with the Santos’ plan for their portfolios.
A: Having a state governor manage your portfolio and make your sector and stock picks is an absolutely terrible idea. I can’t imagine a worse possible outcome for your retirement funds. Florida is not the only state doing this—Louisiana and Texas are doing it too. The goal is to drive money out of alternative energy and back into the oil industry, and obviously, this is being financed by the oil industry, which is pissed off over their low multiples. Suffice it to say it’s not a good idea to move out of one of the fastest-growing industries in the market and move into an industry that’s going to zero in 10 years. If that’s their investment strategy, I wish they’d stick to politics and leave investing for true professionals to do.
Q: What do you think about cannabis stocks?
A: I’m a better user of the product than the stock. How about that? How hard is it to grow weed? At the end of the day, these are just pure marketing companies, and that value added is low. Plus, they have huge competition from the black market still selling ½ to ⅓ below market prices because they’re tax-free; the local taxes on these cannabis sales are enormous.
Q: Would you recommend selling a bear market rally when the S&P goes to 405?
A: The (QQQ) would be the better short, something like the $310-320 vertical bear put spread for February to bring in some free money. That’s what I'm planning to do if we get up that high, which we may not.
Q: How do you take advantage of a low CBOE Volatility Index (VIX)?
A: You don’t; there’s nothing to do here with the (VIX) at $22. My trades this year were not volatility trades—because we did them with low volatility, they were pure directional trades betting that the longs would go up and the shorts would go down and they all worked.
Q: Will Rivian (RIVN) survive?
A: Yes, they have two years of cash flow in the bank, and they’re boosting production. However, a high-growth, non-earning stock like Rivian is just out of favor right now. Will they come back into favor? Yes, probably in a year or so, but in the meantime, people are much happier buying Microsoft (MSFT) at a discount than Rivian.
Q: Do you ever buy butterfly spreads?
A: No, four-legged trades run up a lot of commissions, are hard to execute because you have 4 spreads, and have lower returns. They are also lower risk and for people who have no idea what the market is going to do. I don’t need the lower risk trades because I know what markets are going to do.
Q: Do you suggest any Microsoft (MSFT) LEAPS?
A: Yes, go out two years with LEAPS and go out about 50% on your strike prices. A 50% move here in Microsoft in two years is a complete no-brainer.
Q: With weakness in retail, rising inventories, and high consumer debt, will consumers dip into savings?
A: Yes they will, but that will predominantly happen at the bottom half of the economy—the part of the economy that has minimal to no savings. The upper half seems to be doing well—the middle class and of course, the wealthy— and are not cutting back their spending at all, which is why this seems to be a recession that may not actually show up. So, what can I say? The rich are doing great and everyone else is doing less than great, and stocks are reflecting that. Nothing new here.
Q: Would you hold off on tech LEAPS for a bigger selloff, or closer to April?
A: If we do get another big selloff and challenge the October lows, I’ll be pumping out those LEAPS as fast as I can write them; except then, a two-year LEAPS will have an April of 2025 expiration.
Q: I just signed up. What are the advantages of LEAPS?
A: A possible 10x return in 2 years with very low risk. I would suggest going to my website, logging in, and doing a search for LEAPS. There will be a piece there on how to execute a LEAPS, and the Concierge members can also find that piece by logging into their website.
Q: Best and worst sectors?
A: First half, already mentioned them. We like commodities, healthcare, financials, and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/B) in the first half and tech in the second half.
Q: Have we reached a low in cryptocurrencies?
A: Probably not, and I’ll tell you why I’ve given up on cryptos: I may not live long enough to see the bottom in crypto. It has Tokyo written all over it, and it took Tokyo 30 years to resume a bull market after it crashed in 1990. We’re still at the scandal stage where it turns out that the majority of these trading platforms were stealing money from customers. This is not a great inspiration for investing in that sector. When you have the best quality growth stocks down 80-90%; why bother with something that may not exist or may never recover in your lifetime? I’m out of the crypto business, but there are a wealth of crypto research sources still online and I’m sure they’d be more than happy to give you an opinion.
Q: Why have defense stocks like Raytheon (RTX) and Lockheed Martin (LMT) been weak recently?
A: A couple of reasons. #1 Just outright profit taking into the end of the year in one of the best-performing sectors. #2 The end of the war in Ukraine may not be that far off, and if that happens that could trigger a major round of selling in defense. We did get the three-day ceasefire over the Russian Orthodox New Year, that’s a possible hint, so that may be another reason.
Q: Political outlook on 2024?
A: It’s too early to make any calls, anything could happen; but if we get a repeat of the November election outcome, you could have Democrats retake control of both houses of congress—that’s where the betting money is going right now.
Q: Would you bottom fish in the United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG)?
A: No, I would not—I am avoiding energy like the plague. Remember the all-time low for natural gas is $0.95 per MM BTU, so we still could have a long way to go.
Q: Would you buy iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI) on a post-COVID breakout?
A: It looks like it’s already moved, so maybe kind of late on that. The problem is that in China, you don’t know what you are buying and the locals have a huge advantage in reading Beijing.
Q: What do you think about the Biden administration wanting to ban gas stoves?
A: That’s actually not a federal issue, it’s a state issue. California has already banned gas pipes for all new construction. It looks like New York will follow and that’s one-third of the US population. The goal is to replace them with electrical appliances which emit no carbon. I have a non-carbon house myself, I went down that path about 10 years ago, and it seems to be the only way to reduce carbon emissions—is to either price gasoline or oil out of the market, or to make it illegal, and they’re already making gasoline cars illegal, so gas and oil won’t be far behind. From 1900, we went from a hay powered economy to a gasoline-powered one in only 20 years so it should be doable.
Q: How can the push for all electric work well when we have so many shutdowns, much higher electricity cost, and cannot keep up with the demand already here?
A: Buy lots of copper for new local electric powerlines at the house level and buy lots of aluminum for the long-distance transmission lines. Global demand for both aluminum and copper has to triple to accommodate the grid buildout that is already planned. As far as hurricanes in Florida, there’s nothing you can do to stop those on a hundred-year view; I would move to higher ground, which is hard to do in Florida as the highest point in the state is only 345 feet and that’s a garbage dump.
Q: Can I get a copy of all these slides?
A: Yes, we post the PowerPoint on the website at www.madhedgefundtrader.com usually two hours after the production.
Q: Are you recommending buying precious metals right now (GLD), (GDX), (SLV), (and WPM) even after the upside breakout?
A: On upside breakouts, you buy the dips. A perfect dip would be a retest of the 200-day moving average. But we may not get that, since it seems to be everyone’s number-one choice right now. By the way, I haven’t been telling people to buy gold and LEAPS on all the gold plays since October—that’s where the big move has already been made.
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 or TECHNOLOGY LETTER, 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
CLICK HERE to download today's position sheet.
With the Israeli Army in Jerusalem in 1979
Global Market Comments
September 30, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE MAD HEDGE SEPTEMBER 13-15 SUMMIT REPLAYS ARE UP),
(WHY WARREN BUFFET HATES GOLD),
(GLD), (GDX), (GOLD), (NEM)
Those in the investment business are well used to the Armageddon crowd. These are the guys who are perennially predicting the collapse of the dollar, the default of the US government, hyperinflation, and the end of the world.
Maybe after 11 years of rising, stocks are finally expensive on a relative basis?
Their perennial recommendations are to keep all your assets in gold and silver, store at least a year’s worth of canned food, and keep your untraceable guns well-oiled and supplied with ammo, preferably in high capacity magazines.
If you followed their advice, you lost your shirt.
I have broken many of these wayward acolytes of their money-losing habits. But not all of them. There seems to be an endless supply emanating from the hinterlands.
The “Oracle of Omaha” Warren Buffet often goes to great lengths to explain why he despises the yellow metal.
The sage doesn't really care about the gold, whatever the price. He sees it primarily as a bet on fear. I imagine he feels the same about Bitcoin, the modern tulips of our age.
If investors are more afraid in a year than they are today, then you make money on gold. If they aren't, then you lose money.
The only problem now is that fear ain’t working.
If you took all the gold in the world, it would form a cube 67 feet on all sides, worth $5 trillion. For that same amount of money, you could own other assets with far greater productive earning power, including:
*All the farmland in the US, about 1 billion acres, which is worth $2.5 trillion.
*Two Apple’s (AAPL), the largest capitalized company in the world at $3 trillion.
Instead of producing any income or dividends, gold just sits there and shines, making you feel like King Midas.
I don't know. With the stock market at an all-time high, and oil trading at $70.49/barrel, a bet on fear looks pretty good to me right now.
I'm still sticking with my long-term forecast of the old inflation-adjusted high of $2,300/ounce. But it might be very long term.
It is just a matter of time before emerging market central bank buying pushes it up there. And who knows? Fear might make a comeback too.
Global Market Comments
January 5, 2022
Fiat Lux
2022 Annual Asset Class Review
A Global Vision
FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
Featured Trades:
(SPX), (QQQ), (XLF), (XLE), (XLY),
(TLT), (TBT), (JNK), (PHB), (HYG), (PCY), (MUB), (HCP)
(FXE), (EUO), (FXC), (FXA), (YCS), (FXY), (CYB)
(BHP), (FCX), (VALE), (AMLP), (USO), (UNG),
(GLD), (GDX), (SLV), (ITB), (LEN), (KBH), (PHM)