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The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Higher Highs

I was all ready to write another hyper-bullish report for the week. That was at least until noon EST on Friday. That’s when NVIDIA (NVDA) Peaked at $955 and then free fell $100 to $855. New all-time and then a new intraday low on huge volume and that is the textbook definition of a market top.

Not that we should be complaining. At the high, (NVDA) was up an unimaginable 105% so far this year. I spent my week buying back short put options for 50 cents that I initially sold for $20. With a quarterly quadruple witching due this Friday, anything can happen.

By the end of February, more than half of all analyst 2024 yearend targets were met. The response was a rush to raise yearend targets, triggering the current melt-up.

It always ends in tears.

And I’m about to tell you something that you will absolutely love to hear. Lower interest rates dramatically increase corporate stock buybacks, already set at $1.25 trillion for 2024. That’s because of the lower cost of capital.

What do more share buybacks automatically bring? High stock prices, especially for large positive cash flow companies like big tech.

As much as the permabears hate to admit it, good news really is good news.

With all of the media obsession with NVIDIA (NVDA), my largest holding, and Meta (META), the fact is that the rally is broadening out. More than half of all industrial stocks are trading at all-time highs. Long-forgotten small caps (IWM) are also approaching 2021 all-time highs.

Going into this week managers were either overweight big tech and extremely nervous or out of big tech and kicking themselves. The urge to rotate is strong. But your standby rotation sectors, industrials, biotech, and banking have also seen big moves.

Which brings us to the subject of gold (GLD).

After a tedious one-year sideways consolidation, the barbarous relic blasted out to the upside above $2,200 an ounce, a new all-time high. After soaking up as much gold as they could over the past decade, China and Russia have finally taken the gold market net short, which is why we saw such dramatic price action.

With interest rates in the US soon to fall, the opportunity cost of owning non-yielding gold is about to shrink. That will cut the knees out from under the US dollar prompting a stampede into precious metals and Bitcoin.

Except this time, it’s different.

Gold miners usually outperform the yellow metal by four to one to the upside. Not so this time. Barrick Gold (GOLD) and Newmont Mining (NEM) were barely able to keep pace with the barbarous relic. That’s because inflation has boosted their costs and cut profit margins. After all, they are stock first and gold plays second.

Still, if gold reaches my $3,000 target in 2025 the LEAPS I sent out for (GOLD) last June should easily hit its maximum profit point of 298%.

That other weak dollar play, oil (USO) may not deliver the joys of past cycles and may in fact be trapped in a fairly narrow $60-$80 range. The futures markets are saying that the price of Texas tea will be lower in a year.

The US is now the world’s top oil producer at 13 million barrels/day and that is rising (thanks to enormously generous tax breaks), capping prices. Non-OPEC+ production is increasing, especially from Brazil and Canada. China, the world’s largest oil importer is missing in action. But low inventories, especially at the American Strategic Petroleum Reserve, are preventing a crash as well. Shale production is growing.

Still, even a $20 rally can have a dramatic impact on the share prices of the big US producers, like Exxon (XOM) and Occidental Petroleum (OXY), some 25% of which is now owned by Warren Buffet. Even without some sexy price action, this sector pays some of the highest dividend yields in the markets.

In February we closed up +7.42%. So far in March, we are up +0.70%. My 2024 year-to-date performance is at +3.21%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +7.11% so far in 2024. My trailing one-year return reached +54.28% versus +40.94% for the S&P 500.

That brings my 16-year total return to +689.74%. My average annualized return has recovered to +52.05%.

Some 63 of my 70 trades last year were profitable in 2023. Some 11 of 15 trades have been profitable so far in 2024.

I used the ballistic move in (NVDA) to take profits in my double long there. I am maintaining longs in (AMZN) and Snowflake (SNOW). I am both long and short the bond market (TLT) and I am 60% in cash given the elevated level of the stock markets.

Nonfarm Payroll Report Rose 275,000 in February. The Headline Unemployment Rate rose to 3.9%, a two-year high. The report illustrates a labor market that is gradually downshifting, with more moderate job and pay gains that suggest the economy will keep expanding without much risk of a reacceleration in inflation. These are very Fed friendly numbers.

JOLTS Job Openings Report Rises by 140,000 to 8,890,000, less than expected. Leisure and hospitality led with 41,000 new jobs, construction added 28,000 and trade, transportation and utilities contributed 24,000. Growth was concentrated among larger companies, as establishments with fewer than 50 employees contributed just 13,000 to the total.

Rivian Shares Soar, on news it is halting plans to build a new $2.25 billion factory in Georgia, an abrupt reversal aimed at cutting costs while the company prepares to launch a cheaper electric vehicle. Shifting planned production of the forthcoming R2 model to an existing facility in Illinois will allow Rivian to begin deliveries in the first half of 2026, earlier than expected. Buy (RIVN) on dips.

New York Community Bancorp Bailed Out, with a cash infusion led by former Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin. The shares soared from $2 to $3.41. That takes the heat off the sector….until the next one. The US is shrinking from 4236 banks to only six banks. Who says politics doesn’t pay?

Europe Moves Towards Interest Rate Cuts, igniting a global bond market rally. Staff projections now see economic growth of 0.6% in 2024, from a previous forecast of 0.8%. They presented a more positive picture of inflation, with the forecast for the year brought to an average 2.3% from 2.7%. Market bets increased on rate cuts taking place as early as June, with the euro trading 0.35% lower against the British pound following the news.

Beige Book Comes in Moderate, saying "labor market tightness eased further," in February but noted "difficulties persisted attracting workers for highly skilled positions." The Beige Book is a review of economic conditions across all 12 Fed districts. Fed Chair Jerome Powell told Congress on Wednesday that the U.S central bank expected "inflation to come down, the economy to keep growing," but shied away from committing to any timetable for interest rate cuts.

China Targets 5% Growth for 2024, but nobody buys it for a second. A covid hangover, residential real estate crisis triggering a financial crisis, and constant invasion threats over Taiwan, make this target a pipe dream. Avoid (FXI) and all Middle Kingdom plays.

Gold Hits New All-Time High, at $2,141 an ounce on expectations of imminent rate cuts by the Fed. Gold, often used as a safe store of value during times of political and financial uncertainty, has climbed over $300 dollars since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Buy (GLD), (GOLD), and (NEM) on dips.

Dell (DELL) Becomes an AI Stock, sending the shares up 47% in a Day. That’s been changing over the past year, as Dell has been reporting strong orders of servers designed to power generative AI workloads—many of which use chips supplied by AI kingmaker Nvidia. The company’s fourth quarter results convinced any doubters. Can Apple (AAPL) do the same?

Tesla Plunges on Poor China Sales, down $14.50 on sales data dimmed the outlook for Tesla's global deliveries, at a time when the top EV maker is battling a decline in demand and is weighed down by a lack of entry-level vehicles and the age of its product line-up. Not the time to be in EVs or solar. Buy (TSLA) on bigger dip.

US National Debt is Rising by $1 Trillion Every 100 Days. A trillion here, a trillion there, sooner or later that adds up to a lot of money. Eventually, someone is going to have to do something about this. The US national debt stands at $34.5 trillion, or $104,545 per person.

The Uranium Shortage is Getting Extreme, with yellow cake up 112% in a year. Owners of left-for-dead uranium mines are restarting operations to capitalize on rising demand for the nuclear fuel. Most of those American mines were idled in the aftermath of Fukushima when uranium prices crashed and countries like Germany and Japan initiated plans to phase out nuclear reactors. Now, with governments turning to nuclear power to meet emissions targets and top uranium producers struggling to satisfy demand, prices of the silvery-white metal are surging. Buy (Cameco (CCJ) on dips.

Japan’s Nikkei ($NIKK) Tops 40,000, a new 34-year high. The ultra-weak Japanese economy is giving the economy there a free lunch, but better hedge your currency exposure. Good thing I missed a dead market for 34 years.

NVIDIA Replaces Tesla as Top Traded Stock, with volumes migrating to the options market as well. Blockbuster profits are catnip for traders, while EV price wars aren’t. Tesla is down 52% from its all-time high two years ago and is one of the biggest percentage decliners in the Nasdaq 100 Index 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, March 11 at 7:00 AM EST, the Consumer Inflation Expectations are announced.

On Tuesday, March 12 at 8:30 AM, Inflation Rate for February is released.

On Wednesday, March 13 at 2:00 PM, MBA Mortgage Applications are published

On Thursday, March 14 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced. We also get the Producer Price Index.

On Friday, March 15 at 2:30 PM, the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment is published. At 2:00 PM the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.

As for me, I have met many interesting people over a half-century of interviews, but it is tough to beat Corporal Hiroshi Onoda of the Japanese Army, the last man to surrender in WWII.

I had heard of Onoda while working as a foreign correspondent in Tokyo. So, I convinced my boss at The Economist magazine in London that it was time to do a special report on the Philippines and interview President Ferdinand Marcos. That accomplished, I headed for Lubang island where Onoda was said to be hiding, taking a launch from the main island of Luzon.

I hiked to the top of the island in the blazing heat, consuming two full army canteens of water (plastic bottles hadn’t been invented yet). No luck. But I had a strange feeling that someone was watching me.

When the Philippines fell in 1945, Onoda’s commanding officer ordered the remaining men to fight on to the last man. Four stayed behind, continuing a 30-year war.

As a massive American military presence and growing international trade raised Philippine standards of living, the locals eventually were able to buy their own guns and kill off Onoda’s companions one by one. By 1972 he was alone, but he kept fighting.

The Japanese government knew about Onoda from the 1950s onward and made every effort to bring him back. They hired search crews, tracking dogs, and even helicopters with loudspeakers, but to no avail. Frustrated, they left a one-year supply of the main Tokyo newspaper and a stockpile of food and returned to Japan. This continued for 20 years.

Onoda read the papers with great interest, believing some parts but distrusting others. His worldview became increasingly bizarre. He learned of the enormous exports of Japanese automobiles to the US, so he concluded that while still at war, the two countries were conducting trade.

But when he came to the classified ads, he found the salaries wildly out of touch with reality. Lowly secretaries were earning an incredible 50,000 yen a year, while a salesman could earn an obscene 200,000 yen.

Before the war, there was one Japanese yen to the US dollar. In the hyperinflation that followed the yen fell to 800, and then only recovered to 360. Onoda took this as proof that all the newspapers were faked by the clueless Americans who had no idea of true Japanese salary levels.

So he kept fighting. By 1974 he had killed 17 Philippino civilians.

After I left Lubang island, a Japanese hippy named Norio Suzuki with long hair, beads, and sandals followed me, also looking for Onoda. Onoda tracked him as he had me but was so shocked by his appearance that he decided not to kill him. The hippy spent two days with Onoda explaining the modern world.

Then Suzuki finally asked the obvious question: what would it take to get Onoda to surrender? Onoda said it was very simple, a direct order from his commanding officer. Suzuki made a beeline straight for the Japanese embassy in Manila and the wheels started turning.

A nationwide search was conducted to find Onoda’s last commanding officer and a doddering 80-year-old was turned up working in an obscure bookstore. Then the government custom-tailored a prewar Imperial Japanese Army uniform and flew him down to the Philippines.

The man gave the order and Onoda handed over his samurai sword and rifle, or at least what was left of it. Rats had eaten most of the wooden parts. You can watch the surrender ceremony by clicking here on YouTube.

When Onoda returned to Japan, he was a sensation. He displayed prewar mannerisms and values like filial piety and emperor worship that had been long forgotten. Emperor Hirohito was still alive.

When I finally interviewed him, Onoda was sympathetic. I had by then been trained in Bushido at karate school and displayed the appropriate level of humility, deference, mannerisms, and reference.

I asked why he didn’t shoot me. He said that after fighting for 30 years he only had a few shells left and wanted to save them for someone more important.

Onoda didn’t last long in the modern Japan, as he could no longer tolerate modern materialism and cold winters. He moved to Brazil to start a school to teach prewar values and survival skills where the weather was similar to that of the Philippines. Onoda died in 2014 at the age of 91. A diet of coconuts and rats had extended his life beyond that of most individuals.

Onoda wasn’t actually the last Japanese to surrender in WWII. I discovered an entire Japanese division in 1975 that had retreated from China into Laos and just blended in with the population. They were prized for their education and hard work and married well.

During the 1990’s a Japanese was discovered in Siberia. He was released locally at the end of the war, got a job, married a Russian woman, and forgot how to speak Japanese. But Onoda was the last to stop fighting.

The Onoda story reminds me of the fact that journalists learn very early in their careers. You can provide all the facts in the world to some people. But if they conflict with their own deeply held beliefs, they won’t buy them for a second.

Hiro Onoda Surrenders

Budding Journalist John Thomas

Good Luck and Good Trading,

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

March 8, 2024

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
March 8, 2024
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MARCH 6 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(SPX), (QQQ), (PANW), (SNOW), (NVDA), (GLD), (GOLD), (NEM), (BA), (AMZN), (TLT), (AAPL), (COIN)

March 6 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Diary, Newsletter

Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the March 6 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA.

Q: With your projections of the Dow going to $240,000 in 10 years, would it be wise to invest in the Dow?

A: The Dow is just an indicator that everybody understands and is familiar with what the media uses. What I tell people to do is if you are not an aggressive person, put half your money in the S&P 500 (SPX), which is getting most of the gains, and half in the technology (QQQ), which is getting all of the gains. If you're an aggressive person, say in your twenties, thirties, or forties, then you put all of your money in the Invesco QQQ NASDAQ Trust (QQQ) because you'll live long enough to survive the inevitable downturns.

Q: What should we do now with Palo Alto Networks (PANW)?

A: Keep it. It’s a fantastic long-term company. This is a rare opportunity to get in on the long side, as this is a company that I think could double over the next 3 to 5 years. Hacking is never going out of style and now they have AI. The selloff was caused by a major platform upgrade which may cause profits to dip for a quarter. That’s now in the price.

Q: With the successful launch of Bitcoin, should we allocate 5% or 10% of our portfolio to Bitcoin?

A: Only if you can handle a 90% decline at any time without warning because that's exactly what it did in 2021. Calling it a store of value is a fantasy. You also still have big theft issues with Bitcoin. You don't have theft issues if you have all your money at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and so on, so there is a security issue (with Bitcoin). The only way to bypass the security issues is to have a hot wallet, and the only way to have a hot wallet is to be a computer programmer yourself or have a degree in computer science—so it's not for most people. If you can navigate all of that, then maybe; but again, nobody knows when the next 90% decline is going to come. By the way, if I can find stocks with Mad Hedge Fund Trader that go up faster than Bitcoin, I'd much rather own the stocks, because at least I know what they make.

Q: Is Snowflake (SNOW) a buy here at $155?

A: Absolutely. Another great cybersecurity database company. But if we drop to $155, we're going to stop out of the front month call spread and try to buy it back lower down.

Q: Do you think it's wise to sell the semiconductor stocks now and buy them back lower down, and pay the taxes?

A: Probably not. They are really the most volatile sector in the market. If you sell now, it's unlikely you'll be able to pick up the next bottom and get back in, and you have to pay the taxes. So it's probably better just to keep a core long-term position in the semis, especially Nvidia (NVDA); and if it drops 200 points, just buy more. That's what I'm doing. I'm keeping all of my Nvidia LEAPS. All my call spreads and short put positions are about to expire at max profit, and I even have a little bit of stock that I'm keeping. So I think Nvidia goes to $1,000 at one point and now, the forecast of $1,400 is out there. So as Nvidia goes, so goes the entire rest of the semiconductor industry.

Q: You're only 30% invested. Are you looking for a pullback, or are you just waiting for new opportunities to appear?

A: Yes and Yes. I'm waiting for a fantastic company to come up with conservative guidance, which these days means an immediate 20 to 25% sell-off. That is your entry point for these good companies. That's how we got into Palo Alto Networks (PANW), and that's how we got into Snowflake (SNOW). In an extremely overbought market, those are your only opportunities until the market generally sells off or until the domestic plays finally start to take off, and we got the first hints of that last week.

Q: What is your view on junior gold mining stocks?

A: They are a buy here, absolutely, but you get enough volatility in the majors that you don't need to bother with the minors—that's always been my view. Because minors go out of business, they close mines, they don't find gold. A lot of minors have stocks go up on the possibility of gold being found, whereas the majors like Barrick Gold (GOLD) and Newmont Mining (NEM) actually have the gold, and it's just an industrial process of mining it. You know the minors, the juniors, are extremely speculative and high-risk, and that's why most of them are listed in Canada. They can't get a US listing. So that's enough of a tell for me to stay away.

Q: I just realized I have the wrong expiration date on my Amazon (AMZN) spread. Should I exit immediately?

A: What I would do is exit what you have and then wait for another down day on Amazon, and then put it back on. That's the way to deal with that one. The answer to all mistakes is to exit immediately. That's an automatic rule at Morgan Stanley; if you don't do that, you get fired. Or come up with a new set of logic as to why you own this position, which has been done by more than a few traders, I imagine.

Q: Would you be willing to be a Boeing 737 Max passenger right now or ever?

A: Yes! If you don't fly Boeings (BA), your life is suddenly very narrow and limited because you’re stuck on the ground. Boeing is the biggest-selling airplane in the world, and most fleets are made of Boeings. However, I'm a pilot, so if anything goes wrong I can run up front and take control, or at least tell the pilot what to do. I also have 25 parachute jumps, if they're handing those out in first class. So remember, every airplane without engines is a glider and I can land a glider anywhere. The company has major problems to sort out until it becomes a “BUY”.

Q: I cannot get into the (TLT) trade to save my life. Is the (TLT) April $89-$92 vertical bull call debit spread pushing the risk limits?

A: Yes. I would walk away from the trade and wait for a better entry point rather than chase. The whole fixed-income space has flipped from the bid side to the offered side, meaning we've gone from net sellers to net buyers. All asset classes have done that; you're seeing that in gold, silver, and even uranium. All the REITs are having a fantastic week. All interest rate plays are now being bid, and it's hard to buy stuff when things are being bid.

Q: What's it like being 6’4” and living in Japan?

A: Well, I did knock myself out a couple of times, banging myself on the door. You get used to bowing a lot, but bowing is a part of the culture in Japan. If you're watching the new Hulu miniseries, Shogun, you would know that. Once I was working for Sony and I was late for work, so I was running up the stairs, and they had a steel lintel to their door, and I just ran bang into that and knocked myself out. The Sony people thought, “Oh my gosh, we just killed a foreigner!” So yes, it was hard. The only clothes I could buy in Japan for ten years were belts and ties. I had to fly to Hong Kong and had everything else custom-made in those days.

Q: What's your opinion of Masters of the Air?

A: I absolutely love it. It's heartbreaking to watch. I knew a lot of guys who were there, and I was one of the last people trained on how to fly a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. Anybody who watched Masters of the Air with me gets to watch it with someone who is one of the last living people who rated on a B-17 as a pilot.

Q: Are we in a liquidity bubble right now?

A: Yes, we are, and boy, I love every minute of it. But we're not in the year 2000 in a liquidity bubble, we're in 1995 just getting started. And the profits from AI are just getting started which is what's creating this endless liquidity that people are seeing now.

Q: What should I buy the dip in Tesla (TSLA)?

A: There's no downside target for Tesla right now. We just have to wait for the meltdown in demand to finish, and who knows where that is. But with BYD entering the market, Tesla is definitely going to get more competition in emerging markets—that's where BYD is selling the cars now. I also understand they're selling them in Australia.

Q: How much longer can tech stocks keep rising?

A: 5 to 10 more years, but we are way overdue for some kind of pullback.

Q: What are your thoughts on Apple's (APPL) weakness?

A: Apple has become that great backward-looking company. It could drop to $160 or even $140, then we’ll be taking a serious look at some call spreads and LEAPS. You just wait. In four months when they announce their next batch of new products suddenly, they’ll become an AI company and recover the $200 level in no time.

Q: Should I dive into Coinbase (COIN)?

A: Absolutely not on pain of death! It's made its move. You're better off buying Nvidia (NVDA) at that kind of inclination because at least you know what they make.

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 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

Thank You NVIDIA!

March 7, 2024

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
March 7, 2024
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(REMEMBERING THE OLD DAYS AT MORGAN STANLEY),
(MS), (GS), (GLD), (FCX), (FXE), (FXY), (CCJ)

January 12, 2024

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
January 12, 2024
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(JANUARY 10 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A)
(SPY), (UNG), (NVDA), (UUP), (FXA), (GOOG), (GOOGL), (GLD), (GOLD), (WPM), (BYDDY), (F), (GM), (TSLA)

January 10 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Diary, Newsletter

Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the January 10 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA.

Q: Would you sell Nvidia (NVDA) covered calls?

A: No, I would not. Nvidia could double at any time, or at least go up 50%. That is not a covered call writing situation, that is a long call situation, or at the very least a long call spread situation. Do not bet against Nvidia on pain of death—one of the seven-stop losses I had last year was a short in Nvidia.

Q: Do you recommend any brokers for executing my trades?

A: Yes, I recommend tastytrade (click here) because they have some of the lightest code in the entire industry. It’s written to go very fast. Plus they have very competitive margin rates and commissions. They only charge commissions on openings, not on closings for most stocks, etlfs, options and crypto.

Q: Why are you adding positions when the market timing index is so high? Aren't you supposed to be avoiding risk here?

A: The market timing index in the PowerPoint is for the S&P 500 only. If you look at the individual stocks that I've added in the last two days, they've all had 10-20% corrections. So you don't want to touch the main market up here. If anything it's a short, and I am looking at an S&P 500 (SPY) short, by the way, to hedge our other longs. Individual stocks have already corrected, and I've already started to add positions in the leaders for the year. Big tech is moving up; it’s leading the rally so that is what's happening there.

Q: Is it time to buy Tesla (TSLA)? It's a 200-day moving average.

A: I don't want to touch Tesla until the price war is over. Obviously, it's still continuing and Tesla itself is leading the charge on the price war, so I would hold off on that while the other tech stocks like Nvidia (NVDA) are so hot.

Q: I bought the UNG (United States Natural Gas Fund) LEAPS you put out over the Christmas vacation. They have since doubled in value in two weeks. Should I take profits?

A: Yes. Always take a profit in any option play when you get an immediate return because they have the tendency to give up those returns very quickly. They do call natural gas the “widow maker” in the commodities market because of the extreme volatility. So when you get a 50% move in natural gas or any commodity, take the money and run. Go to Las Vegas for a weekend, take your wife to Hawaii, pay off your kid's student loans, or buy yourself a new Rolex watch! Take the quick profit. You always get a chance to buy again on a dip, and there’s nothing like starting off 2024 with a double on a LEAP. For me, it's a matter of professional pride, not about the money. So way to go, John Thomas.

Q: Has crude oil reached the bottom?

A: $70 per barrel has been holding for a long time, but it's not acting like a bottom. I have to tell you, it's not getting any big dead cat bounces you see at real bottoms. So my guess is we have to move into the 60s, maybe all the way down to $62 before we get a turnaround. We need to see a turnaround in the global economy before we get a turnaround in the price of oil, and especially a turnaround in China, which is the world's largest importer of oil—and there is no sign of that happening anytime soon. So there is your answer; watch China.

Q: Will any Bitcoin ETFs be approved in the US?

A: Probably yes, but that also could mark a top of the market. Remember the insiders, the miners, have a huge trading advantage over us. Which is one reason why I'm avoiding this asset class this time around. I have a feeling we'll peak lower than the last high, and then we go back down into lows again. So avoid Bitcoin. There are too many other better things to buy now like Nvidia. During the last Bitcoin peak, all the techs were insanely expensive, and now they're not. We have better alternatives to crypto than we did two years ago.

Q: With China not improving, do you still like the US dollar to drop and the Australian dollar to increase?

A: I do expect the US dollar (UUP) to fall. I think it's peaked out and already dropped 10%, and I expect the Aussie (FXA) to rise. It's already risen by about 7%, but not because of China. It's happening because the US will cut interest rates anywhere from 3 to 6 times this year. And it could be either; it could be 3 quarter-point rate cuts, or it could be 6. I'm kind of leaning towards 6 myself. Which leads to the next question...

Q: Do you still like bonds?

A: Absolutely, yes. (TLT) is trading around $97 today. I'm looking for it to hit $110 to $120 by the end of the year, plus the interest payments. So the total return on (TLT) bonds will be between 18% and 28% on the year. Most people will take that.

Q: Do you still like uranium?

A: Yes. In fact, just last week, France announced it was building 14 new nuclear power plants. These are the big 1 to 4-megawatt old-style plants on top of their additional programs. So that creates more demand for yellow cake fuel and more demand for uranium, and it is getting a lot of push these days as a green fuel. Which it is—it is non-carbon producing. By the way, look at NuScale (SMR) if you're interested in uranium because they have the newest design that solves all the old nuclear problems. And the stock just had a big selloff because they lost a customer.

Q: Do you still like the banks?

A: Well, all four of the financial LEAPS that I recommended at the bottom of the banking crisis in March are all expiring this month at max profits anywhere over a hundred percent. So yes, I love the banks, but I don't especially like them right here, not on top of 30-35% gains. So wait for a pullback. These would be great candidates for any sell-off going into March; that's when we take another look at these. Oh, and if another bank goes bankrupt so much the better, that creates much better entry points.

Q: What's the best way to trade long-term dollar shorts (UUP)?

A: The answer is through futures contracts through banks, is the cheapest way to do it. You get a leverage of 10 to 100 times depending on the contract. You can do long or short. The dealing expenses are the cheapest, and that's how professionals trade for their own account, is through futures contracts through banks. It's not really an equity play. There are a number of short-dollar ETFs out there, but dealing with expenses wide, tracking errors is big so it is not an efficient way to do it. So, that would be my recommendation on long-term dollar shorts. The other way is to buy the Australian dollar, the (FXA).

Q: How are your stem cell knee injections working, John?

A: Fantastic. It completely cured my arthritis with my stem cell injections in my knees and lower back. And after I got shot in the hip in Ukraine, I had a Stem cell injection there too, and that worked. So the pain is completely gone from that bullet wound I got from the Russians in October. Yes, I'm one of the lucky people where everything stem cell-related seems to work, so I do all of them. Go ahead and try it, it’ll only cost you a thousand dollars or two per injection.

Q: When trading Google, do you use the (GOOGL) or just the (GOOG)?

A: One is the holding company, and one is the operating company for the search business. It's really six of one and half a dozen of the other. Both are liquid. The tracking between the two is almost nil, so I don't bother.

Q: Do you expect a recession or high unemployment this year?

A: No, you never get recessions or high unemployment in election years. And much of the spending that the administration obtained years ago has yet to be spent. You know, the lag time on government spending is in the years and it magically tends to happen the most in election years. Go figure. So after a slowdown in the first quarter, I'm expecting to speed up going into the rest of the year.

Q: How much can gold (GLD) go up this year?

A: At least 20 to 30%. Which means the Barrick Gold (GOLD) and Newmont Mining (NEM) could easily double this year. And what about silver? It should go up even more. Which means a Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM) leap at this level should go up 400%. Yes, you've heard it here first, 400% with fairly low risk. And if you want to know how to do that, just search for LEAPS on my website or become a concierge member and you can call me and I'll tell you how to do it. I'll guide your hand on how to do the trade.

Q: Is BYD in China a threat to Tesla (TSLA)?

A: No. BYD Motors (BYDDY) is taking over the low end of the market. Read the least profitable end of the market in China where they actually sell more cars than Tesla including hybrids, but Tesla still leads in EVs, and it's the question of would you rather own a Rolls Royce or a Volkswagen. That is the choice. In China, people buy EVs to show off their wealth, and a BYD car shows off your humility or at least your stinginess. So in some emerging markets where cost is the issue, BYD may take over the market, but they won't make very much money at it. And in other markets where quality is the issue like the US, like China, Tesla will dominate and you may end up with a situation like you have with Apple (APPL). Apple has only a 6% market share in the global cell phone business, but they account for 91% of global profits in the cell phone business, and Tesla could do the same. They could end up making all the money with a lesser market share ceding the bottom end or the money-losing end of the market to BYD, Ford (F), General Motors (GM), or anybody else down there.

Q: What do you think of a (TLT) February $90-$93 vertical bull call debit spread for February?

A: I like it. It’s a little close to the money—I usually try to go out $5 points on the TLT strikes when I'm setting these up. So that's a little aggressive, but you'll end up making more money. My bet is you could make 20% on this call spread right here. So many people are still trying to get into the bond market. They got left out, the move up was so fast since October. The institutional investors that dominate that market are not used to the idea of speed. So yes, I think we're looking at a sideways move before the next leg up.

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, TECHNOLOGY LETTER, or JACQUIE'S POST, 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

January 8, 2024

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
January 8, 2024
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or HERE IS THE TRADE OF THE YEAR),
(TLT), (TSLA), (BYDDY), (FCX), (TLT) (F), (GLD), (X)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Here is the Trade of the Year

Diary, Newsletter

During 2023, the market spent the entire year climbing the proverbial wall of worry. The question is how much we have to give back from deferred tax selling from the profitable 2023 trades before 2024 can start anew.

It could be weeks. It could be months.

Last year was the Year of the Magnificent Seven. So far this year, it is looking like the Year of the Magnificent 493, when everything else goes up.

Which brings me to the most important topic of the day.

The best trade out there this year may be the most boring one of all, the ten-year US Treasury notes, now yielding 4.10%.

Let’s say the Federal Reserve delivers on its promise to cut interest rates three times in 2024 from 5.5% taking the overnight rate down to 4.75%. The futures markets are giving us a 70% probability this will start in March, but I think that Jay Powell will want to torture us for a few extra months until June to make sure inflation is well and truly dead.

In that case, bond prices (TLT) should rise at least from $96 to $110 by the end of the year, taking the yield down from 4.10% today to 3.60% Add in the current 4.10% yield and that should give you a very low-risk total return for the year of 18% or better.

But what if the 2024 yearend liquidity surge discounts the 3 additional interest rate cuts to take place in 2025? That could add another $10 to this trade, taking the total return for the year up to 28%. Most investors will take an annual return of 28% all day long.

There is in fact a better way to do this.

Don’t buy the (TLT), which has high management and administration costs and wide dealing spreads that probably top 2% a year. Bypass all of that through buying the ten-year US Treasury note directly from your broker. That’s easy to do, has minimal commissions and the bonds trade like water.

After all, the US government has a unique talent for issuing bonds and there are already trillions of dollars’ worth outstanding. That shifts the 2% take of the (TLT) from Wall Street into your pocket.

It gets better.

What are the chances that another pandemic will occur in the next decade? I’d say about 50/50. After all, with a global population of 8 billion and rising, international travel and trade reaccelerating, pandemic risks are rising once again.

If you don’t believe me, just try and get an Airbnb (ABNB) in Florence, Italy, the epicenter of the last breakout in Europe. There are hardly any Italians left in Florence because they can’t compete with tourists on housing costs and can’t afford to live there anymore. So it is now more important to hedge your portfolio from pandemic risks.

It just so happens that there is a way you can do this: buy ten-year US Treasury notes. What happened with the last pandemic (see chart below)? The (TLT) doubled in value from $80 to $165, taking yields from 5.0% all the way down to 0.32%. Back then, investors were worried about return OF capital, not return ON capital, for which the US government has a perfect record.

It turns out that bonds will not only hedge all of your stocks from pandemic risks, but ALL INVESTMENTS OF EVERY KIND, including commodities, the dollar, precious metals, energy, and even your own home.

And with a 4.1% yield, bonds offer an insurance policy that pays you to own it.

Ten-year US Treasury notes are also the perfect position to have during times of inflation. Falling inflation enables more Fed rate cuts, which automatically increase the value of the notes….by a lot.

How do I know inflation is falling? Because I went bowling last week in Incline Village, Nevada. The establishment is under new ownership. They gutted the place, fired all the staff, and remodeled it in a cool sixties motif. Then they hired two people to run the place.

All payments have to take place online, even for video games, where you also now have to reserve your lanes. As a result, instead of casually walking in to take a lane, you have to book them two weeks in advance. The place is always full.

Cut costs, and soaring revenues, you want to own this bowling alley, as you do for the Magnificent 493. This is going on across the entire US economy, like it or not. This is highly deflationary.

Hedge funds are piling into the ten-year US Treasury note trade in record numbers because you only see a low-risk, high-return setup like this once every decade or so.

My bet is that there are maybe four points of downside risk in this trade against a potential gain of 28 points. That’s a risk/reward ratio of 7:1.

I Like it!

I just thought you’d like to know.

So far in January, we are up 0% since I have done no trades and have a 100% cash position. My 2024 year-to-date performance is also at 0%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is down -2.51% so far in 2024. My trailing one-year return reached +73.94% versus +34.46% for the S&P 500.

My 15-year total return is +676.63% and my average annualized return is +54.05%.

Some 63 of my 70 trades last year were profitable in 2023.

Did We Just See Another 2009 Bottom? If so, we could be looking at rising stocks for another 13 years, making my own Dow 120,000 forecast look conservative. Certainly, the fundamentals are there, as long as we don’t get another pandemic or 100 other things go wrong.

The Nonfarm Payroll Report Sizzles, at 216,000, better than expected. The headline Unemployment Rate maintained a near 50-year low at 3.7%. December’s payroll gains were driven by three categories: Education/health, leisure/hospitality, and government. The overall level of leisure/hospitality jobs remains below the pre-pandemic high, showing that some parts of the job market are still normalizing after the COVID-19 shock.

JOLTS Falls in December, nudging lower to 8.79 million, about in line with the Dow Jones estimate for 8.8 million and the lowest level since March 2021. The ratio of job openings to available workers fell to 1.4 to 1, still elevated but down sharply from the 2 to 1 level that had been prevalent in 2022.

Weekly Jobless Claims Dropped to 202,000, a two-month low. pointing to underlying labor market strength even as demand for workers is easing. With the report from the Labor Department on Thursday also showing the number of people on unemployment rolls remained elevated towards the end of December, financial markets continued to anticipate that the Federal Reserve would start cutting interest rates in March.

Tesla (TSLA) is Still the World’s Largest EV Maker. BYD (BYDDY) delivered 1.57 million EVs in 2023 compared to 1.8 million for Tesla (TSLA). BYD, which I visited in China 12 years ago when Warren Buffet bought a stake in it, is building factories in Europe, Latin America, and across Asia as part of a broader effort to expand sales across these continents, and its cars and buses are popping up in cities all over the world. They could never meet quality standards in the US. They offer a cheaper, lower margin, lesser quality product, but that is all that is needed in many emerging markets.

Copper (FCX) to Rise 75% in 2024, say industry analysts. Copper is headed for a price spurt over the next two years, as mining supply disruptions coincide with higher demand for the metal. Rising demand driven by the green energy transition and a decline in the U.S. dollar strength come the second half of 2024 will fuel support for copper prices. I’m going to keep telling you this until you buy more copper.

The Auto Business is Booming, at 15.6 million units delivered in 2023, a four-year high. Ford (F) saw a 7.6% increase in sales. Also a sign of a strong economy. The company’s F series pickup trucks remain the best-selling vehicle in America.

Pending Home Sales were Unchanged in November, despite record 30-year fixed-rate mortgages at 8.0%. The underlying real estate is far stronger than people realize. Mortgage rates are now solidly in the mid-6% range, but the supply of homes for sale is still very low. REMAX CEO Nick Baily says the market is short 4.5 to 5 million homes which will take a decade to build.

Gold (GLD) to Hit New High in 2024, with fundamentals of a dovish pivot in U.S. interest rates, continued geopolitical risk, and central bank buying is expected to support the market after a volatile 2023. Spot gold posted a 13% annual rise in 2023, its best year since 2020, trading around $2,060 per ounce.

Nippon Steel Buys US Steel (X) for $55 a Share, or $14.9 billion. That is double the next competing offer from Cleveland Cliffs (CLF). In clearly what is a trophy purchase, the buyer will honor all existing union deals. That certainly puts my December 2025 $20-$23 LEAPS issued last June at its maximum profit of 132%. Sell now if you still have it. There is only downside risk from here.

Home Prices Hit New All-Time Highs, according to S&P Case Shiller, up 0.6% in October and 4.8% YOY. That is nine consecutive months of gains. A 30-year fixed rate mortgage down to 6.7% is a help. Detroit had the biggest increase at 8.1%, followed by San Diego with 7.2% and New York with 7.1%. Portland, Oregon, was the only one of the 20 cities where prices fell year over year. A decade-long bull market has begun.

Core PCE Dives to a 3.2% YOY Rate. Headline Personal Consumption Expectation fell to only 2.6%, closing in on the Fed’s 2.0% target. It’s no longer a question of if the Fed will cut interest rates, but how much and how fast.

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, January 8, at 8:30 AM EST, the Consumer Inflation Expectations are out, one of the Fed’s favorite inflation reads.

On Tuesday, January 9 at 8:30 AM, the NFIB Business Optimism Index will be released.

On Wednesday, January 10 at 2:00 PM, the MBA Mortgage Applications will be published.

On Thursday, January 11 at 8:30 AM the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced. We also get the Consumer Price Index for December.

On Friday, January 12 at 2:30 PM, the December Producer Price Index is published. At 2:00 PM the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.

As for me, when I drove up to visit my pharmacist in Incline Village, Nevada, I warned him in advance that I had a question he never had heard before: How good is 80-year-old morphine?

He stood back and eyed me suspiciously. Then I explained in detail.

Two years ago, I led an expedition to the South Pacific Solomon Island of Guadalcanal for the US Marine Corps Historical Division (click here for the link). My mission was to recover physical remains and dog tags from the missing in action there from the epic 1942 battle.

Between 1942 and 1944, nearly four hundred Marines vanished in the jungles, seas, and skies of Guadalcanal. They were the victims of enemy ambushes and friendly fire, hard fighting, malaria, dysentery, and poor planning.

They were buried in field graves, in cemeteries as unknowns, if not at all left out in the open where they fell. They were classified as “missing,” “not recovered,” and “presumed dead.”

I managed to accomplish this by hiring an army of kids who knew where the most productive battlefields were, offering a reward of $10 a dog tag, a king's ransom in one of the poorest countries in the world. I recovered about 30 rusted, barely legible oval steel tags.

They also brought me unexploded Japanese hand grenades (please don’t drop), live mortar shells, lots of US 50 caliber and Japanese 7.7 mm Arisaka ammo, and the odd human jawbone, nationality undetermined.

I also chased down a lot of rumors.

There was said to be a fully intact Japanese zero fighter in flying condition hidden in a container at the port for sale to the highest bidder. No luck there.

There was also a just discovered intact B-17 Flying Fortress bomber that crash-landed on a mountain peak with a crew of 11. But that required a four-hour mosquito-infested jungle climb and I figured it wasn’t worth the malaria.

Then, one kid said he knew the location of a Japanese hospital. He led me down a steep, crumbling coral ravine, up a canyon, and into a dark cave. And there it was, a Japanese field hospital untouched since the day it was abandoned in 1943.

The skeletons of Japanese soldiers in decayed but full uniform lay in cots where they died. There was a pile of skeletons in the back of the cave. Rusted bottles of Japanese drugs were strewn about, and yellowed glass sachets of morphine were scattered everywhere. I slowly backed out, fearing a cave-in.

It was creepy.

I sent my finds to the Marine Corps at Quantico, Virginia, who traced and returned them to the families. Often the survivors were the children, or even grandchildren of the MIA’s. What came back were stories of pain and loss that had finally reached closure after eight decades.

Wandering about the island, I often ran into Japanese groups with the same goals as mine. My Japanese is still fluent enough to carry on a decent friendly conversation with the grandchildren of their veterans. It turned out I knew far more about their loved ones than they did. After all, it was our side that wrote the history. They were very grateful.

How many MIAs were they looking for? 30,000! Every year they found hundreds of skeletons and cremated them in a ceremony, one of which I was invited to. The ashes were returned to giant bronze urns at Yasakuni Ginja in Tokyo, the final resting place of hundreds of thousands of their own.

My pharmacist friend thought the morphine I discovered had lost half of its potency. Would he take it himself? No way!

As for me, I was a lucky one. My dad made it back from Guadalcanal, although the malaria and post-traumatic stress bothered him for years. And you never wanted to get in a fight with him….ever.

I can work here and make money in the stock market all day long. But my efforts on Guadalcanal were infinitely more rewarding. I’ll return as soon as I get the chance, now that I know where to look.

True MIA’s, the Ultimate Sacrifice

My Collection of Dog Tags and Morphine

My Army of Scavengers

Dad on Guadalcanal (lower right)

Good Luck and Good Trading,

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

January 3, 2024

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
January 3, 2024
Fiat Lux

2024 Annual Asset Class Review
A Global Vision

FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

Featured Trades:

(SPX), (QQQ), (IWM) (AAPL), (XLF), (BAC) (JPM), (BAC), (C), (MS), (GS),

(X), (CAT), (DE),(TLT), (TBT), (JNK), (PHB), (HYG), (MUB), (LQD), (FXE), (EUO),

(FXC), (FXA), (YCS), (FXY), (CYB), (DIG), (RIG), (USO), (DUG), (UNG), (USO),

(XLE), (AMLP),(GLD), (DGP), (SLV), (PPTL), (PALL), (ITB), (LEN), (KBH), (PHM)

2024 Annual Asset Class Review

Diary, Newsletter

I am once again writing this report from a first-class sleeping cabin on Amtrak’s legendary California Zephyr.

By day, I have a comfortable seat next to a panoramic window. At night, they fold into two bunk beds, a single and a double. There is a shower, but only Houdini can navigate it.

I am anything but Houdini, so I foray downstairs to use the larger public hot showers. They are divine.

We are now pulling away from Chicago’s Union Station, leaving its hurried commuters, buskers, panhandlers, and majestic great halls behind. I love this building as a monument to American exceptionalism.

I am headed for Emeryville, California, just across the bay from San Francisco, some 2,121.6 miles away. That gives me only 56 hours to complete this report.

I tip my porter, Raymond, $100 in advance to ensure everything goes well during the long adventure and keep me up to date with the onboard gossip.

The rolling and pitching of the car is causing my fingers to dance all over the keyboard. Microsoft’s Spellchecker can catch most of the mistakes, but not all of them.

Chicago’s Union Station

As both broadband and cell phone coverage are unavailable along most of the route, I have to rely on frenzied Internet searches during stops at major stations along the way, like Omaha, Salt Lake City, and Reno, to Google obscure data points and download the latest charts.

You know those cool maps in the Verizon stores that show the vast coverage of their cell phone networks? They are complete BS.

Who knew that 95% of America is off the grid? That explains so much about our country today.

I have posted many of my better photos from the trip below, although there is only so much you can do from a moving train and an iPhone 15 Pro.

Here is the bottom line which I have been warning you about for months. In 2024 we will probably top the 70.44% we made last year, but you are going to have to navigate the reefs, shoals, hurricanes, and the odd banking crisis. Do it and you can laugh all the way to the bank. I will be there to assist you in navigating every step.

The first half of 2024 will be all about trading, making bets on when the Fed starts cutting interest rates. Technology will continue their meteoric melt-up. In the second half, I expect the cuts to actually take place and markets to go straight up. Domestic industrials, commodities, financials, energy foreign markets, and currencies will lead.

And here is my fundamental thesis for 2024. After the Fed kept rates too low for too long and then raised them too much, it will then panic and lower them again too fast to avoid a recession. In other words, a mistake-prone Jay Powell will keep making mistakes. That sounds like a good bet to me.

Keep in mind that the Mad Hedge AI Market Timing Index is at the absolute top end of its historic range the three-month likelihood of you making money on a trade is essentially zero. But adhere to the recommendations I make in this report today and you should be up about 30% in a year.

Let me give you a list of the challenges I see financial markets facing in the coming year:

The Ten Key Variables for 2024

1) When will the Fed pivot?
2) When will quantitative tightening end?
3) How soon will the Russians give up on Ukraine?
4) When will the rotation from technology to domestic value plays happen?
5)How much of falling interest rates will translate into higher gold prices?
6) When will the structural commodities boom get a second wind?
7) How fast will the US dollar fall?
8) How quickly will lower interest rates feed into a hotter real estate market?
9) How fast can the Chinese economy bounce back from Covid-19?
10) When does the next bull market in energy begin?

All the answers are below:

Somewhere in Iowa

The Thumbnail Portfolio

Equities – buy dips
Bonds – buy dips
Foreign Currencies – buy dips
Commodities – buy dips
Precious Metals – buy dips
Energy – buy dips
Real Estate – buy dips

1) The Economy – From Hot to Cool to Hot Again

2023 was a terrible year for economists who largely got it wrong. Many will be driving Uber cabs from January.

The economy is clearly slowing now from the red-hot 5.2% GDP growth rate we saw in Q3 to a much more modest 2.0% rate in Q4. We’ll get the first read on the end of January.

Any more than that and the Fed will panic and bring interest rate cuts dramatically forward to head off a recession. That is clearly what technology stocks were discounting with a melt-up of Biblical proportions, some 19% in the last two months, or $65 in the (QQQ)’s.

Anywhere you look, the data is softening, save for employment, which is holding up incredibly well at a 3.7% headline Unemployment Rate. The labor shortage may be the result of more workers dying from COVID-19 than we understand. Far more are working from home not showing up in the data. And many young people have just disappeared off the grid (they’re in the vans you see on the freeways).

The big picture view of what’s going on here is that after 15 years of turmoil caused by the 2008 financial crisis, pandemic, ultra-low interest rates, and excessive stimulus, we may finally be returning to normal. That means long-term average growth and inflation rates of 3.0% each.

I can’t wait.

A Rocky Mountain Moose Family

2) Equities (SPX), (QQQ), (IWM) (AAPL), (XLF), (BAC) (JPM), (C), (MS), (GS), (X), (CAT), (DE)

As I travel around the world speaking with investors, I notice that they all have one thing in common. They underestimate the impact of technology, the rate at which it is accelerating, its deflationary impact on the economy, and the positive influence they have on all stocks, not just tech ones. And the farther I get away from Silicon Valley the poorer the understanding.

Since my job is to make your life incredibly easy, I am going to simplify my equity strategy for 2024.

It's all about falling interest rates.

You should pay attention. In my January 4, 2023 Annual Asset Class Review (click here), I predicted the S&P 500 would hit $4,800 by year-end end. Here we are at $4,752.

I didn’t nail the market move because I am omniscient, possess a crystal ball, or know a secret Yaqui Indian chant. I have spent the last 30 years living in Silicon Valley and have a front-row seat to the hyper-accelerating technology here.

Since the time of the Roman Empire advancing technology has been highly deflationary (can I get you a deal on a chariot!). Now is no different, which meant that the Federal Reserve would have to stop raising interest rates in the first half of the year.

The predictions of a decade-long battle with rising prices like we saw in the seventies and eighties proved so much bunk, alarmism, and clickbait. In fact, the last 25 basis point rate rise took place on July 26, taking up from an overnight rate of 5.25% to 5.5%. That rendered the hard landing forecasts for the economy nonsense.

When interest rates are as high as they are now, you only look at trades and investments that can benefit from falling interest rates. All stocks actually benefit from cheaper money, but some much more than others.

In the first half, that will be technology plays like Apple (AAPL), (Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL), Meta (META), and NVIDIA (NVDA). Much of this move was pulled forward into the end of 2023 so this sector may flatline for a while.

In the second half, value plays will take the leadership like banks, (JPM), (BAC), (C), financials (MS), (GS), homebuilders (KBH), (LEN), (PHM), industrials (X), capital goods (CAT), (DE), and commodities (FCX). Everything is going to new all-time highs. My Dow average of 120,000 by the end of the decade is only one more triple away and is now looking very conservative.

That means we now have at hand a generational opportunity to get into the fastest-growing sectors of the US economy at bargain prices. I’m talking Cadillacs at KIA prices. Corporate profits powered by accelerating technology, artificial intelligence, and capital spending will rise by large multiples. Every contemporary earnings forecast will come up short and have to be upgraded. 2024 will be a year of never-ending upgrades.

After crossing a long, hot desert small-cap stocks can finally see water. That’s because they are the most leveraged, undercapitalized, and at the mercy of interest rates and the economic cycle. They always deliver the most heart-rending declines going into recessions. Guess what happens now with the economy headed for a soft landing? They lead to the upside, with some forecasts for the Russell 2000 going as high as a ballistic 50%.

Another category of its own, Biotech & Health Care which is now despised, should do well on its own as technology and breakthroughs are bringing new discoveries. Artificial intelligence is discovering new drugs at an incredible pace and then telling you how to cheaply manufacture them. My top three picks there are Eli Lily (ELI), Abbvie (ABBV), and Merck (MRK).

There is another equity subclass that we haven’t visited in about a decade, and that would be emerging markets (EEM). After ten years of punishment from a strong dollar, (EEM) has been forgotten as an investment allocation. We are now in a position where the (EEM) is likely to outperform US markets in 2024, and perhaps for the rest of the decade. The drivers here are falling interest rates, a cheaper dollar, a reigniting global economy, and a new commodity boom.

Block out time on your calendars, because whenever the Volatility Index (VIX) tops $20, up from the current $12, I am going pedal to the metal, and full firewall forward (a pilot term), and your inboxes will be flooded with new trade alerts.

What is my yearend prediction for the S&P 500 for 2024. We should reach $5,500, a gain of 14.58%. You heard it here first.

Frozen Headwaters of the Colorado River

3) Bonds (TLT), (TBT), (JNK), (PHB), (HYG), (MUB), (LQD)

Amtrak needs to fill every seat in the dining car to get everyone fed on time, so you never know who you will share a table with for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

There was the Vietnam Vet Phantom Jet Pilot who now refused to fly because he was treated so badly at airports. A young couple desperately eloping from Omaha could only afford seats as far as Salt Lake City. After they sat up all night, I paid for their breakfast.

A retired British couple was circumnavigating the entire US in a month on a “See America Pass.” Mennonites returning home by train because their religion forbade automobiles or airplanes.

The old bond trade is dead.

Long live the new bond trade!

After selling short bonds (TLT) from $180 all the way down to $82, I flipped to the long side on October 17. The next week, bonds saw their biggest rally in history, making instant millionaires out of several of my followers. The (TLT) has since rocketed from $82 to an eye-popping $100, a 22% gain.

In a heartbeat, we went from super bear to hyper bull.

I am looking for the Fed to cut interest rates by 1.00% in 2024 but won’t begin until the second half of the year. All of the first half bond gains were pulled forward into 2023 so I am looking for long periods of narrow trading ranges. By June, economic weakness will be so obvious that a dramatic Fed rate-cutting policy will ensue.

In addition, the Fed will end its quantitative tightening program by June, which is currently sucking $90 billion a month out of the economy. That’s a lot of bond-selling that suddenly ends.

I’m looking for $120 in the (TLT) sometime in 2024, with a possible stretch to $130. Use every five-point dip to load up on shares in the (TLT) ETF, calls, call spreads, and one-year LEAPS. This trade is going to work fast. It is the low-hanging fruit of 2024.

We are never going back to the 0.32% yields, and $165 prices we saw in the last bond peak. But you can still make a lot of money in a run-up from $82 to $120, as many happy bondholders are now discovering.

It isn’t just bonds that are going up. The entire interest rate space is doing well including junk bonds (JNK), municipal bonds (MUB), REITS (NLY), preferred stock, and convertible bonds.

A Visit to the 19^th Century

4) Foreign Currencies (FXE), (EUO), (FXC), (FXA), (YCS), (FXY), (CYB)

With a major yield advantage over the rest of the world for the last decade, the US dollar has been on an absolute tear. After all, the world’s strongest economy begets the world’s strongest currency.

That is about to end.

If your primary assumption is that US interest rates will see a sharp decline sometime in 2024, then the outlook for the greenback is terrible.

Currencies are driven by interest rate differentials and the buck is soon going to see the fastest shrinking yield premium in the forex markets.

That shines a great bright light on the foreign currency ETFs. You could do well buying the Australian Dollar (FXA), Euro (FXE), Japanese yen (FXE), and British Pound (FXB). I’d pass on the Chinese yuan (CYB) right now until their Covid shutdowns end.

Look at the 50-year chart of the US dollar index below and you’ll see that a 13-year uptrend in the buck is rolling over and will lead to a 5-10-year down move. Draw your weapons.

5) Commodities (FCX), (VALE), (DBA)

Commodities are the high beta players in the financial markets. That’s because the cost of being wrong is so much higher. Get on the losing side of commodities and you will be bled dry by storage costs, interest expenses, contangos, and zero demand.

Commodities have one great attribute. They predict recessions and recoveries earlier than any other asset class. When they peaked in March of 2022, they were screaming loud and clear that a recession would hit in early 2023. By reversing on a dime on November 13, 2023, they also told us that a rip-roaring recovery would begin in 2024.

You saw this in every important play in the sector, including Broken Hill (BHP), Peabody Energy (BTU), and Freeport McMoRan (FCX). And who but me noticed that Alcoa Aluminum (AA) was up an incredible 50% in December? Maybe you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but the old tricks work pretty darn well!

The heady days of the 2011 commodity bubble top are about to replay. Now that this sector is convinced of a substantially weaker US dollar and lower inflation, it is once more a favorite target of traders.

China will finally rejoin the global economy as a growth engine in 2024 but at only half its previous growth rate. It will be replaced by India, which is turning into the new China and is now the most populous country in the world.

And here’s another big new driver. Each electric vehicle requires 200 pounds of copper and production is expected to rise from 2 million units a year to 20 million by 2030. Annual copper production will have to increase three-fold in a decade to accommodate this increase, no easy task or prices will have to rise.

The great thing about commodities is that it takes a decade to bring new supply online, unlike stocks and bonds, which can merely be created by an entry in an Excel spreadsheet. As a result, they always run far higher than you can imagine.

Accumulate all commodities on dips.

Snow Angel on the Continental Divide

6) Energy (DIG), (RIG), (USO), (DUG), (UNG), (USO), (XLE), (AMLP)

Energy was the top-performing sector of 2023 until it wasn’t.

We got a nice boost to $90 a barrel from the Gaza War. But that faded rapidly as there was never an actual supply disruption, just the threats of one. Saudi production has been cut back so far, some 5 million barrels a day, that it risks budget shortfalls if it reduces any more. In the meantime, US fracking production has taken off like a rocket.

In the meantime, Joe Biden is sitting on the bid in an effort to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserves that was drawn down from 723 to 350 million barrels during the last price spike.

The trade here is to buy any energy plays when Texas tea approaches $70 and take profits at $95. Your first picks should be ExxonMobile (XOM), Occidental Petroleum (OXY) where Warren Buffet has a 27% stake, Diamondback Energy (FANG), and Devon Energy (DVN).

The really big energy play for 2024 will be in natural gas (UNG), which was slaughtered in 2023. The problem here was not a shortage of demand because China would take all we could deliver. It was in our ability to deliver, hobbled by the lack of gasification facilities needed to export. One even blew up.

In 2024 several new export facilities came online and the damaged one was repaired. That should send prices soaring. Natural gas prices now at a throw-away $2.00 per MM BTU could make it to $8.00 in the next 12 months. That takes the (UNG) from $5.00 to $15.00 (because of the contango).

Buy (UNG) LEAPS (Long Term Equity Anticipation Securities) right now.

Remember, you will be trading an asset class that is eventually on its way to zero sooner than you think. However, you could have several doublings on the way to zero. This is one of those times. And you also have a huge 35% contango headwind working against you all the time.

They call this commodity the “widow maker” for a good reason.

The real tell here is that energy companies are bailing on their own industry. Instead of reinvesting profits back into their future exploration and development, as they have for the last century, they are paying out more in dividends and share buybacks.

Take the money and run. Trade, don’t marry this asset class.

There is the additional challenge in that the bulk of US investors, especially environmentally friendly ESG funds, are now banned from investing in legacy carbon-based stocks. That means permanently cheap valuations and share prices for the energy industry.

Energy now counts for only 5% of the S&P 500. Twenty years ago, it boasted a 15% weighting.

The gradual shutdown of the industry makes the supply/demand situation infinitely more volatile.

To understand better how oil might behave in 2024, I’ll be studying US hay consumption from 1900-1920. That was when the horse population fell from 100 million to 6 million, all replaced by gasoline-powered cars and trucks.

The internal combustion engine is about to suffer the same fate.

7) Precious Metals (GLD), (DGP), (SLV), (PPTL), (PALL)

The train has added extra engines at Denver, so now we may begin the long laboring climb up the Eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains.

On a steep curve, we pass along an antiquated freight train of hopper cars filled with large boulders.

The porter tells me this train is welded to the tracks to create a windbreak. Once, a gust howled out of the pass so swiftly, that it blew a passenger train over on its side.

In the snow-filled canyons, we saw a family of three moose, a huge herd of elk, and another group of wild mustangs. The engineer informs us that a rare bald eagle is flying along the left side of the train. It’s a good omen for the coming year.

We also see countless abandoned 19th-century gold mines and broken-down wooden trestles leading to huge piles of tailings, and relics of previous precious metals booms. So, it is timely here to speak about the future of precious metals.

Here it’s important to look at the long view on gold. The barbarous relic tends to have good and bad decades. During the 2000’s the price of the yellow metal rose tenfold, from $200 to $2,000. The 2010s were very boring when gold was unchanged. Gold is doing well this decade, already up 40%, and a double or triple is in the cards.

2023 should have been a terrible year for precious metals. With inflation soaring, stocks volatile, and interest rates soaring, gold had every reason to collapse. Instead, it was up on the year, thanks to a heroic $325, 17.8%% rally in the last two months.

The reason is falling interest rates, which reduce the opportunity costs of owning gold. The yellow metal doesn’t pay a dividend, costs money to store and insure, and delivery is an expensive pain in the butt.

Chart formations are looking very encouraging with a massive upside breakout in place. So, buy gold on dips if you have a stick of courage on you, which you must if you read this newsletter.

Of course, the best investors never buy gold during a bull market. They Hoover up gold miners, which rise four times faster, like Barrack Gold (GOLD), Newmont Mining (NEM), and the basket play Van Eck Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX).

Higher beta silver (SLV) will be the better bet, as it already has been because it plays a major role in the decarbonization of America. There isn’t a solar panel or electric vehicle out there without some silver in them and the growth numbers are positively exponential. Keep buying (SLV), (SLH), and (WPM) on dips.

Crossing the Great Nevada Desert Near Area 51

8) Real Estate (ITB), (LEN), (KBH), (PHM)

The majestic snow-covered Rocky Mountains are behind me. There is now a paucity of scenery, with the endless ocean of sagebrush and salt flats of Northern Nevada outside my window, so there is nothing else to do but write.

My apologies in advance to readers in Wells, Elko, Battle Mountain, and Winnemucca, Nevada.

It is a route long traversed by roving bands of Indians, itinerant fur traders, the Pony Express, my own immigrant forebearers in wagon trains, the Transcontinental Railroad, the Lincoln Highway, and finally US Interstate 80, which was built for the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley.

Passing by shantytowns and the forlorn communities of the high desert, I am prompted to comment on the state of the US real estate market.

Those tormented by the shrinking number of real estate transactions over the past two years take solace. The past excesses have been unwound and we are now on the launching pad for another decade-long bull market.

There is a generational structural shortage of supply with housing which won’t come back into balance until the 2030’s. You don’t have a real estate crash when we are short 10 million homes.

The reasons, of course, are demographic. There are only three numbers you need to know in the housing market for the next ten years: there are 80 million baby boomers, 65 million Generation Xers who follow them, and 86 million in the generation after that, the Millennials.

The 76 million baby boomers (between ages 62 and 79) have been unloading dwellings to the 72 million Gen Xers (between age 41 and 56) since prices peaked in 2007. But there are not enough of the latter, and three decades of falling real incomes mean that they only earn a fraction of what their parents made. That’s what caused the financial crisis. That has created the present shortage of housing, both for ownership and rentals.

There is a happy ending to this story.

The 72 million Millennials now aged 25-40 are now the dominant buyers in the market. They are transitioning from 30% to 70% of all new buyers of homes. They are also just entering the peak spending years of middle age, which is great for everyone. Hot on their heels are 68 million Gen Z, which are now 12 to 27 years old.

The Great Millennial Migration to the suburbs and Middle America has just begun. Thanks to the pandemic and Zoom, many are never returning to the cities. That has prompted massive numbers to move from the coasts to the American heartland.

That’s why Boise, Idaho was the top-performing real estate market in 2023, followed by Phoenix, Arizona. Personally, I like Reno, Nevada, where Apple, Google, Amazon, and Tesla are building factories as fast as they can, just a four-hour drive from Silicon Valley.

As a result, the price of single-family homes should continue to rise during the 2020s, as they did during the 1970s and the 1990s when identical demographic forces were at play.

This will happen in the context of a labor shortfall, rising wages, and improving standards of living.

Increasing rents are accelerating this trend. Renters now pay 35% of their gross income, compared to only 18% for owners, and less, when multiple deductions and tax subsidies are considered. Rents are now rising faster than home prices.

Remember, too, that the US will not have built any new houses in large numbers in 17 years. The 50% of small home builders that went under during the Financial Crisis never came back.

We are still operating at only half of the 2007 peak rate. Thanks to the Great Recession, the construction of five million new homes has gone missing in action.

There is a new factor at work. We are all now prisoners of the 2.75% 30-year fixed-rate mortgages we all obtained over the past five years. If we sell and try to move, a new mortgage will cost double today. If you borrow at a 2.75% 30-year fixed rate, and the long-term inflation rate is 3%, then, over time, you will get your house for free. That’s why nobody is selling, and prices have barely fallen.

This winds down in 2024 as the Fed realizes its many errors and sharply lowers interest rates. Home prices will explode…. again.

Quite honestly, of all the asset classes mentioned in this report, purchasing your abode is probably the single best investment you can make now after you throw in all the tax breaks. It’s also a great inflation play.

That means the major homebuilders like Lennar (LEN), Pulte Homes (PHM), and KB Homes (KBH) are a buy on the dip. But don’t forget to sell your home by the 2030s when the next demographic headwind resumes. That’s when you should unload your home to a Millennial or Gen Xer and move into a cheap rental.

A second-hand RV would be better.

Crossing the Bridge to Home Sweet Home

9) Postscript

We have pulled into the station at Truckee amid a howling blizzard.

My loyal staff have made the ten-mile trek from my estate at Incline Village to welcome me to California with a couple of hot breakfast burritos and a chilled bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne, which has been resting in a nearby snowbank. I am thankfully spared from taking my last meal with Amtrak.

After that, it was over legendary Donner Pass, and then all downhill from the Sierras, across the Central Valley, and into the Sacramento River Delta.

Well, that’s all for now. We’ve just passed what was left of the Pacific mothball fleet moored near the Benicia Bridge (2,000 ships down to six in 50 years). The pressure increase caused by a 7,200-foot descent from Donner Pass has crushed my plastic water bottle. Nice science experiment!

The Golden Gate Bridge and the soaring spire of Salesforce Tower are just coming into view across San Francisco Bay.

A storm has blown through, leaving the air crystal clear and the bay as flat as glass. It is time for me to unplug my MacBook Pro and iPhone 15 Pro, pick up my various adapters, and pack up.

We arrive in Emeryville 45 minutes early. With any luck, I can squeeze in a ten-mile night hike up Grizzly Peak and still get home in time to watch the ball drop in New York’s Times Square on TV.

I reach the ridge just in time to catch a spectacular pastel sunset over the Pacific Ocean. The omens are there. It is going to be another good year.

I’ll shoot you a Trade Alert whenever I see a window open at a sweet spot on any of the dozens of trades described above, which should be soon.

Good luck and good trading in 2024!

John Thomas
The Mad Hedge Fund Trader