Mad Hedge Technology Letter
June 3, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
TECH RECESSION IS COMING)
(GOOGL), (MSFT), (AAPL), (TSLA)
Tag Archive for: (GOOGL)
The Nasdaq index isn’t pricing in a recession, but it absolutely should, as economic data streaming in shows cracks beneath the surface.
The Federal government finally went on record to admit the historically epic blunder they committed by categorizing inflation as “transitory,” with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledging that she was “wrong.”
It's about time.
The colossal mismanagement of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve has had an extraordinary whiplash on tech shares and many have gotten burnt.
What we are experiencing now is high volatility that used to never exist in the stock market as an overleveraged system flooded by cheap money is now deleveraging.
Strong tech names like Google (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) have experienced 3% up or down days on just normal trading days with growth stocks like Tesla (TSLA) up or down 10% in just a day.
Retail traders are in over their head if they go at this alone and this is why the Mad Hedge Technology Letter is guiding you to safety.
Taking profits on the spikes and valleys is what we do best.
After months of strong consumer spending and supply-chain improvements, some of the country’s most outspoken corporate leaders have started to freak out.
Tech growth bellwether Tesla (TSLA) and their CEO Elon Musk just announced a 10% staff layoff, and that move could be the canary in the coal mine for the tech economy.
Musk clearly feels something isn’t right, and we could be approaching an economic cliff.
If that wasn’t the canary, then Microsoft's downgraded revenue expectations for next quarter’s earnings has to be as the strongest tech companies downgrade forecasts.
The probability of a recession has lurched higher, to around 50%, and this is all while the government preaches about how great the American consumer is doing.
Like many things about the US Federal government, don’t take what they say at face value because usually, the inverse is true.
The sense of doom has been especially evident in the banking sector, where Dimon told investors this week that they should be preparing for an economic “hurricane.”
State side is getting a little crusty, so then the international picture is a little rosier, right?
Wrong.
Apple is shifting its iPad production to Vietnam from China after China’s dystopian zero covid policy has effectively shut down the supply chain there.
The iPhone maker already produces some of its AirPods in Vietnam. The shift to move some iPad production to Vietnam may help it boost iPad revenue.
Ironically enough, as bad as the United States is doing now, the situation abroad is a lot worse.
Europe has completely capitulated to the military conflict and the German Producer Pricing Index has accelerated to 30%.
To make matters even worse, the European Central Bank still is maintaining a 0% net interest rate policy meaning there are Central Bank’s out there doing a lot worse job than the United States Federal Reserve.
Quite hard to believe this level of policy failure.
In short, this inflation problem hasn’t been solved at all and although it could come down a tick year-over-year, it still does nothing material to change the picture.
Even worse, a tech CEO has to be a complete fool to invest in growing capacity right now unless they have $10 billion of extra cash laying around which few companies have unless you’re Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Tesla.
At the smaller and ground level, small tech and their balance sheets have been getting slaughtered and so has the American consumer.
Just because the American consumer goes from eating premium beef to chicken, doesn’t mean the consumer is strong.
Sooner or later, they will run out of things to substitute down from.
Same goes for smartphones, software programs, semiconductor chips, and cloud enterprise contracts.
We are in a substitute down phase and that doesn’t shout economic bullishness to me.
Maybe the American consumer can substitute driving a gas-powered car for riding a leg-powered bicycle, I wouldn’t put it past the current government to recommend this to the country.
In Europe, people have already been fed with the drive slower and dress warmer B.S. to cover up government mistakes.
Next, Europeans will need to endure the “eat less” policy come this summer and fall.
Global Market Comments
June 3, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(JUNE 1 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(AAPL), (GOOGL), (MSFT), (JPM), (BAC), (C), (UUP), (FXA), (FXC), (EEM),
(VIX), (CRM), (AAPL), (TSLA), (COIN), (EDIT), (CRSP), (LMT), (RTX), (GD)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the June 1 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar broadcast from Silicon Valley.
Q: What are the 3 best stocks to own for the end of the year?
A: Apple (AAPL), Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT). Those you want to buy on meltdown days, kind of like today. Make sure you scale into these—so maybe buy 20% on every down-500-point Dow day. Eventually, you’ll end up with a pretty decent position at a market low in a stock that will double in 3-5 years.
Q: Why these three stocks?
A: Lots of reasons: They’re huge, they’re safe, two out of three pay dividends, Alphabet is about to split, and they have huge moats so nobody can get into their sectors. They have near monopolies in what they do, and they have immense cash on the balance sheet. These are the kind of stocks that portfolio managers dream about. And watch what rallied the hardest in the last dead cat bounce we had—it was these three names. That tells you that they will lead any long-term bull market in the future. These are the stocks that people want to own.
Q: What will bring your predicted second half-bull market in the stock market?
A: Inflation drops from 8% to 4%. That will happen for a couple of reasons. The year-on-year comparisons become highly favorable starting from next month when inflation started to take off a year ago. Inflation numbers are going to be climbing the wall of worry from here on out. That could get us down to 4% by the end of the year. The second reason is the Ukraine War either ends or becomes a stalemate and is no longer a factor in the global markets, and we’ve had time to replace all the Russian oil and Ukrainian wheat.
Q: Are banks positioned to benefit from the coming rally?
A: Absolutely. I think big tech and banks will be the top-performing stock sectors for the next five years because inflation will go away, recession fears will go expire, and credit quality will improve, but interest rates will remain 300 basis points higher than they were during the pandemic. Buy (JPM), (BAC), and (C) on dips.
Q: What will be the worst performing sector?
A: Energy—anything energy-related will get absolutely slaughtered, which is why I don't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole right now. That includes oil companies, exploration companies, E&P companies, and master limited partnerships, as well as coal and other natural gas stocks. So, if you’re long these names don’t forget to sit down when the music stops playing. You could get your head handed to you at the end.
Q: Can we make lower lows?
A: Yes, that’s entirely possible. Market moves are basically random when you get down to these levels— down more than 20%. And on all future downturns, I would be spending your cash going back into the market expecting a second half rally.
Q: What about green energy?
A: Unfortunately, green energy is very tied to old energy because $120 oil makes green companies much more competitive from a cost point of view. So, I’m not going to go piling into green companies right here, especially if I think oil is topping out in the near future. Buying green energy companies here is the same as buying oil at $120 a barrel.
Q: What is the best way to play the declining US dollar?
A: Buy the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM). Also, the Aussie dollar (FXA) and the Canadian Dollar (FXC), which benefit tremendously from commodity prices, which will rise for another decade in a global economic recovery.
Q: Why will energy be the worst sector?
A: If you end the war in the Ukraine or you replace Russian oil, either by finding new sources of oil, getting other producers to increase production which they can do (including the US), or by accelerating the move to alternatives, then you move oil back to pre-invasion prices which were about $70 a barrel or $50 lower than they are here.
Q: Best way to hedge a falling market?
A: Do what I'm doing: keep a balanced portfolio of longs and shorts, that way you always have something that’s going up. And if you do it through the options, you have time decay working for you on both sides of the equation. If you want to go outright, buy outright puts on individual stocks because they had double the moves of the indexes. And go to my short selling school which you can find by going to my website at https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com. There’s actually 12 different ways to benefit from falling markets.
Q: How deep in the money can we go on our call spreads?
A: Wait for the Volatility Index (VIX) to go over $30, and then go 15-20% in the money. And yes, you only make 10, 15, or 20% on those positions in a month but then you put together ten of them and that adds up to quite a lot of money. You want to find the position that has the greatest probability of happening—i.e. something that’s 20% in the money. Do that when the market has just dropped 20%, which it already has, and then you have a position that has a minuscule chance of losing money.
Q: How much longer do you see this current bear market bounce lasting?
A: Until yesterday.
Q: What's your favorite commodity ETF?
A: My favorite commodity stock is Freeport McMoRan (FCX), the world’s largest copper producer. Rather than pay the extra management fees for an ETF, I prefer just to go straight to the source and buy (FCX).
Q: When do you think the Fed will pivot to dovish or neutral?
A: This summer. It’s just a question of whether it’s the July or the September meeting.
Q: When you say “buy on dips”, what does that mean? 1%, 3%, 5%?
A: Well in this market, a dip would be a retest of the previous lows which is going to be down 10% or 15% on the major positions in your portfolio. If you’re day trading, a dip is only 1%, so it really depends on your timeframe and your risk tolerance. That’s why I always tell people to scale by doing everything in incremental pieces—20%, 25%, and so on. You never know what the market’s actually going to do on a short-term basis. Randomness can’t be predicted.
Q: If you plan to enter a LEAPS on Apple, what strikes would you do?
A: Well, first of all, I want to see if Apple drops all the way to $125, which is a lot of people’s downside target. If it did, then I would do the $125/$135 call spread two years out, and that will probably double. And if it starts a long term up trend, then I’ll keep rolling up the strike prices. If, say, Apple goes to $125, you put your LEAPS on. If the stock rises to 150, then take profits on the $125/$135 and roll into the $150/$160. That’s how you can get like 1,000% returns like we got on Tesla (TESLA) a few years ago. You just keep rolling up your strike prices on every weak day and maintain your leverage.
Q: When do we bet the farms on Editas Medicine Inc. (EDIT) and Crispr (CRSP) Therapeutics?
A: Never. These are small, highly speculative companies which will make money someday, but if the someday is in five years and you’re betting the farm with a LEAPS, you lose the farm. It's going to take a long time for these smaller biotech stocks to come back. If you want to play biotech, go with the big ones like Amgen. It takes a long time to convert cutting-edge technology into profits. The big companies already have a stable of reliable money-making drugs on hand.
Q: Salesforce Inc. (CRM) is up big on earnings—what should I do with the stock?
A: Buy the dips. It’s still way, way below its all-time highs, so use the weekdays to accumulate Salesforce for the long term. It’s one of the best cloud plays out there.
Q: What do you think about NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA)?
A: I absolutely love it. It rallied 20% off the bottom. Use any other additional weak days like today to increase your position. This stock someday is worth $1,000, up from today’s $195.
Q: Do you like SPACS?
A: No, I hate them and think they’re a rip-off. And a lot of them have become totally illiquid and untradable, so you have no choice but for them to shut down and return their money if they have any left. I’ve hated SPACS from day one and people are now getting their comeuppance on these.
Q: What do you think about the weakness in Coinbase Global Inc. (COIN) down here?
A: It’s just going down with all the other high-risk, speculative, meme stock type plays, which include all of the crypto plays like Bitcoin. I would avoid all of those. You want to buy quality at the discount now, and you want to buy the Cadillacs at Volkswagen prices and leave the speculative plays for the next generation, Gen Z, who are already highly interested in stocks.
Q: What is your favorite non-US country to invest in?
A: Australia, because you get a double play there on the currency, which should go up 30% from here, and they will benefit from a global commodity boom which continues for another ten years. They pretty much sell a lot of the major commodities like iron ore, wheat, sheep, and so on. It’s also a really nice country to visit. The only negative with Australia are the sharks.
Q: Biotech takeover targets?
A: Well (EDIT) and (CRSP) would be two of them. Things in the sector are so cheap that they are all potential takeover targets. M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) will be a major play in the biotech sector for the foreseeable future.
Q: Should we sell short the defense industry here?
A: No, even if the war ends tomorrow, you might get some profit-taking, but the fact is that long term military spending is increasing permanently. The peace dividend now has to be paid back, and that is great for all the defense companies, so I would not be shorting them. If anything, I’d be buying on dips. Buy Lockheed Martin (LMT), Raytheon (RTX), who make the Javelin antitank missile for which there is now a two-year order backlog. You can also throw in General Dynamics (GD) for good measure which builds nuclear submarines and the Stryker armored vehicle.
To watch a replay of this webinar with all the charts, bells, whistles, and classic rock music, just log in to www.madhedgefundtrader.com, go to MY ACCOUNT, click on GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH, then WEBINARS, and all the webinars from the last 12 years are there in all their glory.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Keep Those Defense Plays
Global Market Comments
May 31, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or WHY I LOVE INFLATION),
(SPY), (TLT), (TBT), (GOOGL),
(AAPL), (MSFT), (BRKB), (NVDA), (V)
I love inflation.
Thanks to the relentless increase in prices, the value of my home has risen by $4 million over the last ten years, and $2 million over the last three years alone.
And I’m not the only one.
Some 66% of Americans own their own homes and may have seen similar price increases or more.
So, what if the price of a gallon of milk goes up by $1? I’ll happily pay that if it means my largest personal investment appreciates at triple-digit rates. Besides, I’m lactose intolerant anyway, and all my kids have grown up.
I’ll tell you what else inflation does. It makes stocks really cheap. That’s because investors fear that the Fed will raise interest rates by too much, destroy company earnings, and trigger a recession.
This is counterintuitive because companies actually benefit from inflation because they can get away with faster price increases more often, boosting profits. I took my kids out to a graduation dinner yesterday and practically had to take out a second mortgage to do so.
Personally, I believe that such a stock market bottom is close. But while the last bottom was within 10%, or 200 S&P 500 (SPX) points in terms of price, it is only 50% in terms of time. That signals a great new bull market for stocks beginning sometime this summer. Then anything you touch will double in three years.
You will look like a genius….again!
You can see who agrees with me by looking at which stocks are already getting bought up. Coca-Cola (KO), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), and Procter & Gamble (PG) are the kind of safe, dividend-paying, brand name stocks that very long-term investors like pension funds love to own. They tend to buy and hold….forever.
No meme stocks here.
It isn’t just the Fed that is raising interest rates, which can only control overnight rates. The US budget deficit is falling at the fastest rate since WWII, possibly taking us to a budget surplus by year-end. As a result, the money supply is shrinking at the fastest rate in 60 years.
QT, or quantitative tightening, will fan the flames when it starts on January 1, ultimately taking up to $9 trillion out of the financial system.
Remember all that liquidity from QE, near-zero rates, and massive government spending that saved the economy from Armageddon? Play for movie in reverse and you get the oppositive result, i.e. falling share prices….at least for a while.
The battle as to who is right about the direction of the economy continues unabated. Is it bonds or stocks? At the rates that stocks have been plunging, stocks are essentially anticipating another Great Depression.
Ten-year US Treasury yields that soared from 1.33% to 3.12% in a mere six months are proclaiming that happy days are here again and will last forever. Since January, the average monthly mortgage payment has jumped by $450 a month. If that isn’t recessionary, I don’t know what is.
As a 53-year veteran of these markets, I can tell you that the bond market is always right. That’s because the money spent on equity research has shrunk to a shadow of its former self in recent decades, while bond research is as strong as ever.
Always listen to the guy with the $10 million budget and ignore the one with the $500,000 budget, which means that in the coming months, equity prognosticators will realize the error of their ways and come over to my way of thinking once again.
The Fed Minutes were not so horrible, downplaying the risk of a full 1% rate rise, triggering a 1,000-point rally in the Dow. With five up days in a row, this is starting to look like THE bottom. Is this the light at the end of the tunnel?
Q1 GDP dives 1.5% in its final read. It’s the worst quarter since the pandemic began during Q2 2022. Weekly Jobless Claims dropped 8,000 to 210,000.
NVIDIA Rips, surprising to the upside on almost every front, sending the stock up $30, or 18.75%. Mad Hedge followers bought (NVDA) last week. This is one of the best-run companies in the world. I expect the shares to rise from the current $178.51 to $1,000 in five years. Buy (NVDA) on dips.
The Consumer will keep driving the economy, says Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. Betting against the American consumer has always been a fool’s errand. I’m with Brian. Cash levels this high were never followed by recessions.
Only 18% of Americans will increase stockholdings this year, which is usually what you get at market bottoms. It was closer to 100% at the December top. Yet another signal that we are approaching the bottom in price, if not time.
New Home Sales dive in April, down 16.6% on a signed contract basis, the weakest in two years. The macro is definitely conspiring against the market. It’s all about interest rates. The average monthly mortgage payment has rocketed by $450 a month since January. Inventories have also soared from 6 to 9 months.
Advertising is in free fall, especially the online version, a usual pre-recession indicator. It is the easiest and first expense companies cut when they expect flagging sales. Look no further than yesterday’s astonishing 43% collapse in Snap (SNAP). Notice that TV commercials are getting endlessly repeated as the number of advertisers and ad rates fall. If I see one more ad for Interactive Brokers, I’ll shoot myself.
The EV Shortage worsens, with wait times for a new Tesla extending beyond a year. I can sell my Model X for more than I paid for it three years ago. Gasoline at $6.00 is converting a lot of drivers, and gas lines this summer loom. Big three dealers are price gouging on the few EVs they have, charging well over list. Good luck finding a Rivian pick-up; that’s a two-year wait. Maybe that makes (TSLA) a “BUY” down here?
My Ten-Year View
When we come out the other side of pandemic, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still historically cheap, oil peaking out soon, and technology hyper-accelerating, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 240,000 here we come!
With some of the greatest market volatility seen since 1987, my May month-to-date performance recovered to +8.80%.
My 2022 year-to-date performance exploded to 38.98%, a new high. The Dow Average is down -9.30% so far in 2022. It is the greatest outperformance on an index since Mad Hedge Fund Trader started 14 years ago. My trailing one-year return maintains a sky-high 61.22%.
Last week was a quiet one, with me using the monster rally to add new shorts in Apple (AAPL) and the S&P 500 (SPY).
That brings my 14-year total return to 551.54%, some 2.40 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period and a new all-time high. My average annualized return has ratcheted up to 43.54%, easily the highest in the industry.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Coronavirus cases at 84 million, up 1.5million in a week, and deaths topping 1,004,000 and have only increased by 2,000 in the past week. You can find the data here.
On Monday, May 30, markets are closed for Memorial Day.
On Tuesday, May 31 at 9:00 AM EST, the S&P Case Shiller National Home Price Index for March is released.
On Wednesday, June 1 at 10:00 AM, JOLTS Job Openings for April are published.
On Thursday, June 2 at 8:30 AM, Weekly Jobless Claims are out. We also learn the ADP Private Employment Report for May.
On Friday, June 3 at 8:30 AM, the big Nonfarm Payroll Report for May is disclosed. At 2:00 the Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count is out.
As for me, as a lifetime oenophile, or wine lover, I long searched for the Holy Grail of the perfect bottle. I finally found my quarry in 1989.
During the 19th century, Russia was still an emerging country that sought to import advanced European technology. So, they sent agents to the top wine-growing regions of the continent to bring back grapevine cuttings to create a domestic wine industry. They succeeded beyond all expectations building a major wine industry in Crimea on the Black Sea.
Then the Russian Revolution broke out in 1918.
Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed, and eventually, the wine industry was taken over by the Soviet state. They kept it going because wine exports brought in valuable foreign exchange with which the government could use to industrialize the country.
Then the Germans invaded in 1941.
Not wanting the enemy to capture a 100-year stockpile of fine wine, the managers of the Massandra winery dug a 100-yard-deep cave, moved their bottles in, bricked up the entrance, and hid it with shrubs. Then everyone involved in storing the wine was killed in the war.
Some 45 years later, looking to expand the facility, some Massandra workers stumbled across the entrance to the cave. Inside, they found a million bottles dating back to the 1850s kept in perfect storage conditions. It was a sensation in the wine collecting world.
To cash in, they hired Sotheby’s in London to repackage and auction off the wine one case at a time. It was the auction event of the year. For years afterwards, you could buy glasses of 100-year-old ports and sherries from the Czar’s own private stock at your local neighborhood restaurant for $5, the deal of the century.
I attended the auction at Sotheby’s packed Bond Street offices. The superstars of the wine collecting world were there with open checkbooks. I sat there with my paddle number 138 but was outbid repeatedly and wondered if I would get anything. In the end, I managed to pick up some of the less popular cases, a 1915 Madeira, a 1936 white port, and a 1938 sherry for about $25 a bottle each.
For years, these were my special occasion wines. I opened one when I was appointed a director of Morgan Stanley. Others went to favored clients at Christmas. My 50th, 60th, and 70th birthdays ate into the inventory. So did the birth of children number four and five. Several high school fundraisers saw bottles earn $1,000 each.
One of the 1915’s met its end when I came home from the Gulf War in 1992. Hey, the last Czar didn’t drink it and looked what happened to him! Another one bit the dust when I sold my hedge fund at the absolute market top in 1999. So did capturing 6,000 new subscribers for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader in 2010.
It turns out that the empties were quite nice too, 100-year-old hand-blown green glass, each one is a sculpture in its own right.
I am now reaching the end of the road and only have a half dozen bottles left. I could always sell them on eBay where they now fetch up to $1,000 a bottle.
But you know what? I’d rather have six more celebrations than take in a few grand.
Any suggestions?
Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
May 25, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(AD MARKETING CRATERS)
(SNAP), (TWTR), (GOOGL), (FB)
This could be the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the consumer falling off a cliff.
There have been soft signals showing that credit card debt is piling up, but the truth is that Americans are spending more money on things they need and not on luxuries.
Snap (SNAP) recording a disastrous earnings report is showing us rapidly slowing growth and digital ad spend is usually first to go in the broader economy.
This leading indicator is essential to understanding the economy because companies don’t and won’t advertise when they understand the incremental marketing spend won’t result in meaningful sales.
Companies are just losing money at that point.
What happens is just a complete freeze of ad spend only to hibernate until the next cycle picks up again and demand returns.
The same dynamics apply to the other digital ad players like Google (GOOGL), Facebook (FB), and Twitter (TWTR) which is why we are seeing 10% selloffs in Google.
The benefit to being such a big and strong company is that Google sells off by 10% while Snap drops by 45%.
Not exactly fair but long-term holders won’t dump Google right away unless there are real structural problems.
To break it down even further, the recession is quickly approaching and the economy is now going into reverse.
Next will be job layoffs and laid-off workers won’t buy much if marketed to.
Snaps’ macroeconomic environment has deteriorated further and faster than anticipated since its last earnings update just a month ago.
Digital ad spend goes quicker than local TV and radio following shortly after.
National TV was much later, and ad agency spend was also later than cycle media buying.
Roku and FuboTV will be hardest hit initially. The length and depth of the recessionary slowdown will determine whether or not pain makes its way to the longer cycle areas of the ad market.
In its first-quarter earnings disclosure in April, Snapchat’s daily active users hit 332 million, an increase from 319 million at the end of 2021.
Snap accounts for only a small low-single digit percentage of total digital advertising, but the macro factors cited should be relevant for all companies.
I believe the read-through is most negative for Twitter, which is 75% dependent on brand ad revenue and has 15-20% exposure to Europe.
Facebook also has significant European exposure (25% of its ad revenue), though its brand advertising exposure is likely well under 25%.
The Nasdaq continues to be a sell the rally type of market because there are no dip buyers.
For years, the dip buyers would save the Nasdaq.
Not only that, but the widespread destruction of tech has also forced many big whales to sit on the sidelines.
Why buy now when the risk reward isn’t favorable?
So now we are headed to a recession and traders are waiting for the recessionary data to flow to confirm these Snap earnings.
If this occurs, don’t be surprised to see a negative feedback loop that triggers algorithms to sell.
The Fed still hasn’t nearly been aggressive enough as well and is selling this false belief that there won’t be a recession and the consumer is strong.
That is yet to be priced into technology shares.
The upcoming data will reflect that the opposite is happening which means the buyer strike continues.
Avoid the dip and sell the rip.
Global Market Comments
May 23, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT)
(SPY), (TLT), (TBT), (GOOGL), (AAPL), (MSFT), (BRKB), (NVDA), (JPM), (BAC), (WFC), ($BTCUSD)
When I first joined Morgan Stanley in 1983, a number of my clients were old enough to have experienced the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed.
One was Sir John Templeton, who confided in me over lunch at his antebellum-style mansion at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, that his long career started with a lot of excitement, and then became incredibly boring for a decade.
It looks like we entered the incredibly boring phase on January 4, when the stock market began its current downtrend. Last week brought the longest weekly losing streak since 1923, some eight weeks so far.
The market is actually down a lot more than it looks, meaning that we are a lot closer to the bottom than you think. Some 87% of the S&P 500 is down more than 10% and 61% is down 20%. The damage is far worse with the NASDAQ, with some 93% of shares down 10%, and a gut-punching 73% down 20% or more.
While tech has already gone down a lot, some 32% so far this year, it is still trading at an 18% premium to the main market. Remember, in this business, timing is everything. If you invested in tech at the Dotcom peak in 1999, it took you 14 years to break even. Latecomers in this cycle could suffer a similar duration of pain and suffering.
And while these are the kind of moves that usually precede a recession, there is still an overwhelming amount of data that says it won’t happen. We here at Mad Hedge Fund Trader analyze, dissect, and examine data all day long.
I will once again repeat what my UCLA math professor told me a half-century ago. “Statistics are like a bikini bathing suit; what they reveal is fascinating, but what they conceal is essential.”
For a start, 3.6% unemployment rates are not what recessions are made of. Double-digit ones are. The next jobless rate print in June is likely to be down, not up. The country in fact is suffering its worst worker shortage in 80 years. There are currently 6 million more jobs than workers. And wages are rising, putting more money in the pockets of consumers.
Last month, airline ticket prices rose by 25%. Good luck trying to get a plane anywhere as all are full. Last winter, I bought a first-class round-trip ticket from San Francisco to London for $6,000. Today, the same ticket is $10,000. During recessions, planes fly empty, routes get cancelled, and staff laid off. Airlines also go bust and are not subject to the takeover wars we are seeing now.
Recessions also bring dramatic credit crises. Rising default rates force banks to retreat from lending, FICO scores tank, and debt markets dry up. It’s all quiet on the western front now, with all fixed income and liquidity indicators are solidly in the green. And while interest rates are higher, they are nowhere near the peaks seen during past recessions.
All this may explain that after the horrific market moves we have already seen but we may be only 4% from the final bottom in this bear move to an S&P 500 at $3,600, or 7% from an (SPX) of $3,500. That means it is time to start scaling into long-term positions now in the best quality names.
That’s why I have been aggressively piling on call spreads in technology that are 10%-20% in the money with only 19 days to expiration, making money hand over fist.
An interesting headline caught my attention last week. The Russians were stealing farm equipment from Ukraine on an epic scale. When they couldn’t steal it, such as when the electronics were disabled, they were destroying it.
That means the Russians didn’t invade Ukraine to get more beachfront territory on the Black Sea, although that is definitely a plus. They want to destroy a competitor’s agricultural production in order to raise the value of their own output.
Yes, this is the beginning of the Resource Wars that could continue for the rest of this century. Resource producers like the US, Russia, Canada, Australia, and Ukraine will be the big winners. Resource consumers like China, India, and the Middle East will be the big losers.
JP Morgan cuts US GDP Forecasts, with the second half marked down from 3% to 2.4% and 2023 from 2.1% to 1.5%. This means no recession, which requires two back-to-back negative quarters.
China’s Industrial Production collapses by 2.9%, and Retail Sales fell by a shocking 11.1%. The Shanghai shutdown is to blame. It means longer supply chain disruptions for longer and another drag on our own economy. If Tesla has a bad quarter, it will be because of a shortage of vehicles in China. So, will the end of Covid in China bring the bull market back in the US?
The US Budget Deficit is in free fall, putting our hefty bond shorts at risk. While Trump was president the national debt exploded by $4 trillion, a dream come true for bond shorts. Since Biden became president, the annual budget deficit has plunged from $3.1 trillion to $360 billion for the first seven months of fiscal 2022, and we could approach zero by yearend. An exploding economy has sent tax revenues soaring, and taxpayers still have to pay a gigantic bill for last year’s monster capital gains in the stock market. Biden has also been unable to get many spending bills through the Senate, where he lacks a clear majority.
India Bans Food Exports. Climate change is destroying its output with heat waves, while the Ukraine War has eliminated 13% of the world’s calories. This is a problem when you have 1.2 billion to feed. Expect food inflation to worsen.
Consumer Sentiment hits an 11-year low according to the University of Michigan, dipping from 64 to 59.1. Record gas prices and soaring inflation are the reasons, but spending remains strong off the super strong jobs market.
Homebuilder Sentiment hits a two-year low, down from 77 to 69 in May, according to the National Association of Homebuilders. Recession fears and soaring interest rates are the big reasons.
Building Permits dive in April by 3.2%, and single family permits were down 4.6%. The onslaught of bad news for housing continues. Avoid.
Target implodes on terrible earnings, taking the stock down 25%, the worst in 40 years. They finally got the inventory they wanted. Too bad consumers are too poor to buy it with $6.00 a gallon.
Commodities send Battery Costs soaring by 22%. Who knew you were going long copper, lithium, and chromium when you bought your Tesla? It’s a good thing you did. Now you can give the middle finger salute when you drive past gas stations.
Average Household now spending $5,000 a year on gasoline, which is $5,000 they’re not spending on anything else. Just ask Target (TGT) and Walmart (WMT).
My Ten-Year View
When we come out the other side of pandemic, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still historically cheap, oil peaking out soon, and technology hyper-accelerating, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The America coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 240,000 here we come!
With some of the greatest market volatility seen since 1987, my May month-to-date performance recovered to +4.79%.
My 2022 year-to-date performance exploded to 34.97%, a new high. The Dow Average is down -16.4% so far in 2022. It is the greatest outperformance on an index since Mad Hedge Fund Trader started 14 years ago. My trailing one-year return maintains a sky-high 62.99%.
This week, I added new long positions in Visa (V) and Microsoft (MSFT) when the Volatility Index (VIX) was in the mid $30s. I also did a nice round trip on an Apple (AAPL) short which brought in $1,740. I also took profits on two longs in the (SPY) and two shorts in the (TLT). Overall, it was a great week!
That brings my 14-year total return to 547.53%, some 2.40 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period and a new all-time high. My average annualized return has ratcheted up to 43.78%, easily the highest in the industry.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Coronavirus cases at 82.5 million, up 300,000 in a week and deaths topping 1,000,000 and have only increased by 2,000 in the past week. You can find the data here.
On Monday, May 23 at 8:30 AM EST, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index for April is out.
On Tuesday, May 24 at 8:30 AM, New Home Sales for April are released.
On Wednesday, May 25 at 8:30 AM, Durable Goods for April are published.
On Thursday, May 26 at 8:30 AM, Weekly Jobless Claims are disclosed. The first look at Q2 GDP is printed.
On Friday, May 27 at 8:30 AM, Personal Income & Spending is out. At 2:00 the Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count is out.
As for me, one of my fondest memories takes me back to England in 1984 for the 40th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France. On June 6, 160,000 Americans stormed Utah and Omaha beaches, paving the way for the end of WWII.
My own Uncle Al was a participant and used to thrill me with his hair-raising D-Day experiences. When he passed away, I inherited the P-38 Walther he captured from a German officer that day.
The British government wanted to go all out to make this celebration a big one as this was expected to be the last when most veterans, now in their late fifties and sixties, were in reasonable health. President Ronald Reagan and prime minister Margaret Thatcher were to be the keynote speakers.
The Royal Air Force was planning a fly past of their entire fleet that started over Buckingham Palace, went on the to the debarkation ports at Southampton and Portsmouth, and then over the invasion beaches. It was to be led by a WWII Lancaster bomber, two Supermarine Spitfire, and two Hawker Hurricane fighters.
The only thing missing was American aircraft. The Naval and Military Club in London, where I am still a member, wondered if I would be willing to participate with my own US-registered twin-engine plane?
“Hell yes,” was my response.
Of course, the big concern was the weather, as it was in 1944. Our prayers were answered with a crystal clear day and a gentle westerly wind. The entire RAF was in the air, and I found myself the tail end Charlie following 175 planes. I was joined by my uncle, Medal of Honor winner Colonel Mitchell Paige.
We flew 500 feet right over the Palace. I could clearly see the Queen, a WWII veteran herself, Prince Philip, Lady Diana, and her family waving from the front balcony. Massive shoulder-to-shoulder crowds packed St. James Park in front.
As I passed over the coast, much of the Royal Navy were out letting their horns go full blast. Then it was southeast to the beaches. I flew over Pont du Hoc, which after 40 years still looked like a green moonscape, after a very heavy bombardment.
In one of the most courageous acts in American history, a company of Army Rangers battled their way up 100-foot sheer cliffs. After losing a third of their men, they discovered that the heavy guns they were supposed to disable turned out to be telephone poles. The real guns had been moved inland 400 yards.
We peeled off from the air armada and landed at Caen Aerodrome. Taxiing to my parking space, I drove over the rails for a German V2 launching pad. I took a car to the Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer where Reagan and Thatcher were making their speeches in front of 9,400 neatly manicured graves.
There were thousands of veterans present from all the participating countries, some wearing period uniforms, most wearing ribbons. At one point, men from the 101st Airborne Division parachuted overhead from vintage DC-3’s and landed near the cemetery.
Even though some men were in their sixties and seventies, they still made successful jumps, landing with big grins on their faces. The task was made far easier without the 100 pounds of gear they carried in 1944.
The 78th anniversary of the D-Day invasion is coming up shortly. I won’t be attending this time but will remember my own fine day there so many years ago.
Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Pont du Hoc
