(JPM) Archives - Page 26 of 30 - Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Unicorns and Candy Cane

I have to tell you that flip-flopping from extreme optimism to extreme pessimism and back is a trader’s dream come true. Volatility is our bread and butter.

Long term followers know that when volatility is low, I struggle to make 1% or 2% a month. When it is high, I make 10% to 20%, as I have for two of the last three months.

That is what the month of October has delivered so far.

To see how well this works, the S&P 500 is dead unchanged so far this month, while the Mad Hedge Fund Trader alert service is up a gangbuster 10% and we are now 70% in cash.

While the market is unchanged in two years, risk has been continuously rising. That's because year on year earnings growth has fallen from 26% to zero. That means with an unchanged index, stocks are 26% more expensive.

Entire chunks of the market have been in a bear market since 2017, including industrials, autos, energy, and retailers. US Steel (X), which the president’s tariffs were supposed to rescue, has crashed 80% since the beginning of 2018.

The great irony here is that while the Dow Average is just short of an all-time high, all of the good short positions have already been exhausted. In short, there is nothing to do.

So, the wise thing to do here is to use the 1,200-point rally since Thursday to raise cash you can put to work during the next round of disappointment, which always comes. If we do forge to new highs, they will be incremental ones at best. That’s when you let your passive indexing friends pick up the next bar tab, who unintentionally caught the move.

In the meantime, we will be bracing ourselves for the big bank earnings due out this week which are supposed to be dismal at best. JP Morgan (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Citigroup (C) are out on Tuesday and Bank of America (BAC) publishes on Wednesday.

That’s when we find out how much of this move has been about unicorns and candy canes, and how much is real.

Trump demoed his Own trade talks, creating a technology blacklist and banning US pension investment into the Middle Kingdom. He also hints he’ll take a small deal rather than a big one. Great for American farmers but leaves intellectual property and forced joint ventures on the table, throwing the California economy under the bus. I knew it would end this way. It’s very market negative. Without a trade deal, there is no way to avoid a US recession in 2020.

The Inverted Yield Curve is flashing “recession.” The three-month Treasury yield has been above the 10-year bond yield since May, and that always says a downturn is coming. The time to batten down the hatches is now.

US Producer Prices plunged in September, down 0.3%, the worst since January. It’s another recession indicator but also pushes the Fed to lower rates further.

Inflation was Zero in September, with the Consumer Price Index up 1.8% YOY. Slowing economy due to the trade war gets the blame, but I think that accelerating technology gets the bigger blame.

New Job Openings hit an 18-month low, down 123,000 to 7.05 million in August, as employers pull back in anticipation of the coming recession. Trade war gets the blame. The smart people don’t hire ahead of a recession.

FedEx (FDX) is dead money, says a Bernstein analyst, citing failing domestic and international sales. No pulling any punches, he said “The bull thesis has been shredded.” Not what you want to hear from this classic recession leading indicator. Nobody ships anything during a slowdown.

Loss of SALT Deductions cost you $1 trillion, or about 4% per home, according to an analysis by Standard & Poor’s. Quite simply, losing the ability to deduct state and local tax deductions creates a higher after-tax cost of carry that reduces your asset value. If you bought a home in 2017 you lost half of your equity almost immediately. The east and west coast were especially hard hit.

Fed to expand balance sheet to deal with the short-term repo funding crisis, which periodically has been driving overnight interest rates up to an incredible 5%. Massive government borrowing is starting to break the existing financial system. What they’re really doing is trying to head off to the next recession.

The Fed September minutes came out, and traders seem to be expecting more rate cuts than the Fed is. Trade is still the overriding concern. The next meeting is October 29-30. It could all end in tears.

Apple (AAPL) raised iPhone 11 Production by 10%, to 8 million more units, according Asian parts suppliers. Great news for its $1,089 top priced product ahead of the Christmas rush. It turns out that an Apple app is helping Hong Kong protesters manage demonstrations. I’m keeping my long, letting the shares run to a new all-time high. Buy (AAPL) on the dips.

The Mad Hedge Trader Alert Service has blasted through to yet another new all-time high. My Global Trading Dispatch reached new apex of +347.48% and my year-to-date accelerated to +47.24%. The tricky and volatile month of October started out with a roar +9.82%. My ten-year average annualized profit bobbed up to +35.64%.

Some 26 out of the last 27 trade alerts have made money, a success rate of 94%! Underpromise and overdeliver, that's the business I have been in all my life. It works. This is rapidly turning into the best year of the decade for me. It is all the result of me writing three newsletters a day.

I used the recession fear-induced selloff after October 1 to pile on a large aggressive short-dated portfolio which I will run into expiration. I am 60% long with the (SPY), (IWM), (USO), (WMT), (AAPL), and (GOOGL). I am 10% short with one position in the (IWM) giving me a net risk position of 50% long. All of them are working.

The coming week is pretty non-eventful of the data front. Maybe the stock market will be non-eventful as well.

On Monday, October 14, nothing of note is published.

On Tuesday, October 15 at 8:30 AM, the New York Empire State Manufacturing Index is released. JP Morgan (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Citigroup (C) kick off the Q3 earnings season with reports.

On Wednesday, October 16, at 8:30 AM, we learn the September Retail Sales. Bank of America (BAC) and CSX Corp. (CSX) report.

On Thursday, October 17 at 8:30 AM, the Housing Starts for September are out. Morgan Stanley (MS) reports.

On Friday, October 18 at 8:30 AM, the Baker Hughes Rig Count is released at 2:00 PM. Schlumberger (SLB), American Express (AXP), and Coca-Cola (KO) report.

As for me, I’ll be going to Costco to restock the fridge after last week’s two-day voluntary power outage by PG&E. Expecting Armageddon, I finished off all the Jack Daniels and chocolate in the house. We managed to eat all of our frozen burritos, pork chops, steaks, and ice cream in a mere 48 hours. But that’s what happens when you have two teenagers.

Hopefully, it will rain soon for the first time in six months bringing these outages to an end.

Good luck and good trading.

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

August 23, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
August 23, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(AUGUST 21 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(FXB), (NVDA), (MU), (LRCX), (AMD),
(WFC), (JPM), (BIDU), (GE), (TLT), (BA)

August 21 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Diary, Newsletter

Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader August 21 Global Strategy Webinar broadcast with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader. Keep those questions coming!

Q: Hey Bill, how often have you heard the word “recession” in the last 24 hours?

A: Seems like every time I turn around. But then we’re also getting a pop in the market; we thought it bottomed a few days ago. The question was: how far were we going to get to bounce? This is going to be very telling as to what happens on this next rally.

Q: Can interest rates go lower?

A: Yes, they can go a lot lower. The general consensus in the US is that we bottom them out somewhere between zero and 1.0%. We’re already way below that in Europe, so we will see lower here in the US. It’s all happening because QE (quantitative easing) is ramping up on a global basis. Europe is about to announce a major QE program in the beginning of September, and the US ended their quantitative tightening way back in March. So, the global flooding of money from central banks, now at $17 trillion, is about to increase even more. That’s what’s causing these huge dislocations in the bond market.

Q: If we’re having trouble getting into trades, should we chase or not?

A: Never chase. Leave your limit in there at a price you’re happy with. Often times, you’ll get done at the end of the day when the high frequency traders cash out all their positions. They will artificially push up our trade alert prices during the day and take them right back down at the end of the day because they have to go 100% cash by the close of each day—they never carry overnight positions. That’s becoming a common way that people get filled on our Trade Alerts.

Q: Will Boris Johnson get kicked out before the hard Brexit occurs?

A: Probably, yes. I’m hoping for it, anyway. What may happen is Parliament forcing a vote on any hard Brexit. If that happens, it will lose, the prime minister will have to resign, and they’ll get a new prime minister. Labor is now campaigning on putting Brexit up to a vote one more time, and just demographic change alone over the last four years means that Brexit will lose in a landslide. That would pull England out of the last 4 years of indecision, torture, and economic funk. If that happens, expect British stock markets to soar and the pound (FXB) to go up, from $1.17 all the way back up to $1.65, where it was before the whole Brexit disaster took place.

Q: Is the US central bank turning into Japan?

A: Yes. If we go to zero rates and zero growth and recession happens, there’s no way to get out of it; and that is the exact situation Japan has been in. For 30 years they have had zero rates, and it’s done absolutely nothing to stimulate their economy or corporate profits. The question then—and one someone might ask Washington—is: why pursue a policy that’s already been proven unsuccessful in every country it’s been tried in?

Q: Will US household debt become a problem if there is a sharp recession?

A: Yes, that’s always a problem in recessions. It’s a major reason why financials have been in a freefall because default rates are about to rise substantially.

Q: Given the big spike in earnings in NVIDIA (NVDA), what now for the stock?

A: Wait for a 10% dip and buy it. This stock has triple in it over the next 3 years. You want to get into all the chip stocks like this, such as Micron Technology (MU), Lam Research (LRCX), and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Q: Baidu (BIDU) has risen in earnings, with management saying the worst is over. Is this reality or is this a red herring?

A: I vote for A red herring. There’s no way the worst is over, unless the management of Baidu knows something we don’t about Chinese intentions.

Q: When will Wells Fargo (WFC) be out of the woods?

A: I hate the sector so I’m really not desperate to reach for marginal financials that I have to get into. If I do want to get into financials, it will be in JP Morgan (JPM), one of my favorites. The whole sector is getting slaughtered by low interest rates.

Q: Any idea when the trade war will end?

A: Yes, after the next presidential election. It’s not as if the Chinese are negotiating in bad faith here, they just have no idea how to deal with a United States that changes its position every day. It’s like negotiating with a piece of Jell-O, you can’t nail it down. At this point the Chinese have thrown their hands up and think they can get a better deal out of the next president.

Q: Would you short General Electric (GE) or wait for another bump up to short it?

A: I would wait for a bump. Obviously—with the latest accounting scandal, which compares (GE) with Enron and WorldCom—I don’t want to get involved with the stock. And we could get new lows once the facts of the case come out. There are too many better fish to fry, like in technology, so I would stay away from (GE).

Q: How do you put stop losses on your trade?

A: It’s a confluence of fundamentals and technicals. Obviously, we’re looking at key support levels on the charts; if those fail then we stop out of there. That doesn’t happen very often, maybe on 10% of our trades (and more recently even less than that). Our latest stop loss was on the (TLT) short. That was our biggest loss of the year but thank goodness we got out of that, because after we stopped out at $138 it went all the way to $146, so that’s why you do stop losses.

Q: How about putting on a (TLT) short now?

A: No, I think we’re going to new highs on (TLT) and new lows on interest rates. We’re just going through a temporary digestion period now. We’ll challenge the lows in rates and highs in prices once again, and you don’t want to be short when that happens. The liquidity is getting so bad in the bond market, you’re getting these gigantic gaps as a global buy panic in bonds continues.

Q: Do you have thoughts on what Fed Governor Powell may say in Jackson Hole, and any market reaction?

A: I have no idea what he might say, but he seems to be trying to walk a tightrope between presidential attacks and economic reality. With the stock market 3% short of an all-time high, I’m not sure how much of a hurry he will be in to lower interest rates. The Fed is usually behind the curve, lowering rates in response to a weak economy, and I’m not sure the actual data is weak enough yet for them to lower. The Fed never anticipates potential weakness (at least until the last raise) so we shall see. But we may have little volatility for the rest of the week and then a big move on Friday, depending on what he says.

Q: What is your take on the short term 6-18 months in residential real estate? Are Chinese tariffs and recession fears already priced in or will prices continue to drop?

A: Prices will continue to drop but not to the extent that we saw in ‘08 and ‘09 when prices dropped by 50, 60, 70% in the worst markets like Florida, Las Vegas, and Arizona. The reason for that is you have a chronic structural shortage in housing. All the home builders that went bankrupt in the last crash has resulted in a shortage, and you also have an immense generation of Millennials trying to buy homes now who’ve been shut out by higher interest rates and who may be coming back in. So, I’m not expecting anything remotely resembling a crash in real estate, just a slowdown. And new homes are actually not falling at all. That’s because the builders are deliberately restraining supply there.

Q: What is a good LEAP to put on now?

A: There aren’t any. We’re somewhat in the middle of a wider, longer-term range, and I want to wait until we get to the bottom of that; when people are jumping out of windows—that’s when you want to start putting on your long term LEAPS (long term equity anticipation securities), and when you get the biggest returns. We may get a shot at that sometime in the next month or two before a year in rally begins. If you held a gun to my head and told me I had to buy a leap, it would probably be in Boeing (BA), which is down 35% from its high.

July 30, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
July 30, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(THE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO INVESTING),
(TSLA), (BYND), (JPM)
(THE SECRET FED PLAN TO BUY GOLD),
(GLD), (GDX), (PALL), (PPLT),

July 29, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
July 29, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, OR THE BAD OMENS ARE THERE),
(INTC), (GOOGL), (AMZN), (JPM), (FXB),
(PLAYING THE SHORT SIDE WITH VERTICAL BEAR PUT SPREADS), (TLT)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or The Bad Omens are There

Diary, Newsletter, Research

The Omens are there.

I am normally a pretty positive guy.

But I was having a beer at Schwarzee at the base of the Matterhorn the other day, just having completed the climb up to the Hornli Hut at 10,758 feet. I carefully watched with my binoculars three helicopters circle the summit of the mountain, around the Solvay Hut.

These were not sightseeing tours. The pilots were taking great risks to retrieve bodies.

I learned at the Bergfuhrerverein Zermatt the next day that one of their men was taking up an American client to the summit. The man reached for a handhold and the rock broke loose, taking both men to their deaths. The Mountain Guide Service of Zermatt is a lot like the US Marine Corps. They always retrieve their dead.

It is an accident that could have happened to anyone. I have been over that route many times. If there was ever an omen of trouble to come, this was it.

The markets are sending out a few foreboding warnings of their own. Friday’s Q2 GDP report came in at a better than expected 2.1%, versus 3.1% in Q1.

Yet the Dow Average was up only a meager 51.47 points when it should have gained 500. It is an old market nostrum that if markets can’t rally on good news, you get the hell out of Dodge. Zermatt too.

It is the slowest US growth in two years. The trade war gets the blame, with falling exports offsetting healthy consumer spending. With the $1.5 trillion tax cut now spent, nothing is left but the debt. 2020 recession fears are running rampant, so paying all-time highs for stock prices is not a great idea.

You might be celebrating last week’s budget deal which heads off a September government shutdown. But it boosts the national debt from $22 to $24 trillion, or $72,000 per American. As with everything else with this administration, a short-term gain is achieved at a very high long-term cost.

Boris Johnson, the pro-Brexit activist, was named UK prime minister. It virtually guarantees a recession there and will act as an additional drag on the US economy. Global businesses will accelerate their departure from London to Paris and Berlin.

The end result may be a disunited kingdom, with Scotland declaring independence in order to stay in the EC, and Northern Ireland splitting off to create a united emerald island. The stock market there will crater and the pound (FXB) will go to parity against the greenback.

The European economy is already in a downward spiral, with German economic data flat on its back. GDP growth has shrunk from 2.0% to 0.7%. It seems we are not buying enough Mercedes, BMWs, and Volkswagens.

Yields on ten-year German bunds hit close to an all-time low at -0.39%. The Euro (FXE) is looking at a breakdown through parity. The country’s largest financial institution, Deutsche Bank, is about to go under. No one here wants to touch equities there. It’s all about finding more bonds.

Soaring Chip Stocks took NASDAQ to new high. I have to admit I missed this one, not expecting a recovery until the China trade war ended. Chip prices are still falling, and volume is shrinking. We still love (AMD), (MU), and (NVDA) long term as obviously do current buyers.

Existing Home Sales fell off a cliff, down 1.7% in June to a seasonally adjusted 5.27 million units. Median Home Prices jumped 4.7% to $287,400. A shortage of entry-level units at decent prices get the blame. Ultra-low interest rates are having no impact.

JP Morgan (JPM) expects stocks to dive in Q3, driven by earnings downgrades for 2020. Who am I to argue with Jamie Diamond? Don’t lose what you made in H1 chasing rich stocks in H2. Everyone I know is bailing on the market and I am 100% cash going into this week’s Fed meeting up 18.33% year-to-date. I made 3.06% in July in only two weeks.

Alphabet (GOOGL) beat big time, sending the shares up 8% in aftermarket trading. Q2 revenues soared 19% YOY to an eye-popping $39.7 billion. It’s the biggest gain in the stock in four years, to $1,226. The laggard FANG finally catches up. The weak first quarter is now long forgotten.

Amazon (AMZN) delivered a rare miss, as heavy investment spending on more market share offset sales growth, taking the shares down 1%. Amazon Prime membership now tops 100 million. Q3 is also looking weak.

Intel (INTC) surged on chip stockpiling, taking the stock up 5% to $54.70. Customers in China stockpiled chips ahead of a worsening trade war. Q3 forecasts are looking even better. Sale of its 5G modem chip business to Apple is seen as a huge positive.

I've finally headed home, after a peripatetic six-week, 18-flight trip around the world meeting clients. I bailed on the continent just in time to escape a record heatwave, with Paris hitting 105 degrees and London 101, where it was so hot that people were passing out on the non-air conditioned underground.

Avoid energy stocks. The outcry over global warming is about to get very loud. I’ll write a more detailed report on the trip when I get a break in the market.

My strategy of avoiding stocks and only investing in weak dollar plays like bonds (TLT), foreign exchange (FXA), and copper (FCX) performed well. After spending a few weeks out of the market, it’s amazing how clear things become. The clouds lift and the fog disperses.

My Global Trading Dispatch has hit a new high for the year at +18.33% and has earned a robust 3.09% so far in July. Nothing like coming out of the blocks for an uncertain H2 on a hot streak. I’m inclined to stay in cash until the Fed interest rate decision on Wednesday.

My ten-year average annualized profit bobbed up to +33.23%. With the markets now in the process of peaking out for the short term, I am now 100% in cash with Global Trading Dispatch and 100% cash in the Mad Hedge Tech Letter. If there is one thing supporting the market now, it is the fact that my Mad Hedge Market Timing Index has pulled back to a neutral 60. It’s a Goldilocks level, not too hot and not too cold.

The coming week will be a big one on the data front, with one big bombshell on Wednesday and the Payroll data on Friday.

On Monday, July 29, the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index is out.

On Tuesday, July 30, we get June Pending Home Sales. A new Case Shiller S&P National Home Price Index is published. Look for YOY gains to shrink.

On Wednesday, July 31, at 8:30 AM, learn the ADP Private Employment Report. At 2:00 PM, the Fed interest rate decision is released and an extended press conference follows. If they don’t cut rates, there will be hell to pay.

On Thursday, August 1 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are printed.

On Friday, August 2 at 8:30 AM, we get the July Nonfarm Payroll Report. Recent numbers have been hot so that is likely to continue.

The Baker Hughes Rig Count follows at 2:00 PM.

As for me, by the time you read this, I will have walked the 25 minutes from my Alpine chalet down to the Zermatt Bahnhoff, ridden the picturesque cog railway down to Brig, and picked up an express train through the 12-mile long Simplon Tunnel to Milan, Italy.

Then I’ll spend the rest of the weekend winging my way home to San Francisco in cramped conditions on Air Italy. Yes, I had to get a few more cappuccinos and a good Italian dinner before coming home.

Now, on with the task of doubling my performance by yearend.

Good luck and good trading.

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

June 3, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
June 3, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MONDAY, JUNE 24 MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA STRATEGY LUNCHEON)
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, OR WHAT A WASTE OF TIME!),
(SPY), ($INDU), (JPM), (MSFT), (AMZN), (TSLA)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or What a Waste of Time!

Diary, Newsletter

“Sell in May and go away” has long suffered from the slings and arrows of non-believers, naysayers, and debunkers.

Not this time.

Looking at the trading since April 30, we have barely seen an up day. Since then, the Dow Average has plunged 1,900 points from a 26,700 high, a loss of 7.1%. We are now sitting right at my initial downside target of the 200-day moving average.

The Dow has now given up virtually all its 2019 gains, picking up only 2.0%. In fact, the market is dead unchanged since the end of 2017. If you have been an index investor for the past 17 months, your return has been about zero. In other words, it has been a complete waste of time.

There are a lot of things I would have preferred to do rather than invest in index funds for the past year and a half. I could have hiked the Pacific Crest Trail….twice. I might have taken six Cunard round-the-world cruises and met several rich widows along the way. I might even have become fluent in Italian and Latin. Such is the value of 20-20 hindsight.

You would have done much better investing in the bond market, which has exploded to a new two-year high, taking the ten-year US Treasury yield down to a once unimaginable 2.16%. During the same period, the (TLT) has gained 11 points, or 9.0% plus another 3.0% worth of interest. You did even better if you invested in lower grade credits.

Which leads us to the big question: Will stocks bottom out here, or are we in for a full-on retrace to the December lows?

Unfortunately, recent events have conspired to point to the latter.

The United States has now declared trade wars against all neighbors and allies around the world: China, Mexico, Europe, and Canada. On Friday, it announced 25% punitive tariffs against Mexico before NAFTA 2.0 was even ratified before Congress, thus rendering it meaningless. Businesses are dropping like flies.

As a result, GDP forecasts have been falling off a cliff, down from 3.2% in Q1 to under 1% for Q2. The administration’s economic policy seems to be a pain now, and more pain later. It is absolutely not what stock investors want to hear.

If you are a business owner now, what do you do with the global supply chain being put through a ringer? Sit as firmly on your hands as possible and do nothing, waiting for either the policy or the administration to change. Stock investors don’t want to hear this either. The fact that stock markets entered this cluster historically expensively is the fat on the fire.

Having hummed the bear national anthem, I would like to point out that stocks could rally from here. We enter a new month on Monday. There will be plenty of opportunities to make amends and the G-20 meeting which starts on June 20. This should provide a backdrop for a rally of at least one-third of the recent losses, or about 600 points.

But quite honestly, if that happens, I’ll be a seller. The economy is doing the best impression of going down the toilet that I can recall, and that includes 2008. Only this time, all the injuries are self-inflicted.

As the trade war ramped up, China moved to ban FedEx (FDX) and restrict rare earth exports (REMX) to the US essential for all electronics manufacture. Most modern weapons systems can’t be built without rare earths. The big question in investors' minds becomes “Is Apple next?”

The OECD cut its global growth forecast from 3.9% to 3.1% for 2019 because of you know what. Stock markets are now down for their sixth week as the 200-day moving average comes within striking distance.

There was more bad news for real estate with April Pending Home Sales down 1.5%. If rates this low can’t help it, nothing will. Where are those SALT deductions?

The bear market in home prices continued in March with the Case Shiller CoreLogic National Home Price Index showing a 3.7% annual price gain, down 0.2%. Home price in San Francisco is posting negative numbers. When will those low-interest rates kick in?

The bond market says the recession is already here with ten-year interest rates at 2.16%, a new 2019 low. German bunds hit negative -0.21%. JP Morgan (JPM) CEO Jamie Diamond says the trade war could cause real damage to the US economy.

US Capital Goods fell out of bed in April, down 0.9%, in another important pre-recession indicator. No company with sentient management wants to expand capacity ahead of an economic slowdown.

Despite all the violence and negativity, the Mad Hedge Fund Trader managed to crawl to new all-time highs last week, thanks to some very conservative positioning on the long side in the right names.

Those would include Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Tesla (TSLA). All of these names were down on the week, but the vertical bull call spreads were up. You see, there is a method to my madness!

Global Trading Dispatch closed the week up 16.30% year-to-date and is up 0.51% so far in May. My trailing one-year declined to +19.71%.

The Mad Hedge Technology Letter did fine, making money on longs in Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN). Some 10 out of 13 Mad Hedge Technology Letter round trips have been profitable this year.

My nine and a half year profit jumped to +316.55%. The average annualized return popped to +33.32%. With the trade war with China raging, I am now 70% in cash with Global Trading Dispatch and 80% cash in the Mad Hedge Tech Letter.

I’ll wait until the markets enjoy a brief short-covering rally before adding any short positions to hedge my longs.

The coming week will be a big one with the trifecta of big jobs reports.

On Monday, June 3 at 7:00 AM, the May US Manufacturing PMI is out.

On Tuesday, June 4, 9:00 AM EST, the April US Factory Orders are published.

On Wednesday, June 5 at 5:15 AM, the May US ADP Employment Report of private hiring trends is released.

On Thursday, June 6 at 5:30 AM, the April US Balance of Trade is printed. At 8:30 Weekly Jobless Claims are published.

On Friday, June 7 at 8:30 AM, we learn the May Nonfarm Payroll Report is announced which lately has been incredibly volatile.

As for me, I am going to be leading the local Boy Scout troop on a 20-mile hike with a 2,500-foot vertical climb in the Oakland Hills. Hey, you never know when Uncle Sam is going to come calling again. I need to stay boot camp-ready at all times.

At least I can still outpace the eleven-year-olds. I’ll be leaving my 60-pound pack in the garage so it should be a piece of cake.

Good luck and good trading.

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

April 1, 2019

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
April 1, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(THE NEXT TECH BUBBLE TOP HAS STARTED)
(LYFT), (PIN), (UBER), (AAPL), (JPM), (FB)

The Next Tech Bubble Top Has Started

Tech Letter

Don't go chasing rainbows.

That is what the current tech IPO environment is hinting.

Even though market conditions are frothy, that doesn't mean I'm calling a market top today, hardly so.

I predicted that Lyft (LYFT) would storm out of the gate like a bull on ecstasy, and I was vindicated when the stock flirted intraday with the $87 mark.

The scarcity value of these gig economy companies is hard to quantify.

Examples Uber unduly promise ambition and innovation leading to hopes of a possible air transport service and sharing network that I would need to see to believe.

The built-up expectations smell of over-promising and under-delivering, the majority won’t be able to deliver merely half of what their manifestos promulgate

As I put my analyst hat on, the 2019 IPO frenzy coming online has some of the same fingerprints of the infamous dot com bust of 2001.

The two main trends symbolic of the last time the tech industry disentangled were overly generous valuation, pricing in revenue expansion of 80% for the next five years when the leader of the pack Microsoft (MSFT) only grew at 50%.

A tantalizing clue was the utterly deficient cash flow generated back then.

The underlying premise revolved around putting the network effect on a pedestal irrespective of understanding that the network effect should have caused cash flow to accelerate which was conspicuously absent.

Losing money and losing a lot of it does lead to paralysis, examples were rife, for instance, priceline.com losing $30 on each air ticket sold.

Even more hard to fathom was that Priceline was stretching itself to the limits on the open market filling ticket orders because of a dearth of inventory steepening losses.

Priceline gushed about a unique business model of collecting excess ticket inventory that airlines couldn't sell at low cost and reskinning them to a digital audience hoping to take advantage of this price dispersion.

But in reality, this wasn’t always the case.

Priceline was on a suicide mission and expanding from 50 employees to 300 employees based upon misleading growth was madness.

In a nutshell, investors bypassed pragmatic arithmetic and were lifted by the fumes of exuberance that had manifested around the euphoria of the tech bubble.

Lyft is not revolutionary, they are a broker which occupy a low position in the spectrum of tech intellectual property.

Exploiting drivers, compensating them per hour, and letting them figure out their own cost structures for car insurance, fuel costs, and opportunity cost while offering zero benefits is a court battle waiting to happen in California.

And if your response was the way they craft value is by way of a proprietary app, well, Google, Apple, or even Netflix can produce the same type of app and quality of app in a few weeks with their legendary phalanx of top-tier engineering talent.

To Lyft’s credit, they have at least collected the treasure trove of data the app has compiled which is extraordinarily valuable.

The top of the tech bubble means that big tech is overreaching into any revenue they can get their hands on like a heroin addict yearning for the next syringe.

The environment has transformed into an eerily zero-sum game, such as Apple (AAPL) cooperating with JPMorgan Chase (JPM) to create Apple pay, and then instantly flipping around to compete with JPMorgan Chase in the credit card space with Apple Pay being an accomplice.

Big tech has sown the seeds of discord by quietly attempting to trample on any analog business they can get near.

Leveraging the network effect of billions of users in a proprietary walled garden to extract the incremental dollar for a new service is impossible to compete with for analog companies without a similar embedded on-demand audience.

Lyft co-founder and CEO Logan Green mentioned in an interview that in the next five year, he plans to deploy a subscription service coined as transportation-as-a-service like a software-as-a-service option which cloud platforms sell.

A fight to the bottom with Uber will cause major disruption in the pricing mechanisms of the subscription service and could force Lyft to earn less revenue per ride than the current pricing system.

Investors need to remember that Uber is bigger than Lyft and possessed more ammunition.

At the end of the day, the race to the bottom is never good for profitability or sustainability, and Lyft has yet to provide any substantial clues on how they will navigate through this quagmire.

My guess is that Lyft will have to do a deal with the devil of sorts to slang its branded broker app onto the cresting wave of Waymo as Waymo motors ahead and starts to materially monetize its self-driving program.

Remember that Alphabet already has a small stake in Lyft and these two could partner up with Alphabet dictating terms.

Lyft cannot compete with the holy grail of tech - self-driving technology – they are way down the tech value chain.

If we look at the bigger picture, the broader market has been riding the coattails of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s 180-degree turn from winter’s statement that interest rate tightening was on “autopilot.”

Now, there is only a 27% chance given by the market that the Fed will raise rates at all in 2019.

The market responded with strength begetting strength allowing the bull run to continue and even whispers of a possible rate cut later this year.

Sentiment will not change until we get to the point when earnings can’t surpass the expectation which have been lowered substantially.

I bet this won’t happen until late this year or next year.

This is inning 8 or 9 of the bull crusade, the closer is warming up in the bullpen.

Lyft’s opening day gallop is just one of the side effects from a market that is toppy.

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