Global Market Comments
March 21, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE MAD HEDGE MARCH TRADERS & INVESTORS SUMMIT REPLAYS ARE UP)
(MARCH 19 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(SH), (SDS), (COST), (PANW), (FTNT), (ZS), (MSFT), (GOOGL), (NVDA), (GLD), (AMZN), (BAIDU), (BABA), (LNG), (FXA), (FXE), (FXC), (FXB)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the March 19 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Incline Village, NV.
Q: I tried to get into ProShares Short S&P500 (SH), it seems pretty illiquid. How did you get in?
A: Well, before I actually sent out the trade alert, I tested the liquidity of the SH seeing if you could get anything done. This is an easy thing to buy on up days in the market when others are taking profits. It is a really difficult thing to get into on down days in the market because you have so many long-only mutual funds trying to hedge their exposure through buying the (SH). We literally had just one up day at the beginning of the month, and I was able to increase my position tenfold and had no trouble getting my price on the LEAPS at $0.50. If you waited one day, you would have had to pay $0.60 for the same position, and that’s because the volatility explodes on this thing. If you look at the charts, the 1x short play has actually delivered enormous returns, as well as the 2x. It’s outperforming 2 to 1. So you have to buy when other people are selling, that’s the only way to get in and out of the (SH). Of course, I’m buying these things with the intention of running these to expiration.
Q: Is it time to sell US stocks?
A: Yes but only on the up days like today. Don’t sell into a pit, don’t sell into bottoms—wait for rally days like today. That's a good place to reduce risk and add some short positions like the ProShares Short S&P500 (SH) and the ProShares UltraShort S&P500 (SDS).
Q: How did you miss the rotation to Europe and China in emerging markets?
A: Very simple—if you ignore something for 15 years, it’s easy to miss a turn. I also missed the turn in Japan, which I ignored for 35 years. The real reason though is that I underestimated the extremity of this government, its economic policies, and the chaos it would create. I think almost everyone underestimated what the new government would actually do and how it would affect the stock market. If I knew ahead of time that the government would adopt recessionary policies, I would have done everything to get my money out of the US and into Europe and China, but this kind of unfolded with a shock a day, sometimes a shock an hour, and markets don’t like shocks and surprises, so they sold off. The more a stock had gone up in the last six months, the more it went down when the new government came into office.
Q: What are your downside targets for the market?
A: Now that we are in recession, I think any 5% rally off the recent low at 5500, you want to sell. The market could rally 3-5% off the bottom—that would be half of the recent loss. Then you’d want to get rid of more longs, cut your portfolio down to a few very high-quality positions, and add downside protection by buying the ProShares Short S&P500 (SH), the ProShares UltraShort S&P500 (SDS), doing buy rights on the calls and buying outright puts. That would be my recommendation. Eventually I see the S&P 500 falling to 5,000 by the summer, and if I’m wrong, it’s going down 30% to 4,500. That is a deep recession scenario, which we are on the track for unless the government suddenly reverses its draconian policies. This is the most extreme government in American history.
Q: Are you going to use the selloff to get into Costco (COST) after a 20% selloff?
A: Absolutely. I’ve been trying to get into Costco for years and it’s just always been too expensive. They keep increasing earnings every year —investors are willing to pay very high multiples for that. This time around, I am going to get into Costco because they are an absolutely outstanding company. By the way, my mentor at Morgan Stanley was a guy named Barton Biggs, who created the asset management division some 40 years ago. He was close friends with Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, and Sam Walton was a huge admirer of Costco, which was just starting up then. I’m surprised they never took over the company, which is too big to take over now.
Q: What to buy at the bottom?
A: You want to buy what was leading right before we went into this collapse. Those are financials, and the highest quality profit making of the Mag7 which include Nvidia (NVDA), Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL), Meta (META), as well as cybersecurity stocks like Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Fortinet (FTNT), Zscaler (ZS) and so on.
Q: Why are you making your recession call when we have no evidence of that fact?
A: If you wait for proof of recession, that often is the market bottom. And that could be August of this year. You know, I talk to hundreds of businessmen around the world, and everyone is saying business is slowing. Companies stop making decisions. Customers stop buying. Everyone's afraid of the tariffs. Nobody knows what's going to happen next. Business confidence is terrible. That adds up to a recession, but data tends to move very slowly, so we won't see it in the data for months. If you're a stock trader, you don't have the luxury of waiting for confirmation of the data. By the time you get it, the move is over. But if you cut half of government spending or 12% of GDP, the recession outcome is guaranteed. It's not a speculation. That is the government's goal: to cause a recession, so they can have a recovery going into the next election to take credit for.
Q: If Alphabet (GOOGL) is broken up, what will happen to the company?
A: With all of these big tech breakups, the parts will be worth a lot more than the whole. The individual pieces can be sold off at much bigger premiums creating new companies with more stock liquidity. This is what happened with AT&T (T) in 1982. I participated in that, and the parts were worth more than the original AT&T was within two years. I expect that to happen to Alphabet, and I expect that to happen if Amazon (AMZN) is broken up— eventually, these companies become so big, they become too big to manage. And if the management sees they can get 100% premium on a spinoff, they'll take it so fast it makes your head spin.
Q: None of the 90% gain in stock prices during the Biden administration was a result of his policies.
A: That's absolutely correct. He stayed out of the way, which is the best thing that governments can do—get the hell out of the way. American capitalism on its own will innovate and create profits far faster than any other economic system in history. Biden did quite a good job of staying away.
Q: Why are credit spreads still okay to do in this environment?
A: Because the implied volatility on the options are so high, you can get insane amounts of money—in the money like 30% or 40% —and get trades done and have a 0% chance of taking a loss on that. Suddenly you're being paid double to take risks on these option trades. The classic example is the $88-$90 call spread in Nvidia (NVDA), which we have expiring on Friday, March 21. We never even got close to $90, but the implied volatility on the day we added that trade was a ridiculous 75%. So, it's almost impossible to lose money when you put on trades with implied volatility in the options of 75%.
Q: What's your long-term target on gold now that your last long-term target of 3,000 finally got hit?
A: Yes, we've been recommending gold (GLD) for seven years now. In that time, it's doubled: $1,500 to $3,000. I'm now looking for $5,000 in gold by 2030, in five years. I got a feeling that flight-to-safety plays are going to be very popular in the world going forward. And by the way, people who did look for Bitcoin to protect them in any downturns: Bitcoin actually went down three times faster than the S&P 500 in the last month.
Q: Will stocks rise if the Fed cuts interest rates?
A: No, they won't, because the only reason the Fed will cut interest rates is if inflation falls, and right now, inflation is about to see a big upturn as those import duties of 25% or 50% work their way through the system. A lot of companies are front-running price increases before they even pay the tariffs and try to carve out some extra margin for themselves in advance. On Wednesday, Jay Powell said he expects inflation to rise from 2.5% to 2.8% by yearend and this will prove to be a low number. That is his “president breathing down the back of his next” forecast.
Q: What are your favorite Chinese stocks?
A: Well, a lot of these leading stocks have already gone up 50% or more since the beginning of the year as capital flees the United States and goes abroad. But if you held a gun to my head and said you had to buy two, I would buy Baidu (BIDU), and I would buy Alibaba (BABA). Those would be my Chinese picks. Alibaba is the closest thing you get to an Amazon in China.
Q: Has the dollar hit its lows this year?
A: No. Risk of the next Fed rate move is an interest rate cut. That is going to hang over the dollar and the currency markets for the entire year. And I don't see any recovery in the dollar this year. In fact, it's easy to see much lower lows, and higher highs in the foreign currencies. Buy (FXA), (FXE), (FXC), and (FXB) on dips.
Q: How do you feel about natural gas?
A: I would not be a buyer here. I think we've had a terrific run off of extreme cold weather—believe me, we got some of that in Nevada too—and that is starting to fade now. This is historically when that gas starts to fade for the year. Long term, my view on gas is bullish because of increased exports to China. We have a very pro-energy administration here; that means taking off the export restraints on natural gas, which can only be good for the gas companies and the gas price. China has basically told us they'll take all the natural gas they can get from us because every shipload of gas they buy (LNG) means less coal they have to burn.
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 Good Trading
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
December 4, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MANAGEMENT TURNOVER IN TECH SPURRING CHANGES)
(INTC), (CRWD), (PANW)
CEO’s are toast as the CEO turnover tally starts to explode at the end of 2024.
There appears to be a strong trend that will grow in 2025, and that is corporate tech companies looking to the bullpen to substitute out the CEO.
They aren’t doing enough for their respective companies, and that needs to change.
This speaks volumes to the tough times in which debt has become too expensive to fund growth.
Tech companies have always played by the idea of the “winner takes all” mentality, and 2024 underscored this trend by seeing the likes of the Magnificent 7 grow in size and stature.
Through October, more than 1,800 CEOs have announced their departures this year. The outperformance of big tech stocks means that shareholders are putting massive pressure on management to juice up their own stock prices.
The number of exits is up 19% from the more than 1,500 departures during the same period last year, which was the previous year-to-date record.
Boards of directors are becoming impatient and ambitious, holding their CEOs accountable for underperformance — both in terms of profits and stock price.
The expected length of tenure as a CEO, on average, is declining as a result of these performance pressures.
The massive stock market gains of the past two years — the S&P gained roughly 20% in 2023 and is set to gain more than that by the end of 2024 — also pose challenges to US companies.
The outperformance of big tech is forcing shareholders to lean into their own management and demand answers to why they are falling behind.
The answer is complicated, and I acknowledge that many CEOs aren’t in the position to throw around capital like the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, or CEO of Meta Zuckerberg.
These leaders can chase the next big thing and can strike out many times and not even bat an eyelid.
High turnover shows growing risk appetites and "a desire for leaders who can navigate increasing complexity in the macro business environment, including tech transformation, sustainability, geopolitical crises, and social issues."
If a company’s figurative boat is sinking while most others are enjoying a rising tide, corrective action must be taken by the CEO and or the Board.
If the CEO doesn’t have a clear plan for a turnaround, the Board finds someone who has a plan and the strength to execute that plan. It doesn’t matter if the CEO is actually at fault. Blame is assigned, and heads roll. It isn’t always fair.
Many of these tech CEOs cannot just issue dividends or execute stock buybacks to manipulate the share prices higher.
I believe these shareholder returns will be a key tool for big tech to jump over the low bar after a bevy of lower-than-expected guidance.
Next year, we could experience the haves and have nots in tech separate from each other even further.
Many of these hot chip names are right in the middle of their growth curves.
Software stocks still look good on the dips.
Lately, there were selloffs in cyber security stocks like Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and CrowdStrike (CRWD).
Traders bought the dip after weak guidance, and this is an example of where there is an opportunity as a trader to get in at optimal entry points.
Global Market Comments
March 25, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or THE BEST WEEK OF THE YEAR),
(PANW), (NVDA), (LNG), (UNG), (FCX), (TLT), (XOM), (AAPL), (GOOG), (MSTR), (BA), (FXY)
You need to have a sense of humor and a strong dose of humility to work in this market. After predicting last week that the market would NOT crash but grind sideways, it then posted the next week of the year. Stocks are actually accelerating their move to the upside.
Of course, we got a big assist from Fed Governor Jay Powell who practically wrote in his own blood a promise that interest rates would be cut at least three times by the end of the year. That is quite a gesture, and all risk assets loved it, even the ones that have been asleep for a year, like gold (GLD) and silver (SLV).
Miraculously, this does happen and there has been a big one over the last two years that nobody knows about.
Cheniere Energy (LNG) shipped 640 tankers full of natural gas (UNG) to Europe last year and 630 in 2022. One tanker provides enough gas to heat one million homes for a month. You can do the math. In total, it has sent out 3,400 tankers since 2016, mostly to China.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Europe was totally dependent on Vladimir Putin for gas. Any doubt about the Russian supply was ended when the Nordstream undersea pipeline was mysteriously blown up. A total cut-off would have been an economic disaster and caused the collapse of NATO.
Two years ago, it was believed that even if we could get the gas to Europe, there were no facilities to liquefy natural gas as it is shipped back into natural gas. Then 16 floating de-liquefaction plants showed up out of nowhere.
Natural gas demand has been soaring in the US as well. Over the past 20 years, coal has dropped from generating 50% of the US electric power supply to only 19% (the unused American share of the coal was sold to China). That has eliminated 500 million tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.
If you noticed that the skies over American cities are getting clearer, this is the reason.
Much has been made over Biden’s “pause” of permitting for new natural gas facilities. The reality is that it will take four years to build the 16 new gas export facilities that have already been approved. By then, we’ll have a new president. All Biden did was throw a bone at the environmental wing of his party. Such are the ways of Washington.
By the way, the Republican Party now has an environmental wing too. Who knew? It’s all proof that if you live long enough, you see everything.
One of the reasons I have been in love with cybersecurity stocks like Palo Alto Networks (PANW) for the past decade is that hacking is the ultimate growth industry. It never goes out of style, is recession-proof, and is growing at an exponential rate.
It is also getting more sophisticated. The big hackers are franchising their business models, inviting in criminals with minimal computer knowledge, vastly increasing their numbers. They are attacking small vendors to large companies to get access to the big ones. They are also picking targets too poor to afford the big cybersecurity companies. The City of Oakland is a classic example, which was prevented from paying its teachers for six months. And now they have AI.
Spending on cybersecurity is expected to grow from $188 billion in 2023 to $215 billion this year, a gain of 14.36%. The number of data breaches has rocketed by 78% over the past two years. Buy (PANW) on dips, which we are seeing right now.
“We’re going to need a bigger GPU” to borrow a famous line from Stephen Spielberg’s blockbuster Jaws.
If you want a peak at the future, both of our own and NVIDIA stock, check out the company’s latest entry into the chip wars, the $50,000 Blackwell GPU, available in a few months. In layman’s terms, it offers four times the computing ability but requires only one-quarter of the electric power, which is increasingly becoming an AI issue. It also uses deep learning to write its own software.
The chip was introduced by CEO Jensen Huang at the Developers conference in San Jose, which I attended in a venue normally occupied by rock stars. Huang started the conference by warning he was not there to sing. But perform he did, accompanied by a group of dancing robots powered by AI.
And while NVIDIA’s sales have tripled over the past year, you ain’t seen anything yet. When I recommended (NVDA) for the millionth time at $400 a share last October, my long-term target was $1,000. It recently hit $975, now stands at $943, and shows no sign of abating. NVIDIA could well keep powering on until the actual release of the Blackwell chip.
As in Jaws, I sense a feeding frenzy coming and (NVDA) shorts are the bait.
In February we closed up +7.42%. So far in March, we are up +3.53%. My 2024 year-to-date performance is at +6.67%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +9.22% so far in 2024. My trailing one-year return reached +56.98% versus +52% for the S&P 500.
That brings my 16-year total return to +683.30%. My average annualized return has recovered to +51.57%.
Some 63 of my 70 round trips were profitable in 2023. Some 11 of 19 trades have been profitable so far in 2024.
I miniated no new longs last week, content to let my existing longs run in Freeport McMoRan (FCX), bonds (TLT), and ExxonMobile (XOM). I am 70% in cash given the elevated state of the market and am looking for new commodity and energy plays to pile into.
Fed Chair Jay Powell Promises Three Interest Rate Cuts of 25 basis points each, at his press conference on Wednesday. Powell said he did not see "cracks" in the labor market, which he described as "in good shape," noting that "the extreme imbalances that we saw in the early parts of the pandemic recovery have mostly been resolved." These are very pro-risk statements. Buy the dips in everything.
Fed to Dial Back Quantitative Tightening, or QT from the current $120 billion a month. It’s a huge plus for risk assets and explains why the most liquidity-driven ones like gold and silver had such a great day. Buy (GLD) and (SLV) on dips.
The Dept of Justice Goes After Apple on Antitrust, on its 61.3% share of the US smartphone market. It accused the iPhone maker of blocking rivals from accessing hardware and software features on its popular devices. Google’s (GOOG) Android actually has a bigger global market share at 70.3% with Apple at only 24%. This is another waste of time that will last ten years and go nowhere.
Bank of Japan to Cut Interest Rates as Early as April, bringing to an end a 34-year stimulus program that was a dismal failure. The Japanese yen (FXY) should rocket, but Japanese stocks not so much.
MicroStrategy (MSTR) Dives 18%, the largest owner of Bitcoin, on a crypto correction. MicroStrategy is the largest corporate owner of Bitcoin. (MSTR) just completed a massive borrowing to buy more crypto at the top. After SEC approval of ETFs and the imminent halving, what is left to drive crypto? Avoid (MSTR) which was blindsided by the last 90% crypto correction.
Existing Homes Sales Soar 9.7% in February to 4.38 million units, on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis. Inventory rose 5.9% year over year to 1.07 million homes for sale at the end of February. That represents a still low 2.9-month supply at the current sales pace. Higher demand continued to push the median price higher, up 5.7% from the year before to $384,500.
Home Prices Have Risen by 2.4 Times the Inflation Rate Since 1960. The cost of a typical house in the U.S. is nearly half a million dollars: the median price for a home in the U.S. is $412,778, according to Redfin data. That’s what successful demographic tailwinds leading to a chronic housing shortage get you.
Boeing is Leasing 36 Airbuses, to meet its own unfilled orders caused by production delays. Another panel fell off an airborne plane last week in Medford, OR. Looking for missing parts has become a regular part of every Boeing landing. This is an act of desperation. Avoid (BA)
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 25, at 7:00 AM EDT, the US Building Permits are announced.
On Tuesday, March 26 at 8:30 AM, S&P Case Shiller for February is released.
On Wednesday, March 27 at 11:00 AM, the MBA Mortgage Data is published
On Thursday, March 28 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced. The final read of the Q2 US GDP is also out.
On Friday, March 29 at 2:00 PM, Personal Income and Spending is out. The Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.
As for me, as I am about to take off for Cuba to visit Finca Vigia (Lookout Farm), the home of Earnest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn I thought I’d review my long history with this storied family. This is where he finished For Whom the Bells Toll, his epic novel about the Spanish Civil War.
My grandfather drove for the Italian Red Cross on the Alpine front during WWI, where Hemingway got his start, so we had a connection right there going back over 100 years.
Since I read Hemingway’s books in my mid-teens, I decided I wanted to be him and became a war correspondent. In those days, you traveled by ship a lot, leaving ample time to finish off his complete work.
I visited his homes in Key West and Ketchum Idaho. In 2023, he stayed at his Hotel Poste room in Cortina, Italy where he lived for five months during the 1950s. His Cuban residence was high on my list, now that Castro is gone.
I used to stay in the Hemingway Suite at the Ritz Hotel on Place Vendome in Paris where he lived during WWII. I had drinks at the Hemingway Bar downstairs where war correspondent Ernest shot a German colonel in the face at point-blank range. I still have the ashtrays.
Harry’s Bar in Venice, a Hemingway favorite, was a regular stopping-off point for me. I have those ashtrays too.
I even dated his granddaughter from his first wife, Hadley, the movie star Mariel Hemingway, before she got married, and when she was still being pursued by Robert de Niro and Woody Allen. Some genes skip generations and she was a dead ringer for her grandfather. She was the only Playboy centerfold I ever went out with. We still keep in touch.
So, I’ll spend the weekend watching Farewell to Arms….again, after I finish this newsletter.
Oh, and if you visit the Ritz Hotel today, you’ll find the ashtrays are now glued to the tables.
Hemingway in 1917
At Work on Hemingway’s Typewriter
Good Luck and Good Trading,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
March 11, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(The Mad MARCH traders & Investors Summit is ON!)
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or HIGHER HIGHS)
(NVDA), (META), (IWM), (AMZN), (RIVN), (SNOW), (GLD), (GOLD), (NEM), (FXI), DELL), (AAPL), (TSLA), (CCJ), ($NIKK), (USO), (GOLD)
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
March 8, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(APPLE NEEDS TO UP ITS GAME)
(CRWD), (PANW)
It’s no longer Apple’s world.
Times have changed.
Management at Apple including CEO Tim Cook need to get with the times or else they risk being left behind.
Large existential risks aren’t only felt by Apple, most of the tech sector risk being left behind by the AI bandwagon.
If there was any inkling that I might be wrong about this then explain the latest data point about Apple’s lackluster sales in Asia.
Sales of Apple’s iPhone plunged in China by 24% year over year as Apple faced stiff competition from local smartphone firms like Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi.
Apple came under particular pressure from Chinese tech giant Huawei, whose consumer business is experiencing a resurgence in China after the launch of its Mate 60 smartphone.
Several rival Chinese smartphone companies also logged drops in their unit sales in the six-week period, but the declines were less pronounced than that of Apple.
The best-performing smartphone brands for the first six weeks were Huawei and its spinoff Honor, which branched out of the tech giant in 2020 as a result of U.S. sanctions.
Huawei smartphone unit shipments rose 64% year over year in the first six weeks of 2024.
Apple is facing a backbreaking environment in its cash cow China.
Local Chinese smartphone makers have caught up and make a pretty nice version of a smartphone comparable to the iPhone including a reinvigorated Huawei.
Customers flocked to iPhones, once Huawei’s phones lost their competitiveness due to the lack of 5G and no cutting-edge semiconductors.
Losing the China market is a big blow to Apple’s management as deglobalization picks up speed.
Even more worrying is why isn’t Apple hopping on the AI bandwagon?
They risk being left behind as the “iPhone company.”
It’s not emerging as one of the largest risk to Apple’s strategic future.
They did well with last generation’s technology, but they look gradually misplaced for the next round of technological modernizations.
I haven’t heard much of what they are doing in AI, and they had to fire their team that worked on the Apple car.
No doubt that Apple shareholders are starting to question what management has up its sleeves and before it was ok to return to the well with iPhone sales growing.
However, we have clearly entered a paradigm shift where the iPhone well has run dry and shareholders are expecting more.
If Tim Cook can’t figure it out then large investors like Warren Buffett could start to unload shares in batches which could demoralize the stock in the short-term.
For now, I do believe Apple is worth a trade to the upside because it’s so beaten down.
It shocking that we have gotten to this point with Apple, but tech companies are all at risk of extinction unless they evolve with the times.
For the first time in a long time, it’s right to question whether to hold Apple shares for the long haul.
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)
