(TLT) Archives - Page 4 of 102 - Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Trump Declares War on the World

I often get asked why I am still working after 55 years in the stock market.

With five customers calling me this morning to thank me for saving their retirement funds, you might understand why.

It is now clear that in retrospect and with the wisdom of 20/20 hindsight, corporate America flipped the switch on the economy, shutting it off and sending all hiring and investment to a grinding halt. They wanted to wait and see how business would fare under the new Trump regime. We didn’t see this in the data until February.

That’s when I started shouting from the rooftops that we were already in a recession and bear market and that you should sell everything, especially big tech stocks. If you waited until August for the data to confirm this, the move-down will be over.

T-bills, bonds, and gold were the only safe places to park your money. Gold just delivered the best quarter since 1986, up 19%. That month I took my short positions up to 80%, a 17-year high for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader.

Those now look like very wise decisions, with markets suffering their worst two-day crash since 1987, and the bad news has only just started. Option implied volatiles are at five-year highs, and risk positions everywhere are going to hell in a handbasket. Tariff-driven inflation could spike to 10% by next year.

Even securities unrelated to stocks, like junk bonds (JNK), down $6 points in two weeks, were getting thrown out with the bathwater because of margin calls. The Mad Hedge AI Market Timing Index is at a five-year low at a reading of 4. Q1 saw the fastest reversal in market momentum in 38 years.

I even heard an expression new to me: “Hate selling”. That refers to a global disengagement from investment in the US and the return of capital to better-performing foreign markets and currencies. Trump is attacking their countries.

The global nature of the selloff is most disturbing, with every country seeking its stock markets rolling over all at once. That presages a global recession.

Analysts across Wall Street are tearing up their playbooks for 2025 and setting new downside targets as fast as they can like I did in February.

Instead of the $500 billion tax increase I expected tariffs would deliver, we got $1 trillion. The worst forward guidance from corporations since the Great Depression starts next week. Retaliatory 34% tariffs from China hit today, and those from Europe will come soon. Trump has promised retaliation.

That forces me to adjust my downside target for the S&P 500 from $5,000 to $4,500. That is a 26.6% selloff from the February top, or 11% more downside from here. How do we get there? Simply assign the 2019 earnings multiple low of 18 and multiply it by S&P 500 earnings pared back by the trade war from $270 to $250. That gets you to $4,500 in months, if not weeks (18 X $250).

No help is that we entered this crash with valuation highs that have only been seen in 1999 and 1929. The higher the high, the lower the lows that follow.

In fact, there is no bottom to this market.

This forecast is based on historical data and assumes that markets are rational and orderly. But as we all know too well, markets can be anything but rational and orderly once the panic selling and margin calls begin.

Of course, a tweet on social media about negotiations could trigger a massive short-covering rally at any time. In reality, the stock market has been negotiating on behalf of Europe and China quite successfully. The further stocks fall, the greater the pressure on Trump to fold.

Tariffs advertised at the White House announcement left our trading partners scratching their heads because they were completely bogus and were a large multiple of the true tariffs. The person who came up with these cockamamie figures remains anonymous, as they used an arbitrary, obscure formula made up from scratch that had never been seen before by the economic community.

For example, the White House claimed the tariff charged by Vietnam was 90%, when in fact it is 5.5%. The claimed tariff for Taiwan was 64%, while the actual one is 1.7%.

The White House numbers supposedly included a factor for non-tariff barriers. I happen to be an expert in these because Japan was notorious for its non-tariff barriers in the 1970s. For example, import documents have to be submitted in Japanese. Hey, I speak Japanese. All they had to do was ask me! How did they quantify this?

That’s anyone’s guess.

The saddest thing is that this new bear market was not caused by surprise external events as in all others in the past century, but is totally voluntary and self-inflicted. It is actually caused by the false assumptions of conspiracy theorists. But these days, it is the conspiracy theorists who have the upper hand.

Why do we suddenly need an emergency jobs program now, when the country is operating at full employment? Many of those skills needed to man the jobs Trump is trying to take back from China, such as in textiles, clothing, shoes, and toys, haven’t existed in the US for generations. Nor does the machinery.

Some three-quarters of the US trade deficits are offset by a monster surplus in services run up by the likes of Meta (META), Alphabet (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), and Salesforce (CRM). And if you didn’t already know, the future is in services, not in manufacturing.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t lose a lot of sleep at night worrying about our trade deficit with Vietnam. Trump took what was a great economy and destroyed it in an effort to remake it in his own image. Is this crazy experiment with 20% of your retirement funds cost so far? How about 50%?

No wonder the Republican Party is panicking! Recent elections have shown unprecedented swings by voters away from them, fearful of their 401Ks.

How many factories will return to the US as a result of the tariffs? My bet is none. There will be many announcements but no actual action, as with the first Trump administration.

Labor costs are $5 an hour in Mexico and China, versus $25-$75 an hour in America. We keep the high-paying, high-value-added jobs and send the cheap, dangerous, highly energy-consuming, and high-polluting ones abroad. Foreigners get rich and earn the money to buy our services.

Their government then takes the excess funds and buys US Treasury bonds (China still has $760 billion worth) and finances our deficits with ever-depreciating paper. It is one big mutually enriching cycle. That’s why globalization has worked for 85 years.

The best thing for companies is to now sit on their hands and do nothing and wait out the next four years until a future administration eliminates the tariffs. That’s much cheaper than spending $20 billion on a new factory here which might become useless in four years.

What is a stock market worth that is walled off from the rest of the world that's in recession? Maybe half or less the February peak value, but I’m only guessing.

It might be much worse.

Keep all cash positions in 90-day T-bills and keep all hedges of existing equity portfolios also at a maximum until the stock market can find its own bottom. I’d rather miss the first 10% move and buy on the way up than catch a falling knife right now.

April is now down -7.25% so far due to the explosion in implied volatilities in our hedged positions. A lot of the Friday options prices made no sense and may reflect broker efforts to increase margin requirements. That takes us to a year-to-date profit of +6.58% so far in 2025. My trailing one-year return stands at a spectacular +74.93%. That takes my average annualized return to +49.73% and my performance since inception to +758.47%.

It has been another busy week for trading. I used the meltdown to add very deep in-the-money longs in (COST), (NVDA), and (NFLX). I stopped out of an existing (NVDA) long as we approached the upper strike price. I kept my very deep in-the-money long in (TSLA). I also kept my (GLD) long as a hedge.

Some 63 of my 70 round trips, or 90%, were profitable in 2023. Some 74 of 94 trades have been profitable in 2024, and several of those losses were really break-even. That is a success rate of +78.72%.

Try beating that anywhere.

My Ten-Year View – A Reassessment

We have to substantially downsize our expectations of equity returns in view of the election outcome. My new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties is now looking at multiple gale-force headwinds. The economy will completely stop decarbonizing. Technology innovation will slow. Trade wars will exact a high price. Inflation will return. The Dow Average will rise by 600% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The new America will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. My Dow 240,000 target has been pushed back to 2035.

Trump Announces Worst-Case Scenario Tariffs, tanking stocks and crypto, with big technology stocks taking the biggest hits. “RISK OFF” assets like gold, silver, bonds, and foreign currencies are soaring. The Dow Average could suffer a 1987-style crash on Monday. Volatility will explode. Duties on Chinese goods were raised to 34%, Europe 20%, and Southeast Asian countries up to 45%. All countries have been hit with high tariffs to avoid transshipments. Retaliation from the world is on the way. It’s another nail in the economy’s coffin, which is now almost certainly in recession. S&P 500 at 5,000 here we come. Is this the day the great depression started? Some $2 trillion in market capitalization was lost today.

Tariffs to Push All Home Prices Higher, as much as 5%, as homebuilders wind down new construction because of higher costs. Drywall comes from Mexico, lumber from Canada, and 10% of the workforce are immigrants. It could explain the recent improvement in existing home sales.

Jobless Claims Hit Three-Year High. Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, increased to 1.9 million in the week ended March 22, slightly higher than economists expected. Those applications have been hovering just under that level for several months now. Meanwhile, initial claims dipped last week, to 219,000, according to Labor Department data released Thursday.

Auto Loan Defaults Hit 21-Year High, with 6.5% of subprime borrowers at least 60 days overdue on payments. It is the largest default rate since data began collection in 1994. Yet another recession indicator.

Tesla Sales Fall off a Cliff, down 13% on the quarter, its weakest performance in nearly three years, as backlash to CEO Elon Musk's embrace of far-right politics grows and as consumers seek out newer models from rival electric-vehicle makers. The EV maker's stumbling sales indicate that the one-time leading brand is reeling from the fallout of the company not refreshing its vehicle lineup in years, and Musk's foray into politics in the United States and Europe. The company posted weak sales in numerous European markets and China, even as more consumers are opting for EVs. Sell (TSLA) on rallies.

Global Sentiment is collapsing, over trade wars and recession fears. Business sentiment among big Japanese manufacturers worsened in the three months to March, a central bank survey showed on Tuesday, a sign escalating trade tensions were already taking a toll on the export-reliant economy. Auto exports to the US are a major support for the Japanese economy, which is an American ally. A global contagion is afoot.

US Dollar Declines as a Reserve Currency, in the last quarter of 2024 while the percentage of actual dollars held as reserve ticked up, IMF data showed on Monday. Dollar-equivalent amounts dropped also among holdings in euro, pound sterling, yuan, yen, Swiss franc, and Australian and Canadian dollars, with only the latter showing a tick up in the percentage of holdings, the IMF's Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) data showed. The end of American exceptionalism means a cheaper greenback.

Vaccine Stocks Get Nailed, as the FDA moves the eliminate the vaccine establishment. Expect stocks to fall and disease to rise. The Food and Drug Administration's top vaccine official, Peter Marks, has been forced to resign, the most high-profile exit at the regulator as the Trump administration undertakes an overhaul of federal health agencies.

Gold Stocks in Comex Warehouses Hit Record highs, due to the risk of import tariffs curtailing shipments to the United States from other countries. Latest data from Comex, part of CME Group, shows gold stored in its warehouses in the United States at an all-time high of 43.3 million troy ounces worth $135 billion at current prices compared with 17.1 million in November. Spot gold prices surged past $3,100 per ounce to a fresh record high on Monday. Bullion is up 19% so far this year after rising 27% in 2024. Buy (GLD) on dips.

On Monday, April 7, at 8:30 AM EST, the Used Car Prices are announced.

On Tuesday, April 8, at 8:30 AM, the NFIB Business Optimism Index is released.

On Wednesday, April 9, at 1:00 PM, the FOMC Minutes are published.

On Thursday, April 10, at 8:30 AM EST, the Weekly Jobless Claims are disclosed. We also get the Consumer Price Index and Inflation Rate.

On Friday, April 11, at 8:30 EST, the Producer Price Index for March is printed. We also get the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment. At 2:00 PM, the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.

As for me, with the 38^th anniversary of the 1987 crash coming up this year, when shares dove 20% in one day, I thought I’d part with a few memories.

I was in Paris visiting Morgan Stanley’s top banking clients, who back then were making a major splash in Japanese equity warrants, my particular area of expertise.

When we walked into our last appointment, I casually asked how the market was doing (Paris is six hours ahead of New York). We were told the Dow Average was down a record 300 points. Stunned, I immediately asked for a private conference room so I could call the equity trading desk in New York to buy some stock.

A woman answered the phone, and when I said I wanted to buy, she burst into tears and threw the handset down on the floor. Redialing found all transatlantic lines jammed.

I never bought my stock, nor did I find out who picked up the phone. I grabbed a taxi to Charles de Gaulle airport and flew my twin Cessna as fast as the turbocharged engines took me back to London, breaking every known air traffic control rule.

By the time I got back, the Dow had closed down 512 points. Then I learned that George Soros asked us to bid on a $250 million blind portfolio of US stocks after the close. He said he had also solicited bids from Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, and Solomon Brothers, and would call us back if we won.

We bid 10% below the final closing prices for the lot. Ten minutes later, he called us back and told us we won the auction. How much did the others bid? He told us that we were the only ones who bid at all!

Then you heard that great sucking sound.

Oops!

What has never been disclosed to the public is that after the close, Morgan Stanley received a margin call from the exchange for $100 million, as volatility had gone through the roof, as did every firm on Wall Street. We ordered JP Morgan to send the money from our account immediately. Then they lost the wire transfer!

After some harsh words at the top, it was found. That’s when I discovered the wonderful world of Fed wire numbers.

The next morning, the Dow continued its plunge, but after an hour managed a U-turn, and launched on a monster rally that lasted for the rest of the year. We made $75 million on that one trade from Soros.

It was the worst investment decision I have seen in the markets in 53 years, executed by its most brilliant player. Go figure. Maybe it was George’s risk control discipline kicking in?

At the end of the month, we then took a $75 million hit on our share of the British Petroleum privatization because Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher refused to postpone the issue, believing that the banks had already made too much money.

That gave Morgan Stanley’s equity division a break-even P&L for the month of October 1987, the worst in market history. Even now, I refuse to gas up at a BP station on the very rare occasions I am driving a rental internal combustion engine from Enterprise.

My Quotron Screen on 1987 Crash Day

Good Luck and Good Trading,

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

April 1, 2025

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
April 1, 2025
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(REVISITING THE FIRST SILVER BUBBLE),
(SLV), (SLW)

March 31, 2025

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
March 31, 2025
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or STAGFLATION IS ON!)
(COST), (BRK/B), (GS), (MS), (NVDA), (AMZN), (TLT), (GLD), (GM), (TSLA)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Stagflation is On!

Diary, Homepage Posts, Newsletter

There is no doubt that the data released out on Friday were a complete disaster for stock investors. The Dow Average futures posted a 1,000-point swing, from up 200 in the overnight markets to down 800 intraday.

Specifically, the Consumer Price Index came in at a hot 0.4%, which is 4.8% annualized. Five-year Inflation Expectations, which the Fed follows most closely, rocketed to 6.0%. Worse yet, Consumer Confidence rose only 0.1% for the second month in a row, the worst performance in 12 years. Friday was the day that the hard data met the soft data and concluded that the recession was on.

That screeching noise you hear is the economy grinding to a halt.

Stock markets absolutely hate stagflation. The last time we had stagflation was during the Ford and Carter administrations during the 1970s, when it took eight years for the Dow to rise a measly 1,000 points. Back then, Wall Street shrank to a fraction of its former self.

This all richly justifies my downside target of 5,000 for the S&P 500, off 20% from the February top, which is increasingly becoming a mainstream prediction. If I am wrong, it will plunge to 4,500, or down 30%.

We were promised animal spirits that would set markets on fire. Instead, the animals are sent back into hibernation and the markets are being snuffed out. I watch every single data release that comes out on a daily basis, and it is amazing how fast they are almost all rolling over at once.

The combination of rising inflation and a weakening economy is described by one infamous word: Stagflation. What’s worse, we are only one month into a stagflationary trend that could run for many months or years.

As a result, we have seen the worst start to a year since Q1 2020, the last time Trump was president. March was the worst month in 3 ½ years. It seems the stock market heartily agrees with my view.

It gets worse.

All earnings estimates for this year are based on record corporate profit margins. If those margins fail to hold when earnings are announced in the coming weeks, it may trigger the second 10% leg down in the major averages. More concerning is the forward guidance companies may provide.

It turns out that companies watch the daily data releases too. Companies sitting on their hands, not investing or hiring, can itself alone cause recessions. Right now, nobody knows what the heck to do.

The final shoe to fall will be a sharp spike up in the headline Unemployment Rate. We get the next read on this on Friday, April 4. It’s just a question of how soon this shows up in the data. Right now, hundreds of thousands of workers have been fired but are still receiving paychecks while their status is being challenged in the courts. So they aren’t being counted as unemployed….yet.

Some 42% of all the hiring in the US over the past three years has been in just two sectors, healthcare and education. That is where the biggest cuts are being made now. It’s all about getting ahead of the curve.

Let me tell you how bad things can get.

On Wednesday, the president announced 25% import duties for completed cars. General Motors (GM) makes about 30% of its cars in Mexico and Canada. As a result, (GM) may have to raise some car prices by 10%-25%. But the president has ordered (GM) not to raise prices at all.

It costs $20 billion and takes four years to build a new car factory in the US from scratch. This all turns (GM) into the perfect money-destruction machine. (GM) may not survive. And you wonder why I have been short (GM) stock two months in a row. Trump must really hate Detroit.

Believe it or not, there is a silver lining to all this.

If you missed the great bull market of the last five years, when the major indexes more than doubled, you are eventually going to get a second bite at the apple. Share prices are dropping so fast that we may get to a final capitulation selloff rather quickly. Then we will be spoiled for choice with stocks that have easy doubles and triples in them.

Let me tell you a trader’s trick.

Watch the shares of companies that have the sharpest rises on the rare up days. These are the ones that institutions are willing to jump into and hold on to forever, the permanent earnings compounders. If you take a look at the longs in the Mad Hedge Model Trading Portfolio, they all meet these criteria. They include (COST), (BRK/B), (GS), (MS), (NVDA), and (AMZN).

Buying bonds (TLT) and gold (GLD) going into a recession may not be a bad idea either. And for those who don’t want to play when the going gets rough, there are always 90-day US Treasury bills yielding 4.20%. They are government-guaranteed.

March is now up +3.17% so far. That takes us to a year-to-date profit of +12.64% so far in 2025. That means Mad Hedge has been operating as a perfect -1X short S&P 500 ETF since the February top. My trailing one-year return stands at a spectacular +81.35%. That takes my average annualized return to +49.82% and my performance since inception to +764.63%.

It has been another busy week for trading. I took profits on the short in (NVDA), which collapsed in the latest tech-driven leg down. I added a new long in (COST), a position I have been trying to get into for years, and it immediately started to make money.

I also stopped out of my two auto shorts in (GM) and (TSLA) at cost. Then Trump moved up his auto tariff announcements by a week, and both positions shot up to max profits. Welcome to trading in the Trump administration. In this period of extreme uncertainty, I have tightened up my stop-loss strategy to avoid big losses.

Some 63 of my 70 round trips, or 90%, were profitable in 2023. Some 74 of 94 trades have been profitable in 2024, and several of those losses were really break-even. That is a success rate of +78.72%.

Try beating that anywhere.

Stagflation Accelerates, with a hot 0.4% increase in the Consumer Price Index and a tepid 0.1% increase in Consumer Spending, the worst since the Pandemic. One-year inflation expectations have shot up to 5.0%. Today is the day the hard data met the soft data and jointly agreed that we are in a recession. S&P 500 5,000 here we come!

25% Auto Import Tariffs Become Official on April 2. The auto industry, once the largest in the US, says it will trigger a recession. Car prices will rise an average of $5,000 per vehicle. Expect the economies of Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois to get demolished as they feed a lot of the parts into Detroit. Steel will also be affected. Some 30% of autos made by US companies are assembled in Canada and Mexico. Which US car makers have the highest share of American content? Tesla.

US GDP Grows 2.4%, during the October-December quarter. These may be the last positive numbers we see for a while as the country heads into recession.

Bonds Rocket, with inflation now running at a 5% annual rate, and the tariffs should add another 1%. That means the next Fed move is likely to be an interest rate RISE, while the unemployment rate is rising. That’s a worst-case scenario for the economy and the stock market.

Moody’s Warns of a Downgrade of the United States, saying Trump’s trade tariffs could hamper the country’s ability to cope with a growing debt pile and higher interest rates. Recession risks are rising.

Canada Freezes Rebates for Tesla Purchasers. Canada has frozen C$43 million ($30.11 million) of rebate payments for Tesla. Buyers had been eligible for a $5,000 rebate on vehicles costing less than $65,000. Tesla’s Q1 sales out next week is expected to be terrible. Avoid (TSLA).

S&P Case Shiller National Home Price Index Rises 4.7% YOY. Home price growth held steady at 0.5% M/M, on a seasonally adjusted basis, in January, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index composite for 20 cities. On an unadjusted basis, the Case-Shiller HPI for 20 cities inched up 0.1% from a month earlier, decelerating from the +0.2% consensus and accelerating from the previous month's -0.1%. On a Y/Y basis, the gauge climbed 4.7%, vs. +4.6% expected and +4.5% prior.

Consumer Confidence Plunges, by the most in five years, according to the conference. The Conference Board’s gauge of confidence decreased 7.2 points to 92.9, data released Tuesday showed. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a reading of 94. The soft data for the economy continues to look horrific.

FedEx Gets Crushed, another early recession indicator. Fewer things are shipped in shrinking economies. Fears about a U.S. recession and President Donald Trump’s new reciprocal tariff rates starting April 2 could threaten FedEx’s earnings, Paterson said in a Friday note to clients. Memphis-based FedEx is generally regarded as a barometer of the global economy, as its business touches a wide variety of global industries.

Next-Gen Chips are Power Hogs. Big tech companies, which are all betting heavily on AI, will undoubtedly buy those chips, even if the price skyrockets. But there’s growing evidence that there won’t be enough electricity to power all of their AI dreams. Some new AI apps use 150 times more power than the old ones.

My Ten-Year View – A Reassessment

We have to substantially downsize our expectations of equity returns in view of the election outcome. My new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties is now looking at multiple gale-force headwinds. The economy will completely stop decarbonizing. Technology innovation will slow. Trade wars will exact a high price. Inflation will return. The Dow Average will rise by 600% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The new America will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. My Dow 240,000 target has been pushed back to 2035.

On Monday, March 31, at 8:30 AM EST, the Chicago PMI is announced.

On Tuesday, April 1, at 8:30 AM, the JOLTS Job Openings Report is released.

On Wednesday, April 2, at 1:00 PM, the ADP Employment Change is published.

On Thursday, April 3, at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are disclosed. We also get the final report for Q1 GDP.

On Friday, April 4, at 8:30 AM, the Nonfarm Payroll Report for March is printed. At 2:00 PM, the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.

As for me, back in 2002, I flew to Iceland to do some research on the country’s national DNA sequencing program called Decode, which analyzed the genetic material of everyone in that tiny nation of 250,000. It was the boldest project yet in the field and had already led to several breakthrough discoveries.

Let me start by telling you the downside of visiting Iceland. In the country that has produced three Miss Universes over the last 50 years, suddenly you are the ugliest guy in the country. Because guess what? The men are beautiful as well, the descendants of Vikings who became stranded there after they cut down all the forests on the island for firewood, leaving nothing with which to build long boats.

I said they were beautiful, not smart.

Still, just looking is free and highly rewarding.

While I was there, I thought it would be fun to trek across Iceland from North to South in the spirit of Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen. I went alone because, after all, how many people do you know who want to trek across Iceland? Besides, it was only 150 miles, or ten days to cross. A piece of cake really.

Near the trailhead, the scenery could have been a scene from Lord of the Rings, with undulating green hills, craggy rock formations, and miniature Icelandic ponies galloping in herds. It was nature in its most raw and pristine form. It was all breathtaking.

Most of the central part of Iceland is covered by a gigantic glacier over which a rough trail is marked by stakes planted in the snow every hundred meters. The problem arises when fog or blizzards set in, obscuring the next stake and making it too easy to get lost. Then you risk walking into a fumarole, a vent from the volcano under the ice, always covered by boiling water. About ten people a year die this way.

My strategy for avoiding this cruel fate was very simple. Walk 50 meters. If I could see the next stake, I would proceed. If I couldn’t, I pitched my tent and waited until the storm passed.

It worked.

Every 10 kilometers stood a stone rescue hut with a propane stove for adventurers caught out in storms. I thought they were for wimps but always camped nearby for the company.

One of the challenges in trekking near the North Pole is getting to sleep. That’s because the sun never sets and it's daylight all night long. The problem was easily solved with the blindfold that came with my Icelandic Air first-class seat.

I was 100 miles into my trek, approached my hut for the night, and opened the door to say hello to my new friends.

What I saw horrified me.

Inside was an entire German Girl Scout Troop spread out in their sleeping bags all with a particularly virulent case of the flu. In the middle was a girl lying on the floor, soaking wet and shivering, who had fallen into a glacier-fed river. She was clearly dying of hypothermia.

I was pissed and instantly went into Marine Corps Captain mode, barking out orders left and right. Fortunately, my German was still pretty good then, so I instructed every girl to get out of their sleeping bags and pile them on top of the freezing scout. I then told them to strip the girl of her wet clothes and reclothe her with dry replacements. They could have their bags back when she got warm. The great thing about Germans is that they are really good at following orders.

Next, I turned the stove burners up high to generate some heat. Then I rifled through backpacks and cooked up what food I could find, force-fed it into the scouts, and emptied my bottle of aspirin. For the adult leader, a woman in her thirties who was practically unconscious, I parted with my emergency supply of Jack Daniels.

By the next morning, the frozen girl was warm, the rest were recovering, and the leader was conscious. They thanked me profusely. I told them I was an American “Adler Scout” (Eagle Scout) and was just doing my job.

One of the girls cautiously moved forward and presented me with a small doll dressed in a traditional German Dirndl, which she said was her good luck charm. Since I was her good luck, I should have it. It was the girl who was freezing to death the day before.

Some 20 years later, I look back fondly on that trip and would love to do it again.

Anyone want to go to Iceland?

Iceland 2002

Good Luck and Good Trading,

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

March 24, 2025

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
March 24, 2025
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD or THE SPECIAL NO CONFIDENCE ISSUE)
(GM), (SH), (TSLA), (NVDA), (GLD), (TLT), (LMT), (BA), (NVDA), (GOOGL), (AAPL), (META), (AMZN), (PANW), (ZS), (CYBR), (FTNT), (COST)
(AMGN), (ABBV), (BMY), (TSLA), GM), (GLD), (BYDDF)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or The Special No Confidence Issue

Diary, Homepage Posts, Newsletter

It’s official: Absolutely no one is confident in their long-term economic forecasts right now. I heard it from none other than the chairman of the Federal Reserve himself. The investment rule book has been run through the shredder.

It has in fact been deleted.

That explains a lot about how markets have been trading this year. It looks like it is going to be a reversion to the mean year. Forecasters, strategists, and gurus alike are rapidly paring down their stock performance targets for 2025 to zero.

When someone calls the fire department, it’s safe to assume that there is a fire out there somewhere. That’s what Fed governor Jay Powell did last week. It raises the question of what Jay Powell really knows that we don’t. Given the opportunity, markets will always assume the worst, that there’s not only a fire, but a major conflagration about to engulf us all. Jay Powell’s judicious comments last week certainly had the flavor of a president breathing down the back of his neck.

It's interesting that a government that ran on deficit reduction pressured the Fed to end quantitative tightening. That’s easing the money supply through the back door.

For those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of monetary policy, let me explain to you how this works.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed bought $9.1 trillion worth of debt securities from the US Treasury, a policy known as “quantitative easing”. This lowers interest rates and helps stimulate the economy when it needs it the most. “Quantitative easing” continued for 15 years through the 2020 pandemic, reaching a peak of $9.1 trillion by 2022. For beginners who want to know more about “quantitative easing” in simple terms, please watch this very funny video.

The problem is that an astronomically high Fed balance sheet like the one we have now is bad for the economy in the long term. They create bubbles in financial assets, inflation, and malinvestment in risky things like cryptocurrencies. That’s why the Fed has been trying to whittle down its enormous balance sheet since 2022.

By letting ten-year Treasury bonds it holds expire instead of rolling them over with new issues, the Fed is effectively shrinking the money supply. This is how the Fed has managed to reduce its balance sheet from $9.1 trillion three years ago to $6.7 trillion today and to near zero eventually. This is known as “quantitative tightening.” At its peak a year ago, the Fed was executing $120 billion a month quantitative tightening.

By cutting quantitative tightening, from $25 billion a month to only $5 billion a month, or effectively zero, the Fed has suddenly started supporting asset prices like stocks and increasing inflation. At least that is how the markets took it to mean by rallying last week.

Why did the Fed do this?

To head off a coming recession. Oops, there’s that politically incorrect “R” word again! This isn’t me smoking California’s largest export. Powell later provided the forecasts that back up this analysis. The Fed expects GDP growth to drop from 2.8% to 1.7% and inflation to rise from 2.5% to 2.8% by the end of this year. That’s called deflation. Private sector forecasts are much worse.

Just to be ultra clear here, the Fed is currently engaging in neither “quantitative easing nor “quantitative tightening,” it is only giving press conferences.

Bottom line: Keep selling stock rallies and buying bonds and gold on dips.

Another discussion you will hear a lot about is the debate over hard data versus soft data.

I’ll skip all the jokes about senior citizens and cut to the chase. Soft data are opinion polls, which are notoriously unreliable, fickle, and can flip back and forth between positive and negative. A good example is the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence, which last week posted its sharpest drop in its history. Consumers are panicking. The problem is that this is the first data series we get and is the only thing we forecasters can hang our hats on.

Hard data are actual reported numbers after the fact, like GDP growth, Unemployment Rates, and Consumer Price Indexes. The problem with hard data is that they can lag one to three months, and sometimes a whole year. This is why by the time a recession is confirmed by the hard data, it is usually over. Hard data often follows soft data, but not always, which is why both investors and politicians in Washington DC are freaking out now.

Bottom line: Keep selling stock rallies and buying bonds and gold (GLD) on dips.

A question I am getting a lot these days is what to buy at the next market bottom, whether that takes place in 2025 or 2026. It’s very simple. You dance with the guy who brought you to the dance. Those are:

Best Quality Big Tech: (NVDA), (GOOGL), (AAPL), (META), (AMZN)
Big tech is justified by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s comment last week that there will be $1 trillion in Artificial Intelligence capital spending by the end of 2028. While we argue over trade wars, AI technology and earnings are accelerating.

Cybersecurity: (PANW), (ZS), (CYBR), (FTNT)
Never goes out of style, never sees customers cut spending, and is growing as fast as AI.

Best Retailer: (COST)
Costco is a permanent earnings compounder. You should have at least one of those.

Best Big Pharma: (AMGN), (ABBV), (BMY)
Big pharma acts as a safety play, is cheap, and acts as a hedge for the three sectors above.

March is now up +2.92% so far. That takes us to a year-to-date profit of +12.29% in 2025. That means Mad Hedge has been operating as a perfect -1X short S&P 500 ETF since the February top. My trailing one-year return stands at a spectacular +82.50%. That takes my average annualized return to +51.12% and my performance since inception to +764.28%.

It has been another busy week for trading. I had four March positions expire at their maximum profit points on the Friday options expiration, shorts in (GM), and longs in (GLD), (SH), and (NVDA). I added new longs in (TSLA) and (NVDA). This is in addition to my existing longs in the (TLT) and shorts in (TSLA), (NVDA), and (GM).

Some 63 of my 70 round trips, or 90%, were profitable in 2023. Some 74 of 94 trades have been profitable in 2024, and several of those losses were really break-even. That is a success rate of +78.72%.

UCLA Andersen School of Business announced a “Recession Watch,” the first ever issued. UCLA, which has been issuing forecasts since 1952, said the administration’s tariff and immigration policies and plans to reduce the federal workforce could combine to cause the economy to contract. Recessions occur when multiple sectors of the economy contract at the same time.

Retail Sales Fade, with consumers battening down the hatches for the approaching economic storm. Retail sales rose by less than forecast in February and the prior month was revised down to mark the biggest drop since July 2021.

This Has Been One of the Most Rapid Corrections in History, leaving no time to readjust portfolios and put on short positions.

The rapid descent in the S&P 500 is unusual, given that it was accomplished in just 22 calendar days, far shorter than the average of 80 days in 38 other examples of declines of 10% or more going back to World War II.

Home Builder Sentiment Craters to a seven-month low in March as tariffs on imported materials raised construction costs, a survey showed on Monday. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index dropped three points to 39 this month, the lowest level since August 2024. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index at 42, well below the boom/bust level of 50.

BYD Motors (BYDDF) Shares Rocket, up 72% this year, on news of technology that it claims can charge electric vehicles almost as quickly as it takes to fill a gasoline car. BYD on Monday unveiled a new “Super e-Platform” technology, which it says will be capable of peak charging speeds of 1,000 kilowatts/hr. The EV giant and Tesla rival say this will allow cars that use the technology to achieve 400 kilometers (roughly 249 miles) of range with just 5 minutes of charging. Buy BYD on dips. It’s going up faster than Tesla is going down.

Weekly Jobless Claims Rise 2,000, to 223,000. The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits increased slightly last week, suggesting the labor market remained stable in March, though the outlook is darkening amid rising trade tensions and deep cuts in government spending.

Copper Hits New All-Time High, at $5.02 a pound. The red metal has outperformed gold by 25% to 15% YTD. It’s now a global economic recovery that is doing this, but flight to safety. Chinese savers are stockpiling copper ingots and storing them at home distrusting their own banks, currency, and government. I have been a long-term copper bull for years as you well know. New copper tariffs are also pushing prices up. Buy (FCX) on dips, the world’s largest producer of element 29 on the Periodic Table.

Boeing (BA) Beats Lockheed for Next Gen Fighter Contract for the F-47, beating out rival Lockheed Martin (LMT) for the multibillion-dollar program. Unusually, Trump announced the decision Friday morning at the White House alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Boeing shares rose 5.7% while Lockheed erased earlier gains to fall 6.8%. The deal raises more questions than answers, in the wake of (BA) stranding astronauts in space, their 737 MAX crashes, and a new Air Force One that is years late. Was politics involved? You have to ask this question about every deal from now on.

Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL) Raises Forecasts, on burgeoning demand from vacationers, including me. The company’s published cruises are now 80% booked. Cruise lines continue to hammer away at the value travel proposition they are offering. However, the threat of heavy port taxes from the administration looms over the sector.

My Ten-Year View – A Reassessment

We have to substantially downsize our expectations of equity returns in view of the election outcome. My new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties is now looking at multiple gale-force headwinds. The economy will completely stop decarbonizing. Technology innovation will slow. Trade wars will exact a high price. Inflation will return. The Dow Average will rise by 600% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The new America will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. My Dow 240,000 target has been pushed back to 2035.

On Monday, March 24, at 8:30 AM EST, the S&P Global Flash PMI is announced.

On Tuesday, March 25, at 8:30 AM, the S&P Case Shiller National Home Price Index is released.

On Wednesday, March 26, at 1:00 PM, the Durable Goods are published.

On Thursday, March 27, at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are disclosed. We also get the final report for Q1 GDP.

On Friday, March 28, the Core PCE is released, and important inflation indicator. At 2:00 PM, the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.

As for me, I received calls from six readers last week saying I remind them of Ernest Hemingway. This, no doubt, was the result of Ken Burns’ excellent documentary about the Nobel Prize-winning writer on PBS last week.

It is no accident.

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.

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, Cuba, and Ketchum Idaho.

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 also 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 my writing.

Oh, and if you visit the Ritz Hotel today, you’ll find the ashtrays are now glued to the tables.

As for last summer, I stayed in the Hemingway Suite at the Hotel Post in Cortina d’Ampezzo Italy where he stayed in the late 1940’s to finish a book. Maybe some inspiration will run off on me.

Hemingway’s Living Room in Cuba, Untouched Since 1960

Earnest in 1918

Typing at Hemingway’s Typewriter in Italy from the 1940’s

The Red Cross Uniform Hemingway Wore when He was Blown Up in 1917

Good Luck and Good Trading

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

March 17, 2025

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
March 17, 2025
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or SELL FIRST AND ASK QUESTIONS LATER),
(SPY), (TLT), (IBKR), (GM), (TSLA), (NVDA), (SH)

March 10, 2025

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
March 10, 2025
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or THE ECONOMY IS GRINDING TO A HALT),
(IBKR), (JPM), (GS), (SF), (TSLA), (GM), (TLT), (GLD)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or The Economy is Grinding to a Halt

Diary, Newsletter

There isn’t a CEO in the country who hasn’t halted capital investment in the face of today’s unprecedented uncertainty. You can’t invest in a business without a credible GDP forecast, and Q1 is certain to deliver a large negative number, the first half of a recession.

There isn’t a consumer that isn’t cutting back on spending. With the price of everything rising, they have no choice. Entire markets, like real estate, are frozen.

Worst of all, there isn’t an investor who hasn’t postponed additional stock purchases. There is an unprecedented capital flight out of the US and into Europe and China taking place. Anything American, like the US dollar, has suddenly become toxic.

One of my favorite expressions is that “Money is like water; it flows to wherever it is treated best.” Right now, there is a Panama Canal’s worth of money flowing elsewhere, or into 90-day US Treasury bills.

And stocks are down by only 8.13% so far?

Welcome to government by reality TV.

The goal isn’t to create jobs, grow the economy, and help stabilize the world. The intention is to shock, amaze, appall, upset, disrupt, and maximize clicks for certain online social media platforms and websites. If so, they are wildly successful. So far, investors are giving the show very poor ratings, subterranean ones, and a definite thumbs down.

Last week was the worst one for stocks in two years. The Magnificent Seven are now down 15% year to date, and I bet that Tesla (TSLA), its stock down 50% in less than three months, is running at an operating loss. I would not be surprised if the country’s retirement savings have cratered by 10% so far in 2025.

Last week, I called my weekly letter “Armageddon”. I was too modest, reticent, and cautious. It should have been entitled “Armageddon on Steroids.” The US economy is probably in recession now, but we won’t see a hint of this until the Q1 numbers are out on April 30 and the confirmation on August 28.

The implications are global.

It's not a recession I’m worried about; it’s a Great Depression, a recession that a broken economy can’t get out of. There isn’t an economy in the world that isn’t being disrupted and turned on its head.

All asset classes are now screaming a recession. Oil is at a six-month low, interest rates are at a three-month low, and both the S&P 500 (SPY) and NASDAQ (QQQ) have broken their 200-day moving averages for the first time in 3 years when they fell 32% and 40%, respectively. And that was when interest rates were still at zero. The Atlanta Fed has ratcheted down its Q1 GDP forecast down to 2.4%, part one of a recession.

If you went to top up your coffee, you probably missed a 600-point move in the Dow Average ($INDU).

And here is the next black swan that is going to bite you.

The U.S. trade deficit surged in January, as import growth dwarfed a smaller increase in exports by 10:1. Imports rose 10% to $401.2 billion as businesses rushed to beat the tariffs, knocking 1.5% off of GDP. Exports climbed by a mere 1.2% to $269.8 billion. That yielded a net deficit of $131.4 billion, 34% greater than the $98.1 billion deficit in December. February is likely to be worse.

The Trump administration is setting up the perfect stagflation economy, with falling growth and rising prices. I suffered through this in the 1970s during the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, and believe me, it was no fun. The triggers were two oil shocks and taking the US off the gold standard. This time, the Trigger is Trump.

It was a grim time. This was when the Dow Average flatlined for a decade, and stockbrokers drove taxis to make a living. It’s why, out of university, I went to work for The Economist magazine in London for ten years instead of heading straight for Wall Street. Brokers weren’t hiring. I didn’t get to Morgan Stanley until 1983, a year after the great bull market began.

The complete collapse of the banking sector has a very clear message: We are now in a recession. That means a 20% drawdown in this correction is a sure thing, and a 50% crash is not impossible. The promised deregulation and easier M&A policies never showed.

Keep adding protection through raising cash, executing buy-writes, and piling on bearish ETFs like the (SH) and (SDS). Tariffs will drop corporate profits by half if they continue and will wipe them out completely if they are increased in a future escalation.

When you impoverish your customers, as the tariffs are doing to Canada and Mexico practically overnight, you impoverish yourself. Their recession becomes our recession.

By the way, the jobs impact on the federal budget has been wildly exaggerated. Federal government jobs are at 3 million, versus 5 million state jobs, and 15 million local government jobs. Salaries account for only 4% of the federal budget as government employees are generally low-paid workers. If you cut them by half or by 1.5 million workers, it only knocks off 2% from federal spending.

Each government job directly creates two new private sector jobs or bout 5 million jobs.

The last safe job in the country was a government job. For centuries, government workers accepted lower pay in exchange for safety and stability. Government unions have not been allowed to go on strike. That contract has been broken this year. Companies are piggybacking their only layoffs on top of the government ones, using them as cover. This will have a leveraged effect on pushing unemployment upward.

Here's another reality check. Per capita, government jobs have been falling for a decade.

The US population rises by about 1% a year and increased to 340 million in 2024. It is up by 22 million in ten years. Population increases alone demanded the gross increase in government jobs of 300,000. Federal government jobs, in fact, have been growing at a declining rate for the past decade when compared to the private sector.

Oh, and you wanted to know about Tesla? The downside target is $140, last summer’s low, or down 72% from the top when Tesla was under 23 government investigations. If that doesn’t hold, we’re going to the 2022 low of $105, down 79%, but only if Elon Musk cares, which so far, he doesn’t. But Tesla will have no government investigations underway.

As for Nvidia, I am much more bullish. I see it going down to $90, down 41% from the top.

Read it and weep.

The Money Is Now Pouring Out

February is now flat at -0.87% return so far, which most people will take given this year’s 8.13% swan dive in the (SPY). That takes us to a year-to-date profit of +8.60% so far in 2025. That means Mad Hedge has been operating as a perfect short S&P 500 ETF since the February high. My trailing one-year return stands at a spectacular +81.34%. That takes my average annualized return to +49.91% and my performance since inception to +760.49%.

It has been a busy week for trading. I cut my risk by stopping out of a long in (JPM) near cost. I added a bearish downside play with the (SH) and a short in (GM). I started taking profits on my short positions that had completely collapsed, such as with the (TLT) and (TSLA). I used the meltdown to add very deep in-the-money long with (NVDA). Next week will probably be as busy.

Some 63 of my 70 round trips, or 90%, were profitable in 2023. Some 74 of 94 trades have been profitable in 2024, and several of those losses were really break-even. That is a success rate of +78.72%.

Try beating that anywhere.

Layoffs Hit Five-Year High. Challenger, an international firm that helps laid-off workers find new jobs, said that job losses spiked a whopping 245% to 172,017 last month, higher than any month since the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in July 2020 and the highest in any February since 2009. The layoffs have only just begun.

ADP Collapses, with private sector hiring falling to only 77,000, a two-year low. Companies are frozen in the headlights, unable to take action in a trade environment that is changing by the day and an economy that is rapidly deteriorating. It’s another recession confirmation data point.

Atlanta Fed Says US GDP Shrank by -2.4% in Q1 of 2025, meaning we are already well on our way into recession. The Atlanta Fed always has the most extreme forecasts. That’s the latest reading from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank's GDP Now model, which is considered the central bank's primary tool for measuring growth in real-time.

January Trade Deficit Hits 80-Year High, as importers rushed to beat business killing Trump tariffs. The goods trade gap surged 25.6% to $153.3 billion last month, the Commerce Department's Census Bureau said on Friday. Goods imports vaulted 11.9% to $325.4 billion. The problem for investors is that this money is subtracted from the US GDP calculation, as these are products made abroad and not in America. Expect horrific economic numbers going forward.

Consumer Spending Falls to Four-Year Low at -0.5%. US consumers unexpectedly pulled back on spending on goods like cars in January amid extreme winter weather, and a slowdown in services, if sustained, may raise concerns about the resilience of the economy. Inflation-adjusted consumer spending fell by the biggest monthly decline in almost four years after a robust holiday season. The drop in outlays was driven by an outsize decline in motor vehicle purchases and drops in categories like recreational goods.

Bitcoin Gives Up All Post-Election Gains, plunging from $108,000 to 82,000, down 24%. My bet is that in bear markets, crypto will fall faster than stocks. Avoid all crypto.

The Oil Market is in Turmoil, with crude prices dropping below $66, a four-month low. A global recession is looming large. The administration has pulled Chevron out of Venezuela, losing 300,000 barrels a day there. But OPEC has increased production, and Iraq has been pressured into reopening its northern pipeline. “Drill baby, drill” threatens to swamp American consumers with excess supply. Avoid all energy plays for now.

The Tesla Collapse Accelerates, with February sales in Germany down -76%, Norway down -46%, and France -26%. The company is also falling behind in China, and there is no way US sales targets will be met. Consumers don’t want to make a political statement with an EV purchase. Shares are now down 49% in three months. Sell all (TSLA) rallies. The final target could be $140 a share, last summer’s low. Where is the CEO?

Germany Passes Massive $1.3 Trillion Spending Stimulus, devoted to defense spending and infrastructure. It caused the biggest drop in German bond prices and rise in yields in 35 years. It was enough to drag US interest rates up, giving bonds here a terrible day. Germany is now expanding its growth while we are shrinking ours. Is Germany now the global economic engine and the US the caboose?

The New Magnificent Seven Speaks German, with European defense rising 30% so far in 2025. After being dead money for 20 years, the Frankfurt stock market has suddenly come alive. The goal is to replace American weapons in Ukraine with German ones. Among the largest defense companies, Germany’s Rheinmetall (RHM) rose 14% on Tuesday, and Italy’s Leonardo (LDO) closed 16% higher, while BAE Systems (BA) was up 15% at the end of trading. France’s Thales (HO) rose 16%, and aircraft makers Dassault Aviation (AM) and Saab (SAAB) rose 15% and 12%, respectively.

Weekly Jobless Claims Fall, by 21,000 to 221,000.
Turbulence lies ahead from tariffs on imports and deep government spending cuts. That was flagged by other data on Thursday showing layoffs announced by U.S.-based employers jumped in February to levels not seen since the last two recessions amid mass federal government job cuts, canceled contracts, and fears of trade wars.

My Ten-Year View – A Reassessment

We have to substantially downsize our expectations of equity returns in view of the election outcome. My new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties, is now looking at multiple gale-force headwinds. The economy will completely stop decarbonizing. Technology innovation will slow. Trade wars will exact a high price. Inflation will return. The Dow Average will rise by 600% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The new America will be far more efficient and profitable than the old.

My Dow 240,000 target has been pushed back to 2035.

On Monday, March 10, at 8:30 AM EST, the Consumer Inflation Expectations are announced.

On Tuesday, March 11, at 8:30 AM, the JOLTS Job Openings Report is released.

On Wednesday, March 12, at 8:30 AM, the Consumer Price Index is printed.

On Thursday, March 13, at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are disclosed. We also get the Producer Price Index.

On Friday, March 14, at 8:30 AM, the University of Michigan was announced as well At 2:00 PM, the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.

As for me, since many of you are now planning long-overdue summer vacations, I thought I would pass on what I learned from the ultimate travel guru of all time before he passed away last year.

After all, who knows how long it will be until the next pandemic? The next decade, next year, or next week?

When I backpacked around Europe in 1968, I relied heavily on Arthur Frommer’s legendary paperback guide, Europe on $5 a Day, which then boasted a cult-like following among impoverished but adventurous Americans. The charter airline business was then booming, plunging airfares, and suddenly Europe came within reach of ordinary Americans like me.

Over the following years, he directed me down cobblestoned alleyways, dubious foreign neighborhoods, and sometimes converted WWII air raid shelters to find those incredible travel deals. When he passed through town some 50 years later, I jumped at the chance to chat with the ever-cheerful, worshipped travel guru.

Frommer believed there are three sea change trends going on in the travel industry today. Business is moving away from the big three travel websites, Travelocity, Orbitz, and Priceline, who have more preferential lucrative but self-enriching side deals with airlines than can be counted, towards pure aggregator sites that almost always offer cheaper fares, like Kayak.com, Sidestep.com, and Fairchase.com.

There is a move away from traditional 48-person escorted bus tours towards small group adventures, like those offered by Gap Adventures, Intrepid Tours, and Adventure Center, that take parties of 12 or less on culturally eye-opening public transportation.

There has also been a huge surge in programs offered by universities that turn travelers into students for a week to study the liberal arts at Oxford, Cambridge, and UC Berkeley. His favorite was the Great Books program offered by St. John’s University in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Frommer says that the Internet has given a huge boost to international travel, but warns against user-generated content, 70% of which is bogus, posted by the hotels and restaurants touting themselves.

Frommer turned an army posting in Berlin in 1952 into a travel empire that publishes 340 books a year, or one out of every four travel books on the market. I met him on a swing through the San Francisco Bay Area (his ticket from New York was only $150), and he graciously signed my tattered, dog-eared original 1968 copy of his opus, which I still have.

Which country has changed the most in his 60 years of travel writing? France, where the citizenry has become noticeably more civil since losing WWII. Bali is the only place where you can still actually travel for $5/day, although you can see Honduras for $10/day. Always looking for a deal, Arthur was on his way to Chile, the only country in the world he had never visited.

Arthur Fromer passed away in 2024 at the age of 95.