Global Market Comments
September 28, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or DID THE ELECTION OR COVID JUST HIT THE STOCK MARKET?),
(SPY), (TLT), (GLD), (TSLA), (UUP)
Tag Archive for: (TSLA)
Did the election finally hit the stock market? It could have been both or neither.
Certainly, the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was worth 1,000 points, and maybe more. It may open the door to a period in politics that is uncertain at best or become violent at worst.
But the Coronavirus is making a comeback too. The US topped 7 million cases and 200,000 deaths, more than any other country in the world. The president’s new pandemic advisor, Scott Atlas, seems to be advocating a “herd immunity” approach. If so, 53% of the population will get the disease causing a total of 3 million deaths. The pandemic will continue for years.
New cases are spiking in Europe. The UK, which was on the verge of ordering workers back to their offices is now going back to a total shutdown. That augers for a second big wave in the US as kids go back to school and universities reopen.
With the S&P 500 now down 1% on the year, 2020 basically never happened. We saw a whole lot of volatility with no net movement. It makes my own 34.50% profit this year look stellar by comparison.
With the twin challenges of Covid-19 and the election lower lows for the market beckon. The one-year charts show that a “head and shoulders” top is in place for the (SPY), so my downside target at the 200-day moving average stands. That would be 3,074 for the (SPX) and $84 for Apple (AAPL).
There is a chance that the Fed could intervene in the stock market one more time right before the election if the markets resume the cascading falls of the spring. If that happens, buyers will return in hoards. My view is that this is but another dip in a long-term bull market that started in 2009 and may run all the way to 2030. You especially want to load the boat with Apple again.
However, the mystery of why technology stocks are so expensive remains. Let me take another shot at this.
From a technology point of view, we have just completely skipped the 2020s and are already in 2030. A year ago, would you have ever imagined that all of the country’s children would now be going to school online or that you’d be sending your business suits to the Good Will?
Stock markets have yet to price in the 2030 level of technology and profit, so the stocks will keep going up. Maybe we are already at 2023 or 2025 prices. I’ll let you know when I find out.
Volatility rocketed last week, and stocks collapsed. Any chance of further Covid-19 economic stimulus this year has just been demolished. If you were worried about the presidential election eroding confidence in the market before, now you have to be positively suicidal.
Any doubts about traders going into cash before the election have been vaporized. A 4-4 Supreme Court now makes an election outcome uncertain, no matter what the actual vote. Price that into your dividend discount model!
US Corona Deaths topped 200,000, weighing heavily on the economy and the election. There is no sign that the death rate is slowing, possibly reaching 400,000 by yearend. I went out to dinner last weekend and one-third of all businesses were boarded up, with no sign of reopening, ever.
Twelve IPOs to hit last week. This is in the wake of the Snowflake (SNOW) deal last week that tripled off its initial price talk. Apparently, there is an extreme shortage of high-growth large cap technology stocks and Silicon Valley is more than happy to meet that demand. Flooding the market like this ends up killing the goose that laid the golden eggs and is a common signal of market tops. Existing stock holdings have to be sold to buy new ones, taking markets south.
The economy slows as stimulus hopes fade as confirmed by last week’s economic data. US Consumer Sentiment dove in August, while Weekly Jobless Claims hover just below a Great Recessionary one million. The pandemic remains the dominant economic issue unless you live online.
The NASDAQ whale continues to sell, as Softbank (SFTBY) continues to unwind its massive technology long options positions. Last week, it was Adobe (ADBE), Salesforce (CRM), and Facebook (FB) that got hit. We won’t know if they made money on these for months, but they certainly put the final spike top in for the technology bubble.
The biggest debt increase in history occurred, with Federal government borrowing up an eye-popping 59% YOY. Sell every rally in the (TLT). It’s just a matter of time before a flood of new issuance destroys this market. We are sowing the seeds for the next financial crisis. The government was running record deficits BEFORE the pandemic even started.
Existing Home Sales soared in August, up 2.4% MOM to 6 million units, the hottest since 2006. Prices are up a huge 11.4% YOY. Homes over $1 million increased by 44% YOY as both work and school move home. Properties sit only 22 days on the market to sell, a record low.
Elon Musk promised a $25,000 car in three years, fully autonomous with long range and no maintenance for the life of the vehicle. The lifetime cost would be half of conventional gasoline-powered cars. That was the outcome of Battery Day in Fremont, CA, attended by hundreds of devotees safely enclosed in Teslas who honked instead of clap. It is all the result of dozens of revolutionary design and manufacturing improvements currently in the works, like moving from lithium to raw silicon for batteries. If so, General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) have had it.
A US dollar crash is imminent, says my old Morgan Stanley colleague Steven Roach. The double dip recession is here inviting even lower interest rates. The current account deficit soared to record highs in Q2. Buy the Aussie (FXA), Euro (FXE), and yen (FXY) on this dip.
Investors pull $25 billion from Equity funds last week as a new wave of nervousness hit the market. It’s the third largest weekly outflow in history. Everyone and his brother is trying to get out before the election. Pick your conspiracy theory as to what could go wrong.
When we come out the other side of this, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 400% or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old.
My Global Trading Dispatch stayed level at just short of an all-time high this week. I dumped my last two positions at the Monday morning opening as I could see the 1,000-point drop coming from a mile off, going to a rare 100% cash position.
The risk/reward in the market now is terrible. I believe we have to test the 200-day moving averages before it is safe to go back in with the indexes and single stocks.
That takes our 2020 year-to-date back up to a blistering 34.50%, versus a loss of 7.00% for the Dow Average. September stands at a nosebleed 7.95%. That takes my eleven-year average annualized performance back to 36.06%. My 11-year total return returned to another new all-time high at 390.41%. My trailing one-year return popped back up to 54.09%.
The coming week is a big one for jobs data. The only numbers that really count for the market are the number of US Coronavirus cases and deaths, now at 203,000, which you can find here.
On Monday, September 28 at 10:30 AM EST, the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index is released.
On Tuesday, September 29 at 9:00 AM EST, the S&P Case Shiller National Home Price Index for July is announced.
On Wednesday, September 30, at 8:15 AM EST, the ADP Private Employment Report is printed. At 8:30 AM EST, the final figure for US Q2 GDP is disclosed. At 10:30 AM EST, the EIA Cushing Crude Oil Stocks are out.
change.
On Thursday, October 1 at 8:30 AM EST, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced.
On Friday, October 2 at 8:30 AM EST, the all-important September Nonfarm Payroll Report is out. At 2:00 PM The Bakers Hughes Rig Count is released.
As for me, we have another superheating of the climate in store this weekend, with San Francisco Bay Area temperatures expected to top 100 degrees. The fires are out now, but high winds are coming so PG&E is expected to cut off electric power once again.
I’ll be fine with my solar and battery back-up. The Tesla power management software knows in advance when this is going to happen and automatically goes into maximum storage mode. But just to be safe and to keep the trade alerts coming, I am charging up the car and every battery I own.
Stay healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
September 24, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(ELON’S BATTERY DAY BLOWOUT),
(TSLA), (GM), (F)
I have to admit that I have been buying into Elon Musk’s vision since I first met him more than 20 years ago, back in his PayPal days. He could see how the future would unroll for the next 50 years.
That has delivered the best investment of my lifetime, with my Tesla shares (TSLA) up 151X from my initial $16.50 cost.
Thanks to Elon, my home is now completely grid-independent, with 59 solar panels and three 13.5-watt Tesla Powerwalls. I am only connected to PG&E so I can sell them my excess power at afternoon peak prices. In the mornings, I recharge my batteries. That’s a cool thing to have when your local utility completely shuts off power for six days a year.
So it was with some enthusiasm that I attended Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting and Battery Day.
Elon Musk was there with all his swagger and confidence in front of a giant screen. The audience was limited to those sitting in Teslas to enable social distancing, and when they approved, they honked horns instead of clapping.
It was a noisy event.
The past five years have been hottest on record. Climate change is accelerating, so the time to step up the move to a truly sustainable grid is here. It is nothing less than a matter of survival of the species. As Musk spoke, pictures of San Francisco's recent orange days, when you could see 100 feet, flashed up on the screen. A hundred-fold increase in our efforts is called for.
The good news is that 76% of the new electricity generation built this year will be wind and solar, or 32 GW. In 2010, 46% of electricity was coal-generated. Today it is half. Trump promises to rescue the industry came to nothing.
Even if 100% of new electricity generation comes from alternatives, it would take 25 years to convert the entire national grid. There is not enough time left to accomplish this to avoid environmental catastrophe.
The three legs of the future of power are solar power, solar storage, and electric cars.
Tesla has made a major contribution so far in all of these, with over 1 million electric cars produced, 26 billion electric car miles driven, 5 GWh of stationary batteries installed (I have 40.5 Watts), and 17 terawatt-hours of solar power generated.
The Shanghai Tesla factory went from a pile of dirt to mass production in an amazing 15 months, and that facility will soon be doubled in size.
“Tera is the new giga,” said Elon. A terawatt is 1,000 times more power than a gigawatt.
The world needs 10 terawatt-hours of new battery production a year to transition the global car fleet to all-electric in 15 years. We need 1,600 fold growth in battery efficiencies to convert the entire grid to electric. That means we need 25 terawatt-hours a year for 15 years. That is Tesla’s goal.
Tesla’s present Nevada Gigafactory is producing only 1.5 terawatt-hours a year in batteries. Would need 135 more factories to meet the above demand with current technology.
To achieve this, Tesla needs to make cars cheaper. The cost per kilowatt is not improving fast enough.
Tesla’s current plan to cut battery costs by half working by improving every one of the dozens of steps of production.
The newest battery design brings 6X increase in energy density levels, will begin mass production in a year in Fremont. Interestingly, Musk relied on existing paper and mottle mass production as models. The design is too complex to describe here but is brilliant. It’s easier to understand with the graphics found in the YouTube video below.
Down the road, dry electrodes will bring further 10X improvement in power. New machine designs and processes will bring a 7X improvement in output. Tesla’s plan is to achieve a further 75% improvement in the cost of production. The eventual goal is to make Tesla the best manufacturer on earth.
By 2022, Tesla will see a 100 GWh production increase in batteries and 3 terawatt-hours by 2030. That is a 30-fold jump.
Silicon is the most abundant element in the world after oxygen and will be used to replace existing graphite chemistry. Moving from processed silicon to raw silicon will deliver cheaper anodes and an 18% cheaper battery. Cathodes will use nickel-manganese allowing an 80% cost reduction.
Some 100% of batteries are now recycled, will eventually become sole source of raw materials for new batteries. Thus, it will become a super-efficient closed cycle.
Tesla will also reduce car costs by casting the battery as a single piece of the car body. The aircraft industry first accomplished this with fuel tanks during WWII. This alone would eliminate unnecessary 370 parts.
The next upgrade in design and manufacturing will take three years to implement and deliver a 69% reduction in cost creating a “compelling” $25,000 car that is fully autonomous and will not need maintenance.
This chops the lifetime cost of Teslas by half when compared to conventional gasoline-powered engines. If Musk can deliver on this promise, General Motors (GM) and Ford Motors (F) are toast.
Tesla is also developing a new supercar. The Tesla Plaid Model S will have a 520-mile range, go from zero to 60 miles per hour in under two seconds, and offer a positively bestial 1100 horsepower motor. You can order yours at the end of 2021. No price was mentioned, but my guess is somewhere north of $250,000.
I already have the Model X with “ludicrous” mode that catapults from 0 to 60 in 2.9 seconds and just that presents a major whiplash risk.
After the event finished, it was clear that the stock market was not drinking the Kool-Aide, Tesla shares diving 5%. It turned out to be a big “buy the rumor, sell the news” event. When traders hear the words “long-term” they glaze over and run a mile.
We may need to wait for the next cycle of upgrades and product announcements to achieve a true upside breakout.
Global Market Comments
September 23, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO THE NEXT DECADE OF TECH INVESTMENT),
(AMZN), (AAPL), (NFLX), (AMD), (INTC), (TSLA), (GOOG), (FB)
Last weekend, I had dinner with one of the oldest and best performing technology managers in Silicon Valley. We met at a small out of the way restaurant in Oakland near Jack London Square so no one would recognize us. It was blessed with a very wide sidewalk out front and plenty of patio tables to meet current COVID-19 requirements.
The service was poor and the food indifferent as are most dining experiences these days. I ordered via a QR code menu and paid with a touchless Square swipe.
I wanted to glean from my friend the names of the best tech stocks to own for the long term right now, the kind you can pick up and forget about for a decade or more, a “lose behind the radiator” portfolio.
To get this information I had to promise the utmost confidentiality. If I mentioned his name, you would say “oh my gosh!”
Amazon (AMZN) is now his largest holding, the current leader in cloud computing. Only 5% of the world’s workload is on the cloud presently so we are still in the early innings of a hyper-growth phase there.
By the time you price in all the transportation, labor, and warehousing costs, Amazon breaks even with its online retail business at best. The mistake people make is only focusing on this lowest of margin businesses.
It’s everything else that’s so interesting. While its profitability is quite low compared to the other FANG stocks, Amazon has the best growth outlook. For a start, third party products hosted on the Amazon site, most of what Amazon sells, offer hefty 30% margins.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has grown from a money loser to a huge earner in just four years. It’s a productivity improvement machine for the world’s cloud infrastructure where they pass all cost increases on to the customer who, once in, buys more services.
Apple (AAPL) is his second holding. The company is in transition now justifying a massive increase in earnings multiples, from 9X to 40X. It now trades at 30X. The iPhone has become an indispensable device for people around the world, and it is the services sold through the phone that are key.
The iPhone is really not a communications device but a selling device, be it for apps, storage, music, or third party services. The cream on top is that Apple is at the very beginning of an enormous replacement cycle for its installed base of over one billion phones. Moving from up-front sales to a lifetime subscription model will also give it the boost.
Half of these are more than four years old, positively geriatric in the tech world. More than half of these are outside the US. 5G will add a turbocharger.
Netflix (NFLX) is another favorite. The world is moving to “over the top” content delivery and Netflix is already spending twice as much on content as any other company in this area. This is why the company won an amazing 21 Emmys this year. This will become a much more profitable company as it grows its subscriber base and amortizes its content costs. Their cash flow is growing by leaps and bounds, which they can use to buy back stock or pay a dividend.
Generally speaking, there is no doubt that the pandemic has pulled forward some future technology demand with the stay-at-home trend. But these companies have delivered normal growth in a hard world. Tech growth will accelerate in 2021 and 2022.
5G will enable better Internet coverage for everyone and will increase the competitiveness of the telecom companies. Factory automation will be another big area for 5G, as it is reliable and secure and can be integrated with artificial intelligence.
Transportation will benefit greatly. Connected self-driving cars will be a big deal, improving safety and the quality of life.
My friend is not as worried about government threatened breakups as regulation. There will be more restraints on what these companies can do going forward. Europe, which has no big tech companies if its own, views big American tech companies simply as a source of revenues through fines. Driving companies out of business through cutthroat competition is simply not something Europeans believe in.
Google (GOOG) is probably more subject to antitrust proceedings both in Europe and the US. The founders have both retired to pursue philanthropic activities, so you no longer have the old passion (“don’t be evil”).
Both Google and Facebook (FB) control 70% of the advertising market between them, which is inherently a slow-growing market, expanding at 5% a year at best. (FB)’s growth has slowed dramatically, while it has reversed at (GOOG).
He is a big fan of (AMD), one of his biggest positions, which is undervalued relative to the other chip companies. They out-executed Intel (INTC) over the last five years and should pass it over the next five years.
He has raised value tech stocks from 15% to 30% of his portfolio. Apple used to be one of these. Semiconductor companies today also fall into this category. Samsung with 40% margins in its memory business is a good example. Selling for 10X earnings, it is ridiculously cheap. It is just a matter of time before semiconductors get rerated too.
He was an early owner of Tesla (TSLA) back in the nail-biting days when it was constantly running out of cash. Now they have the opposite problem, using their easy access to cash through new share issues as a weapon to fight off the other EV startups. Tesla is doing to Detroit what Apple did to the cell phone companies, redefining the car.
Its stock is overvalued now but will become much more profitable than people realize. They also are starting to extract services revenues from their cars, like Apple has. Tesla will grow revenues 30%-50% a year for the next two or three years. They should sell several million of the new small SUV Model Y. Most other companies bringing EVs will fall on their faces.
EVs are a big factor in climate change, even in China, the world’s biggest polluter. In Europe, they are legislating gasoline cars out of existence. If you can make money building cars in Fremont, CA, you can make a fortune building them in China.
Tech valuations are high, there is no doubt about it. But interest rates are much lower by comparison. The Fed is forcing people to buy stocks, enabling these companies to evolve even faster.
When rates rise in a year or so, tech stocks may have to come down. They have a lot more things going for them than against them. The customers keep coming back for more.
Needless to say, the above stocks should make up your shortlist for LEAPS to buy at the coming market bottom.
Global Market Comments
September 21, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or HERE’S THE BLACK SWAN FOR 2020),
(SPY), (INDU), (TSLA), (JPM), (TLT), (C),
(V), (GLD), (AAPL), (AMZN), (UUP)
I had the pleasure of meeting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg only last year. She was funny, a great storyteller, and smart as a tack. If she disagreed with you, she pounced like a lion with a prescient one-liner.
She was also a goldmine of historical anecdotes about American history over the past 60 years, recalling incidents seen from her front-row seat as if they had happened yesterday.
She was also frail and rail-thin as if a faint breeze could knock her over at any time. Contracting cancer five times will do this to a person. Assistants helped her walk.
Her unexpected passing is now on the verge of creating a new financial crisis. Any chance of passing further stimulus in the US congress has just turned to ashes. The focus in Washington has turned entirely to the Supreme Court for the rest of 2020.
As a result, tens of thousands more small business will go under, millions of families will be thrown out on to the street, and the Great Depression will drag on. There is nothing left to spike the punch bowl with.
The Dow Average on Monday morning will open down 1,000 points, led by Tesla (TSLA) and the big technology stocks. US Treasury bonds (TLT) will rocket $5. The US dollar (UUP) will soar on a flight to safety bid.
Traders were already cutting positions and scaling back risk to duck the coming turmoil of the presidential election. We are also trying to front-run a yearend stock selloff prompted by a Biden rise in the capital gains tax from 21% to 40%.
That’s a bit of a moot point as 75% of stock ownership is owned by tax-exempt funds. The remaining 25% is most tied up in institutions that duck the tax by never selling or are embedded on corporate cross ownerships which never change.
Now we have uncertainty with a turbocharger, with gasoline poured in the air intake (pilot talk).
With Democrats refighting the battle of the Alamo, I doubt that Trump can ram through a third Supreme Court nomination. Remember how the last one went, for Brett Cavanaugh? Filibusters alone could delay proceeding by a month. These are NOT developments that make stocks go up.
If Trump succeeds, it may be a pyrrhic victory, costing Republicans at least five Senate seats, losing a majority, and increasing the margin of a presidential loss. If retired astronaut wins the Senate in Arizona on November 3, only two Republicans need to fold to make a Supreme Court nomination impossible.
It’s not like the stock market was in such great shape going into this, the biggest black swan of 2020. The market is being flooded with high priced initial public offerings, some 12 in the coming week alone. Apparently, there is an extreme shortage of high growth large-cap technology stocks and Silicon Valley is more than happy to meet that demand.
Cloud storage player Snowflake (SNOW) saw price talk at $70, an IPO of $120, and a first-day peak of $275. This created $70 billion in market value with the stroke of a key.
Of course, flooding the market like this ends up killing the goose thay laid the golden eggs and is a common signal of market tops. Existing stock holdings have to be sold to buy new ones, taking markets south.
We have already seen the 30-day and 50-day moving averages broken, and sights are clearing set on the 200-day. They would take us to a full top to bottom correction in the indexes of 20%. That would take the S&P 500 from $3,600 to $3,000, The Dow Average from $26,298 to $24,000, and Apple from $137 to $84.
If the Volatility Index (VIX) goes over $50, I’ll start sending out lists of very low risk, high return two-year options LEAPS like I did last time.
The Fed says no interest rate hike until 2023 and promises to heat up the economy even more than previously. The long-term average 2% inflation target I reaffirmed. Jay sees a net shrinkage of the US GDP this year ay 3.7%. Since governor Jay Powell promised to run the economy hot weeks ago, ten-year US treasury bonds have only eked out a paltry rise to 72 basis points.
The market isn’t buying it. It’s tough to beat ever hyper-accelerating technology that crushes prices. Still, I’ll keep selling short bond rallies because it’s just a matter of time before the government crushes the market with massive over-issuance. Sell every rally in the (TLT). The Fed put lives! Buy stocks on dips.
Election chaos is starting to price in, with the US dollar (UUP) getting an undeserved bid in a flight to safety trade and stock down 1,000 points from the week’s high. All sorts of Armageddon scenarios are making the rounds now and traders are pulling out of the market to protect hard-earned profits. For details watch the final season of House of Cards, where martial law is declared in Ohio to reverse an election outcome. No kidding!
Citigroup announced a surprise $900 million loss. I can’t wait for the excuse for this surprise, out-of-the-blue “operational error.' It’s most likely an expensive hack. It’s the kind of black swan that can hit you any time if you are a short-term trader. Long term investors should be buying the dip in (C).
China’s Retail Sales rise for the first time in 2020, up 0.5% in August. First into the pandemic, first out. Keeping Corona deaths to 4,000 was also a big help. It’s proof that economies CAN recover post-COVID-19. Buy China on dips (BABA), (BIDU). Stocks there will enjoy a huge post-election rally once the trade war winds down.
US Consumer Sentiment hits six-month high, up from a 75 estimate to 78.9. The University of Michigan report is proof that those who have money are spending it. Another green shoot. Didn’t help stocks today though.
Oil collapsed 15% on the dimming outlook for the global economy. Not even massive well shutdowns caused by this week’s hurricane could boost prices. Avoid all energy plays like the plague.
Morgan Stanley says the trading boom won’t last forever, says my former employer coming off of a record quarter. Too much of a good thing won’t last forever. Make hay while the sun shines.
The value rotation is on, with large scale selling of technology stocks and the chasing of banks and other recovery plays. It’s been a long time coming and could well persist until the end of the year. The option expiration at the close on Friday was exacerbating all moves, which is why I dumped my last two tech positions days prior. It’s too early to buy tech again on dips. Wait for a pre-election meltdown.
Copper hit a new four-year high as traders bet on an accelerating recovery in the global economy. My favorite, Freeport McMoRan, the world’s largest copper producer and a long time Mad Hedge subscriber is soaring, up 257% from the market lows. China, which is done with the Coronavirus and whose economy is recovering rapidly, has returned as a major buyer of the red metal. Keep buying (FCX) on dips.
When we come out the other side of this, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 400% or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old.
My Global Trading Dispatch clocked its third blockbuster week in a row. I cashed in on my winnings with longs in (JPM), (TLT), (V), (GLD), (AAPL), and (AMZN), rang the cash register with shorts in (TLT) and (SPY), and booked a small loss in a long in (C). This took my cash position from 0% to 80% and I am looking to go to 100% in the coming week. The risk/reward in the market now is terrible.
Notice that I am shifting my longs away from tech and toward domestic recovery plays.
That takes our 2020 year-to-date back up to a blistering 35.74%, versus -2.93% for the Dow Average. September stands at a nosebleed 9.19%. That takes my eleven-year average annualized performance back to 36.43%. My 11-year total return is back for another new all-time high at 392.12%. My trailing one-year return popped back up to 54.87%.
The coming week is a big one for housing data. The only numbers that really count for the market are the number of US Coronavirus cases and deaths, which you can find here.
On Monday, September 21 at 8:30 AM EST, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index is out.
On Tuesday, September 22 at 10:00 AM EST, Existing Home Sales for July are released.
On Wednesday, September 23 at 9:00 AM EST, the US Home Price Index for July is printed. At 10:30 AM EST, the EIA Cushing Crude Oil Stocks are out.
change.
On Thursday, September 24 at 8:30 AM EST, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced. At 10:00 AM the all-important Existing Home Sales for July are published.
On Friday, September 25, at 8:30 AM EST, US Durable Goods Sales for August are disclosed. At 2:00 PM The Bakers Hughes Rig Count is released.
As for me, I’ll climb up on the roof this weekend and clean the ash from my 59 solar panels. The fallout from the nearby raging forest fires has been so extreme that it has cut my solar output by 25%.
It’s not just me. Over a million homes in California have the same problem, putting a serious dent in the state’s electricity production.
Stay healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
September 18, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(SEPTEMBER 16 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(INDU), (TSLA), (DIS), (NKLA),
(GM), (PYPL), (FXI), (XOM), (KCAC),
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the September 16 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader. Keep those questions coming!
Q: Is the Russian vaccine real or just a publicity stunt?
A: I would say it’s real. Russia is much more prone to experimentation, that is a luxury they have. If they kill off a million people because the vaccine is no good, there is no litigation risk. So, it may work, but it is a high-risk drug.
Q: What will a contested election mean for the markets?
A: The Dow (INDU) will be down 2,000 points in one day. But I don’t think it’s going to happen; I think the media has greatly exaggerated the chances of a Trump victory. I don’t think there are any undecided votes now. The only way you’d be undecided by now is if you’ve lived in a care for the past four years. The market has got this completely wrong, and once it’s clear who won, you’ll get a monster rally in the stock market that goes until this year’s end, and the game from here until election day is to try to get into the market as low as possible before then.
Q: Do you think big tech is a crowded trade, and what do you think will eventually happen?
A: It is an extremely crowded trade; eventually it will go down big. If you remember the Dotcom Bubble, everything dropped 80% or went to zero. Having said that, we’ve never had this amount of Fed stimulus before, so we should go higher first, especially after the election. The fact is that the big techs are growing gangbusters—30%, 40%, or 50% a year so spectacular multiples are called for. This is the argument Mad Hedge Fund Trader has been making for the last 10 years, by the way.
Q: Do you think the residential real estate market will crash before or after the election?
A: I would say well after the election because I don't think it will crash until 2030. All these millennial buyers are out there in droves, interest rates are at record lows, and you have this massive work-at-home trend going on, which is going to be largely permanent. So, all of a sudden, the demand is huge for homes that you can convert into a kitchen with 4 home offices. A lot of companies have discovered this to be a very profitable way to work. So, I don’t see any crash happening in housing, perhaps even in my lifetime. We’re not seeing all the excesses in housing now that we saw in the Great Recession 13 years ago.
Q: How will Joe Biden’s election change the wealth of America’s finances?
A: Move money from the extremely rich to the middle class. That is the one-liner. It looks like any tax increases for individuals who make less than $400,000 a year will be minimal. The big hit will be those that make over a billion a year, and that category could even see Roosevelt level tax rates of 90% or more.
Q: What do you think of the condo market in San Francisco?
A: It is terrible now with prices down about 20%. We’re seeing exactly the same thing in New York City as people flee to the suburbs, and in the meantime, we have bidding wars going on in the outer suburbs. This will continue for about another year until people pour back into the city once the pandemic all-clear signal is given. That may be in about two years.
Q: Tesla (TSLA) has retraced half of its recent losses; do you think it will go another leg higher?
A: At this point, Tesla is an extremely high-risk stock. I would only want to be day trading it. The overnight gaps are so enormous. At $500 a share, it’s discounting a best-case scenario for 2025 already, so that is kind of stretching it. Better to buy the car than the stock.
Q: Do you have any other names in the EV market to recommend?
A: Absolutely not; most of the other entrants in the market have no cars and no mass production abilities, which is the real challenge, and are lagging Tesla with terrible designs. Tesla essentially has the lock on that market, and a 10-year head start. They are accelerating their technology and the only other serious producer in volume is General Motors (GM) with their Bolt, but that hasn’t really taken off. It is cheap at $30,000 but the next thing to happen is that Tesla will drop the price of their model Y below the price of the Bolt which will kill it off. But no, I wouldn't touch any of these other things. The future is all electric. Many people also underestimate the decade-long torture Tesla had to go through to get to where they are. I remember it because I have been with Elon from day one during his PayPal (PYPL) days.
Q: Would you sell Disney (DIS) here at $130? The economic climate for 2021 doesn’t look great for public mass entertainment.
A: That is all true, but their streaming business, Disney Plus, is taking off like a rocket. They just released Mulan, which I watched over the weekend with my kids and loved it. It will undoubtedly be the largest streaming movie release in history once we get a look at the numbers next month. So, they are moving into the online business at an incredible speed, and it may be enough to offset the enormous losses they are running from their hotels, cruise ships, and parks. And also, this is a reopening play big time—one of the few quality reopening plays out there—and the only reason to sell Disney here is if you think the corona epidemic will get dramatically worse and stay worse well into next year.
Q: What about battery names?
A: Batteries are still either owned by giant companies like Tesla or they’re small startups that have a nasty habit of going bankrupt. There really aren't any good clean publicly-listed plays on batteries in the markets these days.
Q: What about a short on Nikola (NKLA)?
A: If I were an aggressive day trader, that would be right in my sights. You can expect nothing but bad news to come out about Nikola. Taking a truck with no motor and then rolling it downhill and calling it a successful trial just invites short-sellers by the hoards. It’s already off 65% from its peak.
Q: Why do you say there's no future in hydrogen?
A: You need to build a large national hydrogen distribution network to make this economically viable and it’s just too expensive. Electricity infrastructure is already in place and just needs to be upgraded and modernized. Electricity is also infinitely scalable in improvements in power output, but hydrogen is only capable of straight-line improvement. No contest.
Q: What about the Solid-State Batteries?
A: I actually wrote a piece about this earlier this week. Solid-State Batteries could allow a 20-fold increase in battery efficiency for cars and houses and that may only be 2 or 3 years off as there are several in development now. QuantumScape (KCAC) is the listed leader there. Bill Gates is a major investor (click here for the link).
Q: Can we play a short-term bounce in big oil like ExxonMobile (XOM)?
A: You can, but remember, this is a trading play only, not an investment play. The long-term future for these companies is to go to zero or to get into another line of business, like alternative energy.
Q: What will happen to the market after the Fed speaks today?
A: My guess is stocks will rally as long as Jerome doesn’t say anything horrendous like “this is your last freebie; I’m raising rates at the next meeting,” which he is not going to say at the last Fed meeting before the presidential election.
Q: I am trying to get through all the fluff of misinformation out there; I want your opinion on who is winning the US-China (FXI) trade war.
A: The simple answer is that China has been winning all along. The proof of that is that their economy is growing and ours is shrinking. That’s because China managed to cap their Corona deaths at 4,000 and ours are at 200,000. In the meantime, the technology improvements in China have been enormous over the last 4 years, so none of the trade war issues, which by the way, were all focused on the lowest margin businesses that China did, have had any effect. If anything, it’s forced China to offshore their low margin business to cheap countries like India, Vietnam, and Bangladesh so they disappear as China trade. I always thought the China trade war was a mistake—it’s always better to trade with someone than go to war with them. I’ve done both and prefer the former.
Q: Do you think Biden is bullish for stocks, considering all the regulations that will be put back?
A: I don’t think there will be many regulations put back except for the energy industry, which has essentially operated regulation-free for the last three years. All of those controls—on flaring, on pipelines, and so on—those will all get put back because they were implemented by executive order, which can be reversed with the stroke of a pen. I don’t see much regulation anywhere else in the economy coming back. And in fact, since Joe Biden pulled ahead in the polls in May, the stock market has gone up almost every day. So clearly, the market thinks Joe Biden will be positive for stocks, and the possibility that he might implement an extra $6 trillion dollars in fiscal spending once in office is the reason why. You have to look at what these people do, not what they say. And my bet is that since Trump set the precedent for record deficit spending, Biden will continue that. And we’ll only worry about things like deficits when the inflation rate tops 5%, when interest rates go back to 10% in five years—all the reasons that caused the massive rise in deficits during the late 70s and early 80s.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Sitting Pretty