HERE is the markets today.....pre-open. Stock futures trade broadly flat after China exports slump https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stoc...-slump-stock-market-news-today-115752895.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "US stock futures were broadly flat on Wednesday morning, after a surprise drop in Chinese exports and economic headwinds flagged by the OECD stoked fresh concerns about global growth. Contracts on the S&P 500 (^GSPC) ticked up 0.03%. Those on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) and on the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) were lower, down 0.06% and 0.05% respectively. Official trade data released Wednesday added to the concerns around the post-pandemic recovery in the world's second-biggest economy, which have weighed on global markets. China’s exports slumped 7.5% from a year ago in May, compared with economists' expectations for a 0.4% decline. “Weaker global trade is not a new story, but it is surprising how quickly China's reopening boost has faded, with backlogs of work supporting export numbers until now even as other countries have continued to see demand for their goods wane,” Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, wrote in note Wednesday. “With China's reopening boom flagging so quickly, pressure is set to intensify on the leadership to announce new stimulus measures in a bid to revitalize the economy again,” the analyst added. While the OECD lifted its global 2023 growth forecast slightly to 2.7% in its latest economic outlook Wednesday, the group identified potential drags on future recovery, as inflation persists and interest-rate hikes weigh. Meanwhile, investors are closely monitoring whether the S&P 500 will enter a new bull market. Treasury yields crept lower after the US Treasury said it plans to boost the size of its coming bill sales, which put pressure on short-dated bonds. The yield on the two-year yield fell to 4.5%, while that on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury note dropped to 3.68%. Elsewhere, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s stepped-up crackdown remained in focus for investors, after the regulator brought lawsuits against top cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase (COIN) and Binance. Bitcoin’s price (BTC-USD) was trading below $27,000 early Wednesday. In single stock moves, shares of Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) climbed more than 2% following the news that the Environmental Protection Agency would exclude EV makers from the Renewable Fuels Standard, Reuters reported. NovoCure Limited (NVCR) shares rallied more than 4% amid a debate over its "profound" impact in lung cancer treatment. United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) shares tumbled more than 24% after the grocery wholesaler posted third-quarter profit that came in short of expectations, while cutting its full-year outlook." MY COMMENT As to China.....no one can trust anything coming out of that country. At this point I just dont even care.......they are FRAUD CENTRAL. I am also looking for India to replace them as our market of choice as well as our manufacturing country of choice......along with Viet Nam. OBVIOUSLY there is once again NOTHING going on today. It is going to once again be a very flat and uninspired open and a very shallow day today. BORING....is actually a good thing.....compared to nail biting terror.
It is AMAZING to me that the financial media is now MUTE when it comes to the FED. Not a peep. Good news. The FED constantly trashing the markets is now losing its power. No one cares anymore.....the FED is basically done.....whether they do one or two more hikes or not. We have now made it through the tunnel and are out in the warm light on the other side. The light that we were seeing while in the tunnel was NOT a speeding train.....barreling down the tracks straight at us....while we were trapped in the tunnel with nowhere to run. It was the warm sunshine of a rising BULL MARKET.
What a MASSIVE open for me. My PLTR is up 10% just today. I’ve never seen a stock that keeps on adding 2 digit returns on a semi weekly basis. Was watching a show about NVDA yesterday, nice to see that the company is developing a center here at home in AZ, we need this to happen asap. The reliance they have on Taiwan is a big concern for that company, I can only imagine what kind of a disaster we will have here if China just as much as HINT about Taiwan integration. I also found it surprising that the Biden administration is continuing the tariff wars with china, something that I thought his administration blamed trump for doing. Just goes to show you that sometimes what you hear in the news is never about the real story, just a game of two tribes.
Yes. Zukodany you have been slaying the markets this year! I enjoy seeing it and the others that are literally kicking booty. I agree with the comments about many of these well known and widely invested in companies finally begin to recognize the risk associated with some of these other countries. I understand the whole global economy position, but some of them need to be in a better position and reduce some of this risk. Slowly, we are starting to see some of it. I think the last two or three years have opened the door to some things that really exposed the dangers of it. We need to continue to improve in this area.
Yep, the FED is in their "blackout period" so no world tours and microphones for them. We should have a "blackout period" for the media as well at least once or twice a month. Next week will be the same old ginned up hype that we have dealt with ad nauseum. What cracks me up about most of it, is how the media deals with it. All of the special reports, little red breaking news tickers, pundits, experts, and fortune tellers all knocking each other over like a bunch of incoherent goobers.
Interesting what’s happening with AI and the markets. You basically have a new branch of technology, which premise is to accelerate DEFLATION by minimizing labor and adding revenue, fighting against INFLATION which was caused by the feds rate hike. This war which is unfolding in front of our eyes WILL have a winner, and this time it may not be who you come to expect it to be. Having said that, I’m expecting the feds to raise the rates this month, and possibly the next. I’m sure that they aren’t happy right now with the lead AI has on them
And just like that - all of todays gains are gone - poof! It’s quite alright, you can’t win all the time!
You and I are in the same world today.....Zukodany. I ended the day with a medium loss. I had six of ten stocks DOWN. Those that were UP are.....NKE, HD, HON, and TSLA. I got hammered by the SP500 today by 1.29%. A worthless shallow day for me.
Now on to what is important......the painting that I just picked up a few days ago. It is in a "Louis" style French frame......gold and white. Very feminine and bedroom looking. so I needed a new frame. I went through the catalog of my frame company and ordered a new, hand carved, Taos style frame in 22c gold. I am excited to see it in person and on the painting. It is going to look so much better. The frame that I am going to remove was the original frame from about 80 years ago......but it is not worth keeping. I will remove an old label from the shop that did the original frame since it has the old style format of phone number from 80 years ago......a two digit exchange and than 5 numbers. I will attach that old label to the new frame to preserve it as part of the history of the painting. I have done a draft of a write up of the history of the painting all the way back to the artist. I will include a photo of the painting in the old frame in that paper. I will also include some photos of the original owner of the painting...he and/or his wife owned it for 70 years......before it passed to one of his children and than to me.
Here is how some are seeing the market we are in. Wall Street strategists get more bullish as stocks rise. They're still not optimistic enough. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall...re-still-not-optimistic-enough-192828322.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Strategists still aren't bullish enough on stocks— at least not according to Fundstrat's Head of Research Tom Lee. Lee has been sitting on a 4,750 year-end price target for the S&P 500 and watching analysts slowly increase their calls as the S&P 500 approaches bull market territory. "The sell-side bearishness might be the most extreme I have seen in 30 years," Lee wrote in a note on Wednesday. Despite several S&P 500 target boosts from prominent Wall Street analysts, Lee points out only five of the 20 analysts he's tracking see upside from the S&P 500's current level near 4,300. Morgan Stanley recently called for a 16% decline in earnings by the end of 2023, and investors are net short S&P 500 futures at their highest level since 2007. So as Lee puts it, things seem "gloomy." But there have been some signs of light amid the increasingly murky sky. The team at Goldman Sachs recently cut its likelihood of recession this year to 25%, down from 35%. The firm also believes the current artificial intelligence boom addsa material boost to earnings and therefore the S&P 500, too. BMO Capital Markets chief investment strategist Brian Belski agrees. "The AI hype surrounding the Tech sector is real and likely to propel future growth for many stocks within the space," Belski wrote in a note that included a S&P 500 price target bump on Monday. "So, despite an extremely strong (year-to-date) sector performance, we believe the momentum, even if it slows a bit, is likely persist for the foreseeable future." Truist Co-Chief Investment Officer Keith Lerner is increasingly bullish, too. He jacked up his S&P 500 year-end "range" to 3,800-4,500 from a range of 3,400-4,300. As Lerner points out, earnings are holding up better than feared with first-quarter earnings declining less than expected and second-quarter downward revisions trending below historical averages, per Factset. Lerner sees a "meaningful decline" below 3,800 for the S&P 500 only coming if there's a tech sell-off. Otherwise, things may head toward the high end of his range. "The technology sector is trading at rich valuations, and concentration at the top is a risk," Lerner wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday. "But this is not 2000, not even close, based on valuations and returns. Although tech is extended on a short-term basis and we would be more inclined to add on pullbacks as opposed to aggressively chasing at current levels, we still see the sector as longer-term leadership." The history of bull markets supports Lee's point that everyone should be expecting higher returns in the second half of 2023 if the S&P 500 can tick slightly higher and close above 4,292.44. Carson Group Chief Market Strategist Ryan Detrick points out that once stocks gain 20% off their lows — officially entering a bull market — good things happen. Detrick tracked 13 times stocks bounced up 20% off a 52-week low. In the first thee months stocks were usually choppy, with the benchmark index actually falling 0.5% on average in the first month upon hitting bull market territory. But in the long run, things have been overly positive. After rallying 20% from market lows, the S&P 500 averaged a 10% return over the next six months and 17.7% over the next 12 months. "As we’ve been saying this full year, we continue to expect stocks to do well this year and the upward move is firmly in place and studies like this do little to change our opinion,"Detrick said. History shows once stocks enter a bull market, the rally normal continues." MY COMMENT I remain BULLISH of course. In fact I see the extreme negative sentiment as a good thing......a very nice indicator of the opposite that most people are expecting. No market goes straight up.....we will have various set-backs and perhaps even a correction or two before year end....but that is just NORMAL. My positivity is seen in the fact that a few days ago I added more shares of NVDA....which I see as a TEN YEAR hold.
I TOTALLY agree with this open letter to Amazon. Amazon is pursuing ‘too many ideas’ and needs to focus on best opportunities, analyst says in letter to Jassy https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/07/amazon-is-pursuing-too-many-ideas-bernstein-says-in-open-letter.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Key Points Bernstein analysts published a report on Wednesday that they called an “open letter” to CEO Andy Jassy and the board. In the note, they detailed many of the areas where Amazon has invested without seeing positive results and said the company needs to focus on what it does best. “What we’ve seen recently is a company simply pursuing too many ideas, with weaker ideas taking” resources away from businesses that work, they wrote. There are better places for Amazon to put their capital to work, says Bernstein’s Mark Shmulik In its quest to upend everything from health care and grocery stores to internet satellites, Amazon has become too unfocused and is missing out on opportunities in its core businesses, according to Bernstein analysts, who on Wednesday published what they called an “open letter” to CEO Andy Jassy and the board. Amazon remains dominant in e-commerce and cloud computing with Amazon Web Services. In some other areas, however, the company has spent heavily without seeing the results, the analysts said. “We fully support Amazon’s efforts to uncover and capture the next AWS-sized opportunity,” wrote Bernstein’s Mark Shmulik, who has an outperform rating on the stock. “But what we’ve seen recently is a company simply pursuing too many ideas, with weaker ideas taking away the oxygen, capital, and most importantly focus from the truly disruptive initiatives that ‘only Amazon can do.’” Amazon’s stock performance compared with its “closest mega-cap peers” — Apple, Microsoft and Google — has also left investors wanting, Shmulik said. Amazon shares are up 50% year to date, but they’ve underperformed top peers by about 52% over a five-year period, he said. The stock was down 3.6% to $122.12 as of early afternoon New York time. Shmulik urged Amazon to get back to its “Day One” mentality, referring to a phrase championed by Amazon founder and Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos, who was succeeded by Jassy in July 2021. Bezos famously said a Day One mentality would help Amazon stave off its demise, and described it as continuing to innovate rapidly like a startup, no matter how large the company becomes. “Day 2 is stasis,” Bezos said in a 2017 shareholder letter. “Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.” Amazon should “divest, seek outside funding, or trim spend” in health care and its nascent low Earth orbit satellite venture, called Project Kuiper, Shmulik wrote. He pointed to Amazon’s multiyear effort to break into health care, before abandoning efforts like its Care telehealth service, Halo health and fitness band, and a joint health-care venture called Haven. Kuiper “appears even more extreme as an investment area,” according to Shmulik, with Amazon committing $10 billion to build out the initiative. Google’s lack of success with its Project Loon, Fiber and Fi efforts signals “capital intensive low-margin utilities aren’t worth the effort regardless of how ‘cool’ the technology may be,” he wrote. Amazon should even take a page out of Alphabet’s book and strip out Kuiper, health care and possibly Alexa into “other bets,” Shmulik said. Doing so, he says, would show a “far healthier and more profitable core business” and wouldn’t detract from the company’s effort to “build the next AWS.” Shmulik is also skeptical of Amazon’s ongoing efforts to expand in international markets like Brazil, Singapore and India, where competition remains stiff. He calls it a case of throwing “good money after bad,” despite the strategic value that those markets may hold. When it comes to Whole Foods, Fresh supermarkets and Go cashierless convenience stories, Amazon needs to “make a call on physical grocery,” Shmulik wrote. Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, and has continued to build out its grocery offerings on its website, while launching other experimental shops. Recently, the company paused further expansion of its Fresh and Go stores as Jassy looks to cut costs. Instead of continuing to “tinker with” its Fresh and Go stores, Shmulik said Amazon should “purchase a proven concept such as potential divested KR/ACI stores,” referring to the stores Kroger and Albertsons’ are selling off as part of their planned merger. Amazon should focus on its core strengths and keep pushing into other areas where it’s gained traction, Shmulik said, encouraging a continued build-out of its advertising and media arms, as well as its Buy With Prime service, which allows websites off of Amazon to take advantage of its Prime delivery benefits. The current scattershot approach is confusing to shareholders and needs to be cleared up to stem continued underperformance, Shmulik added, calling out uncertainty around where Amazon falls in the artificial intelligence race. “We get investor questions today asking ‘is AWS in last place in AI?’, ‘is retail actually a profitable business?‘, and even ‘do we want Andy on the earnings call?’” Shmulik wrote. “It points to one underlying issue: Amazon doesn’t own its own narrative.” An Amazon spokesperson didn’t provide a comment for this story but pointed to Jassy’s shareholder letter in April that addressed some of the issues in Bernstein’s note. In his letter, Jassy said the company had spent several months analyzing businesses and determining “whether we had conviction about each initiative’s long-term potential” to bolster revenue and operating income. Regarding the international expansion, Jassy said “these new countries take a certain amount of fixed investment to get started and to scale, but we like the trajectory they’re on.” The letter said the company needs a “broader physical store footprint” to serve more people in the grocery market and, in terms of Kuiper, the business “represents a very large potential opportunity for Amazon” and is initially capital intensive, similar to AWS." MY COMMENT AGREE COMPLETELY. In addition the company has been bleeding executive talent for a couple of years now. They need to get their act together over the next four quarters or look for a new CEO that can produce for shareholders.
I just read my previous post and needed to make a correction. It’s not AI vs Feds, but rather AI vs the government (which essentially created inflation by access stimulus and remedying it by getting fed involvement through rate hikes)
I haven’t made any trades or changes. So my current holdings are: SPY / SSSYX RGAGX MLAIX Costco Apple The funds are in mostly pretax accounts. I will say that during the recent market turbulence I had no interest in selling any of my shares as I knew we would recover. I did have a friend who put all his 401k into high yield interest accounts that our 401k offers and I think he lost out on all of the recovery. I think once you know that the market is a revolving door of fear and exuberance then you don’t let those feeling control you.
Well done and well said Jwalker. Has your friend made any comment about pulling all of his money and missing out on the gains?
Same open today as the rest of the week. A shallow and irrelevant market at the moment. HERE is the market today. Stocks flat as investors weigh economic data, GameStop shakeup https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stoc...hakeup-stock-market-news-today-133447244.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Stock were little changed on Thursday morning as investors digested fresh economic data ahead of next week's Federal Reserve meeting and a leadership shakeup at GameStop (GME). The S&P 500 (^GSPC) inched 0.06% higher while the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) rose 0.14% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) hovered near the flatline at the market open. The Nasdaq 100 snapped a 4-day winning streak on Wednesday as the artificial intelligence infused rally appears to have hit a standstill. The S&P 500 has been chasing bull-market territory all week, needing a close above 4,292.44 to officially mark a 20% rally from the index's October 2022 bottom. In single stock moves, GameStop, a meme stock favorite, reported first-quarter earnings and announced the firing of CEO Matthew Furlong as part of the release. GameStop board chairman Ryan Cohen was named executive chairman. Financially, GameStop's first quarter came in worse than Wall Street had hoped for, with revenue of $1.24 billion coming in short of analysts expectations for $1.4 billion. The company didn't hold an earnings call, typically an industry standard, to explain its quarterly results or the executive shakeup. Shares of the company fell nearly 20% at the market open on Thursday. "We remain convinced that GameStop is doomed, with declining physical software sales and a shift of sales to subscription services and digital downloads sealing its fate," Wedbush managing director Michael Pachter wrote in a note to clients on Thursday. "While we think that the chain might have some value if run in order to harvest profits, we don’t see a turnaround on the horizon without capable management." On the economic front, new data from the Department of Labor showed 261,000 jobless claims were filed in the week ending June 3. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting 235,000 claims. Thursday's report marks an increase from the week prior's 233,000 claims. While not considered a major indicator on a weekly basis in the Fed's decision making, this week's jobless claims will be one of the final economic data points for the Federal Reserve ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting set to begin next Tuesday. As of Thursday morning, markets are pricing in a 65% chance that the Federal Reserve pauses its historic interest rate hiking campaign at that meeting, per the CME FedWatch Tool." MY COMMENT NOTHING going on at the moment. With the FED next week and no news happening the markets are lingering and aimlessly floating. I believe we are now seeing a stand off in the stock markets. Money on the sidelines is just siting and not making any move to come into the markets. At the same time those in the markets already are just siting. The pause that refreshes? (remember that one?) Markets can not go crazy up all the time. In the old days we would say the markets are simply consolidating the recent gains. If we get the right commentary from the FED next week....we will head back up. Markets move in spurts and pauses......this is nothing odd or unusual. What counts is how the market action looks over the long term which is overwhelmingly UP.......in terms of PROBABILITIES.
This is a strange story......but considering our government bureaucracy....I tend to believe it. Robinhood Joins Coinbase in Saying It Tried to 'Come In and Register' Like SEC Wanted https://finance.yahoo.com/news/robinhood-joins-coinbase-saying-tried-180908883.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "With Coinbase (COIN) and Binance accused of running illegal exchanges by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the latest industry testimony in the U.S. House of Representatives this week revealed that companies had desperately sought the agency’s help to properly register but were turned away. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has a go-to crypto invitation to the firms that are operating without the agency’s approval and oversight, which he’s repeated so often it’s become a messaging mantra: They just need to come in and register. Robinhood Markets' chief compliance lawyer told lawmakers that the popular trading firm was trying to register as a special-purpose broker for digital assets. Dan Gallagher, a former SEC commissioner who has spent a career in securities and corporate law, couldn’t get the agency to guide Robinhood into crypto compliance, though he said the staff seemed to want to help. “When Chair Gensler at the SEC in 2021 said, ‘Come in and register,’ we did,” Gallagher said in his testimony. “We went through a 16-month process with the SEC staff trying to register a special purpose broker dealer. And then we were pretty summarily told in March that that process was over and we would not see any fruits of that effort.” His story echoes longstanding complaints from Coinbase, whose top lawyer was also present at the House Agriculture Committee on Tuesday and is now facing an SEC lawsuit alleging his company offered unregistered securities and didn’t get approval as an exchange. “When Coinbase has attempted to do just that, to talk about how we could register as a broker-dealer or an [alternative trading system] or even as a [national securities exchange] after months and months of discussion, we’re simply dismissed with no response or any counter proposal or ideas coming back from the SEC,” said Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer. Gallagher said one of the regulator’s final sticking points for Robinhood was the lack of registration and disclosures from issuers of tokens that trade on the platform, and Gallagher argued there’s no way for his company to insist that outside issuers meet SEC demands. Sen. Cynthia Lummnis (R-Wyo.) jumped into the debate with a tweet this week promoting her crypto bill: “The SEC has failed to provide a path for digital asset exchanges to register.” The possible counterweight to this argument is the series of approvals of digital-assets broker-dealers by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), an industry-funded oversight arm created by the SEC. The brokerages, including Prometheum Ember Capital LLC, Bosonic Securities and OTC Markets Group, are officially approved to trade crypto securities, a category of assets whose borders aren’t yet well defined. Meanwhile, the companies trying to navigate a path as compliant crypto firms haven’t yet demonstrated a fully formed business model. In comments after his agency’s enforcement actions, Gensler now seems to suggest the U.S. “doesn’t need more digital currency,” and that the industry must fix its compliance problems or he foresees a possibility of it “collapsing like a house of cards.” However, this compliance dispute is no longer in the hands of the industry or the SEC but will be decided in the courts. "We have to go to court and really see, otherwise this industry is just not going to exist in the United States," Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a CNBC interview on Wednesday." MY COMMENT If I was into conspiracy theories I would think that the government does not want to help or support Crypto. In other words they do NOT want Crypto to be out there as an alternative currency or assert. Sounds like a CLASSIC.....CATCH 22.
For those that are NOT aware of the phrase....CATCH 22....above, here you go. "A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations.[1] The term was coined by Joseph Heller, who used it in his 1961 novel Catch-22. Catch-22s often result from rules, regulations, or procedures that an individual is subject to, but has no control over, because to fight the rule is to accept it. Another example is a situation in which someone is in need of something that can only be had by not being in need of it (e.g. the only way to qualify for a loan is to prove to the bank that you do not need a loan). One connotation of the term is that the creators of the "catch-22" situation have created arbitrary rules in order to justify and conceal their own abuse of power." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic)
Looks like I tanked NVDA by adding 15 shares a few days ago. After that they were down for three days in a row. (they are up so far today)
We have been seeing profit taking lately after the BIG tech run up. S&P 500, Nasdaq close lower as traders cash in on latest megacap rally https://finance.yahoo.com/news/futures-inch-lower-fed-policy-102136354.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what i consider important content) "(Reuters) - The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed in negative territory on Wednesday as investors took profits after a months-long megacap stocks run and ahead of key economic and policy events next week. The small-cap index Russell 2000 climbed 1.78% as investors kept moving away from megagap and growth stocks after their strong gains. "Over the past week, we've seen a pretty dramatic outperformance of small caps relative to large caps," said Paul Baiocchi, investment firm SS&C ALPS Advisors chief ETF strategist. "We're seeing that persist here today." U.S. inflation data is expected to show consumer prices eased slightly in May from the previous month but with elevated core prices. Weighing on stocks, the two-year U.S. Treasury yield and benchmark 10-year yield increased after the Bank of Canada raised interest rates, adding to investor jitters about the Federal Reserve's next U.S. interest rate decision. Money market participants now see a 69% chance that the U.S. central bank will skip raising interest rates in its June meeting but will hike in July, down from nearly 77% earlier, according to the CME's Fedwatch tool. Recently, U.S. shares have been boosted by a megacap stocks rally and a stronger-than-expected earnings season, with the S&P 500 up almost 20% from its October 2022 lows. Some analysts expect profit-taking soon in big tech and other major growth stocks. Meanwhile, CBOE Volatility Index hit the lowest close since Feb. 14, 2020. Wells Fargo raised the price target on Netflix shares to $500 from $400, the highest on Wall Street, according to Refinitiv. The streaming company ticked 0.12% higher on the news. Energy index rose 2.65% after oil prices edged higher, while the KBW Regional Banking Index closed at the highest level since March 29. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 91.74 points, or 0.27%, to 33,665.02, the S&P 500 lost 16.33 points, or 0.38%, to 4,267.52 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 171.52 points, or 1.29%, to 13,104.90. Yext Inc soared 38.44% after the New York-based online marketing firm raised its annual earnings forecast. Campbell Soup fell 8.91% after the packaged food maker posted a lower fiscal third-quarter gross margin, dented by high commodity and freight costs. Coinbase shares advanced 3.20% the day after they hit a seven-month low, as the company's CEO reassured customers that their funds were safe and blasted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over its lawsuit. On Tuesday, the SEC sued the largest U.S. crypto exchange, accusing it of operating illegally, without having first registered with regulator. Cathie Wood's Ark Invest bought 419,324 shares of Coinbase on Tuesday. Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.58-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.27-to-1 ratio favored advancers. The S&P 500 posted 22 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 122 new highs and 40 new lows." MY COMMENT I really dont care why something happens on the daily or weekly basis......but profit taking at least makes sense. I do not take profits. As long as I hold a stock I let it simply run. I ride the wave for as long as possible. I saw the POWER of this sort of investing approach in my mom's account. She had a good number of stocks that she owned for 40-50 years. Over that time with dividends being reinvested....she racked up BIG share balances in those stocks. Over the years they went up and down.....and....in and out of favor. BUT....in the end the gains were HUGE. Of course they were top quality companies like Proctor & Gamble and dividend king Phillip Morris.
Looks like there....."MIGHT"....be a recession after all....just not here in the USA. Euro zone enters recession after Germany, Ireland growth revision https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/eur...on-after-germany-ireland-growth-revision.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Key Points Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany and Greece are among the euro economies that reported an economic quarter-on-quarter contraction in the first quarter. The lackluster economic environment also poses a challenge to the European Central Bank, which has been on a hawkish path for the last 12 months. The euro zone entered a recession in the first quarter of this year, and economists are not optimistic for the coming months. The 20-member bloc reported gross domestic product of -0.1% for the first quarter, according to revised estimates from the region’s statistics office, Eurostat, released Thursday. In a first reading, the agency had said the euro zone grew by 0.1% over the first three months of the year. This pronouncement was adjusted down after Germany also cut its growth figures for the same period, and effectively entered a recession. Ireland also made a downward revision to its growth rate, now showing a contraction of almost 5%. Before the weak performance over January-March, the euro zone also contracted by 0.1% in the last quarter of 2022. The two consecutive quarters of negative GDP performance have also dragged the wider region into a technical recession. “News that GDP contracted in the first quarter after all means that the euro zone has already fallen into a technical recession. We suspect that the economy will contract further over the rest of this year,” Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics, said in a note Thursday. Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany and Greece are among the euro economies that reported an economic quarter-on-quarter contraction for the first quarter. Household consumption dropped by 0.3% in the first quarter, highlighting the pressures that consumers are facing amid higher prices. Claus Vistesen of Pantheon Macroeconomics said in a note that the euro zone region is unlikely to see much growth in the months ahead, when he expects a slowdown in investment. The lackluster economic environment also poses a challenge for the European Central Bank, which has been on a hawkish path for the last 12 months and most recently set its main rate at 3.25%. The central bank is due to meet next week, and market players have priced in another 25 basis point hike. A poor economic performance might limit the ECB’s ability to increase rates further in a bid to tackle inflation. ECB officials have nevertheless previously suggested that it is more important to bring down prices than to avoid an economic slowdown. Euro zone bond yields continued to trade largely higher Thursday following the data announcement, as several market players expect further monetary tightening." MY COMMENT I said "might" above since the old definition of a recession.....two quarters of negative growth....was thrown out with the bath water last year when we hit a technical recession here in the USA. I guess that definition is still in use in the EU.
