The Long Term Investor

A medium loss for me today. It was BIG TECH day.....MSFT, AAPL, AMZN, GOOGL, .....were all in the green. All my others were RED. I also lost out to the SP500 today by 0.66%.

 

The market is seeming a little TOPPY to me right now. It seems like we are ready to sit for a while or drop back for a short time. There seems to be a lot of.....resistance and fear...... building right now. It makes no difference if it is justified or not. This is just part of the normal bull market process.

Perhaps part of this is the fact that earnings are over and now there is really nothing going on in terms of fundamentals.....it is just the daily news, economic news, and the other day to day....baloney. Nothing factual to drive the markets or create direction.

It may happen or it may not....no way to tell what the short term will bring.

 

In other words with a.......market vacuum....the space will be filled with a reversion to the prior fear environment and irrational focus on the FED and inflation.

Stocks slump after hot inflation print

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stoc...lump-after-hot-inflation-print-160639297.html

It is also......not helping......that the FED meets next week and that the Ten Year Treasury has been up a little bit lately.

 

I think this view is about right.

Here’s when the Fed is likely to start cutting interest rates, according to investment strategists

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/14/her...cutting-rates-investment-strategists-say.html

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"Key Points

• The U.S. Federal Reserve will likely cut interest rates by a cumulative 0.75 percentage points to 1 point in 2024, investment strategists said Wednesday.
• The Fed will likely achieve a so-called “soft landing” as it navigates interest rate policy, they said.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The U.S. Federal Reserve is likely to start cutting interest rates by the end of the second quarter despite recent “hotter than expected” inflation data, according to Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco.

The U.S. economy is also likely to dodge recession as the Fed calibrates interest rate policy, she and other strategists said Wednesday at Financial Advisor Magazine’s annual Invest in Women conference in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The Fed has raised borrowing costs for consumers and businesses to rein in high inflation during the pandemic era. That has pushed up rates for mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and other forms of lending.

Inflation has declined significantly from its peak in mid-2022. However, it’s still well above the Fed’s 2% target level.

The question has become, at what point — and how quickly — does the central bank start to cut rates in order to avoid plunging the economy into a downturn?

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week that the Fed may not be far off from throttling back.

Despite hotter-than-expected inflation data issued this week, the central bank is likely to start reducing borrowing costs by the end of June, with cumulative cuts of 0.75 percentage point or 1 point in 2024, Hooper said.

History may be a guiding principle, she said. The Fed last raised interest rates in summer 2023; in prior interest-rate-hiking cycles, the Fed began cutting rates about 8½ months later, Hooper said.

Jenny Johnson, president and CEO of Franklin Templeton, also expects the central bank to begin cutting rates this year, though in the second half of 2024 at Fed policy meetings in July or September.

Forecasts have changed from prior months.

Moira McLachlan, senior investment strategist in AllianceBernstein’s wealth strategies group, said the firm had earlier expected five or six cumulative rate cuts this year, but now anticipates three or four.

The firm’s “base case” is cumulative cuts of 1 percentage point in 2024, she said Wednesday.

Strategists expect the U.S. to dodge a recession as it navigates interest rate policy, experiencing what’s known in economic parlance as a “soft landing.”

“A soft landing is our best guess in terms of where we’re going to be,” McLachlan said.

“We’re likely to avoid a recession,” Hooper echoed.

“I do worry [the Fed] may be too late to start cutting,” she said."

MY COMMENT

This is what I see as the....."PROBABILITY"......for rate cuts. The first one will occur in about the June to July time span. I expect that there will probably be three to four.

A cumulative cut this year of 1% will be just about what the doctor ordered.

This means that we are now within about 2-3 months of the first rate cut. We could be in for another EPIC YEAR for investors this year....considering the very strong start to the year and the potential to end the year strong......being carried on the back of rate cuts.

Icing on the cake for the continuing BULL MARKET.

 

I will repeat this....just so everyone on here can work hard to make me some money:

"I am also going to be AWOL.....all next week and about half the week after (March 17 to March 28). We have company coming, and after that family obligations that will take up that time. So I am giving everyone plenty of warning.....I will probably not be posting or if I get a chance it will be very little. I dont want to come back to a correction....so you guys get ready to take over the markets and get me some gains."

BUT.....in the meantime....we have one more market day. So lets hit it hard tomorrow and rack up some more gains for the week.

 

Ramp up those market manipulating phone calls....Zukodany.

BUT......HEY....are you going to be dancing the week away in Miami? Where is EMMETT when we need him?

 

The.....anticipated....day today to end the week.

Stocks higher as Wall Street looks to bounce back

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-market-today-stocks-higher-113235513.html

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"Stock futures were moving higher Friday after Wall Street was rattled by inflation data.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.15% to 38,971, while the S&P 500 advanced 0.19% to 5,163.50, while the tech-laden Nasdaq rose 0.12% to 18,046.75.

Stocks finished lower in the previous session after the producer-price index came in higher than expected. The Dow slipped 0.35%, the S&P 500 lost 0.29% and the Nasdaq gave up 0.3%.

“PPI came in much hotter than expected, driven primarily by energy costs which were up 4.4% on the month,” said Rob Swanke, senior equity strategist for Commonwealth Financial Network. “Energy prices had seen some significant declines over the past three months, so seeing a bounce back is reasonable.”

Swanke said that the Federal Reserve has been keeping a closer eye on some services demand, which rose 0.3% during the month, a decrease from the prior month.

“Services demand has continued to benefit from lower trade prices as we import lower inflation from abroad,” he said. “Overall, following the CPI print earlier this week, this likely continues to provide support for the Fed remaining on pause for the next few meetings and the 10-year is rising slightly on this print.”

The Fed's policy-making Federal Open Market Committee holds its regular monthly meeting this Tuesday and Wednesday.

In company news, shares of Adobe (ADBE) closed 12% lower after-hours Thursday and were starting Friday off in the red after the graphics-software company beat Wall Street's first-quarter estimates but offered disappointing guidance.

McDonald’s (MCD) said on Friday that a technology outage had disrupted operations at many of its outlets worldwide, including Japan and Australia, but said it wasn't a cybersecurity incident, Reuters reported.

Many McDonald's stores in Japan stopped taking in-person and mobile customer orders because of the system disruption, a spokesperson at McDonald's Holdings Company Japan said, adding that the company was working to restore operations soon.

Tesla (TSLA) shares were up 1% after the electric vehicle maker closed down 4.1% on Thursday.

On Friday the market will be looking out for data on consumer sentiment and industrial production."

MY COMMENT

In other words......NOTHING.....going on today of any importance.

As to the FED next week......when will these people sit down, shut up, and go away. STFU. These constant meeting are just ridiculous as is the obsessive focus on them.

No one cared about this GARBAGE in the old days.....especially small retail, long term, investors.

 

OMG......I just heard on the opening of VARNEY that today is the......IDES OF MARCH. We are all DOOMED......DOOMED...I tell you.

 

WOW......I just spent forty five minutes scanning and reading all my usual sites. There is absolutely NOTHING to comment on or post. A RARE day. I like it.

I guess I will have to wait for the markets to open....for something of interest.

 

WOW......I just saw that TSLA....is the WORST PERFORMING stock in the entire SP500 this year. Of course we are ONLY 2.5 months into the year at this moment. Down by 32% since January 1.

Sensational...yes. Meaningful....who knows.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/investing/tesla-growth-stock-elon-musk/index.html

 

AND....as we open....ALL the averages are DOWN. Looks like most of my stocks are in the RED. BUMMER.

 

WOW.....a major VICTORY for me today.....I found a single one of my stocks that is in the GREEN. Good old....HD.

I can now move on with a HAPPY start to the day.

 

An all around CRAPPY close today for me. EVERY stock in the RED. I also got beat by the SP500 by 0.44 today.

Good to more on to a new week....even if I will be totally out of touch for the next EIGHT market days.

 

As to where we are at the end of this week.

DOW year to date +2.65%
DOW five days +0.12%

SP500 year to date +7.89%
SP500 five days +0.10%

NASDAQ 100 year to date +7.78%
NASDAQ 100 five days (-0.76%)

NASDAQ year to date +8.18%
NASDAQ five days (-0.49%)

RUSSELL year to date +1.32%
RUSSELL five days (-1.75%)

My entire account showed a slight loss this week. Last week my entire account year to date was at.....+21.86%. This week my entire account is at year to date....+21.12%. A very slight loss for a week with a number of crappy days.

We move forward from here into FED week.

 

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND EVERYONE.