I dont see much of anything negative regarding the markets today. A bit of typical fear-mongering out there in the media....but....whats new. We will see if the markets can just IGNORE the positive and lack of anything negative today. Of course....the real news....will come after the close with earnings from TSLA and GOOGL. Dow pops more than 200 points after Trump announces Japan trade deal https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/22/stock-market-today-live-updates.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Stocks rose Wednesday after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. had reached a trade deal with Japan, lifting hope for further agreements being made. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 240 points higher, or 0.6%. The S&P 500 climbed 0.3% along with the Nasdaq Composit. Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday night that the U.S. had completed a “massive Deal” with Japan. The agreement includes “reciprocal” tariffs of 15% on the nation’s exports to the U.S. The president also said the U.S. is meeting with European officials in a push to reach a trade deal with the European Union. The U.S. has been pushing to reach trade deals with other countries ahead of an Aug. 1 deadline. This comes after Trump on April 2 sent markets into turmoil, with his announcement of sweeping tariffs Wednesday’s moves follow a second straight day concluding at a high for the S&P 500, which inched up 0.06% in the session. Tuesday marked the 11th closing record of 2025 for the benchmark index. The 30-stock Dow climbed nearly 180 points in the session. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, on the other hand, fell about 0.4% as chip stocks took a hit. Investors are awaiting earnings from Alphabet and Tesla expected Wednesday after the bell. They are the first reports of the earnings season from the megacap technology sector, a group that’s been closely watched given its market leadership in recent years. Beyond big tech, investors will also monitor reports from Chipotle Mexican Grill and Mattel after the market closes. These releases come amid a busy earnings week. Of the 105 S&P 500 companies that have reported so far this season, more than 86% have posted earnings that surpassed Wall Street’s expectations, per FactSet. On the economics front, traders will follow existing home sales data due Wednesday morning." MY COMMENT Looks like very nice potential for the markets today. We will see if.....potential....becomes reality.
I will mention again....I will DISAPPEAR.....later this morning since I have to go to the studio today. I might be back by about 5:00PM.....so I will miss the close and the after hours earnings. ENJOY. Oh yes.....MAKE ME SOME MONEY.
For my nine stocks....I am starting the day MIXED. I have five stocks up and four down. BUT....so far looks like a nice gain. BUT....gains or losses at the open dont matter one bit. What counts is the close......and....the next two market days to close out the week. Remember it is all about.....earnings, earnings, earnings.
I cant read this story since I dont pay....but the headline says it all. I dont see much of any pull back by retail investors. We are the GUTS of the markets and WE are mostly very long term investors. You know....it used to be somewhat rare to see most people being long term investors. BUT...I credit the 401K with changing how most people think about investing. The 401K by its nature pushes people to think and be long term and that has carried over to all investing by retail investors. I think the 401K has "trained" investors to be and think long term. Stocks will keep ripping to record highs as retail traders continue buying spree, Citadel says https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/23/stocks-will-keep-ripping-to-record-highs-citadel-says.html
NOW the markets have joined my mixed portfolio. the general markets are now MIXED with the DOW and the SP500 green.....and the NASDAQ being RED.
My RED stocks today continue. WMT....AAPL....GOOGL....and....MSFT. AAPL is obvious considering their issues this year. GOOGL....due to reporting later today. WMT.....who cares....they are a small training wheels position for me. MSFT....probably hang-over from the recent hacking event. LOL....there is always some short term excuse for being in the red or the green.
Yeah, the "tariff headlines" have really lost much effect or meaning at this point I think. So many "deadlines" and changes and the point made in a prior post about the process being "erratic and confusing". I think that has somewhat taken the good and the bad about any of it, causing the markets and people to just toss most of it to the side and dismiss most information about them. I would think that at some point the dust will settle on all of it and then we may have an idea of how successful/unsuccessful any of it will be. Until then, nobody really knows. Although, the framework for some of the trade negotiations is just the beginning to a lengthy process to an actual established deal for any of the parties involved. The US likely did need to revisit some of the issues in trade and change some of the parameters. Not a bad thing to review and rework where needed. I think the "process" at how we arrived and conducted it has been rather silly, but I'm not in charge of those things.....
On to more important, tangible items. Earnings. I think the last number I observed was at about 86% so far have been on the right side of things. Of course, we have a ways to go, but that is a pretty good start. As mentioned already above, this is where you as an investor can dive into your particular company/stock and gauge for yourself whether what you own is still serving your needs and expectations.
A huge chunk of my "USA portfolio" is COST, better saying COST and NVDA...that I started adding in 2020, if I remember well! Today I was looking Costco performance, Yahoo F is good for that data, and noted that in 1y performance still good (around 10%) but YTD is poor (less then 3%). Not flat but poor. Maybe time to trim some gains and start looking other high flyer. As WXYZ says frequently a stock split could be the needed driver to get another boost. However top management seems not to be in same wave lenght...
Some earnings after the bell.... Tesla Releases Second Quarter 2025 Financial Results (TSLA) CHIPOTLE ANNOUNCES SECOND QUARTER 2025 RESULTS (CMG) General Dynamics Reports Second-Quarter 2025 Financial Results (GD) CSX Corp. Announces Second Quarter 2025 Results (CSX) Alphabet Inc. Q2 Profit Climbs, Beats Estimates (GOOG)
A nice end to the market today. Moving right along. Another day of earnings reported. I suspect W will be glad he booted CMG when he did. Down close to -11% in after hours off the initial reaction to earnings. Not saying they deserve it or that I care much about the company one way or the other.....I just remember W speaking of it a few times. GOOG appears to have done okay with their quarter. TSLA.....depends I guess on your own view. TB16 could do a deep dive on all things TSLA for a summary of company health.....
Continuing a bit with earnings. Some of the defense related stuff have done well so far. Government contracts are big business, until they aren't. Of course, some of them have way overrun their costs too. Big money and big losses can come in a hurry with some of these contracts....not to mention the competition. Our tax money at work on some of these big awards on a blown budget....your welcome Uncle Sam.
I haven't posted in a while. Here's an update on my investing. No changes of significance since 2009.
YES....glad to be done with CMG some time ago. I had a BIG gain today....thanks to HD, PLTR, and NVDA. five stocks in the green. ALso a good beat on the SP500 today by 0.52%.
AND....also a very nice earnings BEAT by GOOGL today. Alphabet beats earnings expectations, raises spending forecast https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/23/alphabet-google-q2-earnings.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Key Points Alphabet reported second-quarter results on Wednesday that beat on revenue and earnings. The company increased its capital expenditures forecast for 2025 to $85 billion, up $10 billion from February, due to “strong and growing demand for our Cloud products and services.” The company’s overall revenue grew 14% year over year, higher than the 10.9% Wall Street expected. Alphabet reported second-quarter results on Wednesday that beat on revenue and earnings, but the company said it would raise its capital investments by $10 billion in 2025. Shares of the company were up as much as 3% in after-hours trading. Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG: Revenue: $96.43 billion vs. $94 billion expected Earnings per share: $2.31 vs. $2.18 expected Wall Street is also watching several other numbers in the report: YouTube advertising revenue: $9.8 billion vs. $9.56 billion, according to StreetAccount Google Cloud revenue: $13.62 billion vs.$13.11 billion, according to StreetAccount Traffic acquisition costs (TAC): $14.71 billion vs. $14.18 billion, according to StreetAccount The company’s overall revenue grew 14% year over year, higher than the 10.9% Wall Street expected, but Alphabet is going to spend more on artificial intelligence in 2025 than it anticipated. In February, the company said it expected to invest $75 billion in capital expenditures in 2025 as it continues to expand on its AI strategy. That was already above the $58.84 billion Wall Street expected at the time. The company increased that figure on Wednesday to $85 billion, saying it was raising it due to “strong and growing demand for our Cloud products and services.” The company expects to further increase capital expenditures in 2026, Alphabet finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said on an earnings call. The company reported revenue of $13.62 billion for its cloud computing business, which is a 32% increase from a year ago. Last week, OpenAI announced that it expected to use Google’s cloud infrastructure for its popular ChatGPT service. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said “we are very excited to be partnering with them.” Alphabet’s net income increased to $28.20 billion, up nearly 20% from the previous year. The company’s search and advertising units still showed growth in the second quarter despite AI competition heating up. The company’s search unit brought in $54.19 billion during the quarter, and its advertising revenue grew to $71.34 billion — up about 10.4% from $64.61 billion the year prior. YouTube advertising revenue came in at $9.8 billion, higher than Wall Street expected. The company said its “Other Bets” segment, which includes its self-driving car unit Waymo and life sciences unit Verily, brought in $373 million — up from $365 million a year ago. Other Bets reported a loss of $1.25 billion, up from the $1.13 billion a year ago. AI Overviews, Google’s AI search product that summarizes search results, now has upward of two billion monthly users across more than 200 countries and territories, Pichai said during Wednesday’s earnings call. That’s up from 1.5 billion monthly users last quarter. The Gemini app, which has the company’s AI chatbot, now has more than 450 million monthly active users, Pichai said. When asked about large spending on AI talent, Ashkenazi said Alphabet makes “sure that we invest appropriately to have the best and brightest minds in the industry.” Google made a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing earlier in July that it would bring in Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and other top researchers at the AI coding startup as part of a $2.4 billion deal that also includes licensing the company’s technology. Total operating expenses increased 20% to $26.1 billion, Ashkenazi said on Wednesday. The biggest driver of growth was expenses for legal and other matters due in part to a $1.4 billion charge related to a settlement, she said on Wednesday’s earnings call. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in May announced a $1.37 billion settlement with Google related to a data privacy rights lawsuit it made against the company in 2022. Ashkenazi said Alphabet’s third-quarter revenue “could see a tailwind” due to several reasons. That includes a negative impact for advertising, which benefited from “strong spend on U.S. elections” in late 2024, particularly on YouTube, she said." MY COMMENT This was a .....BIG and BROAD.....earnings beat. Really nice numbers across the board. I also like the big capital spending that is going to come in the near future. A good use of company funds....to shore up AI. Well done....GOOGL. A great start to BIG TECH earnings.
A good open today. GOOGL is doing nicely for me at the open.....I thought the earnings report was EXTREMELY good. The SP500 and NASDAQ open at new ALL TIME HIGHS. Yesterday my entire portfolio hit a new ALL TIME HIGH. We are in the groove right now.
Good news for ranchers and USA beef producers......I saw that Australia is lifting the ban on beef from the USA. NICE.
MORE good news....the economic data of the day.....not that I really care. US weekly jobless claims unexpectedly fall https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-weekly-jobless-claims-unexpectedly-123836996.html "The number of Americans filing new applications for jobless benefits unexpectedly fell last week, pointing to stable labor market conditions, though sluggish hiring is making it harder for many laid-off workers to land new opportunities. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 217,000 for the week ended July 19, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 226,000 claims for the latest week." MY COMMENT Seeing the word......"unexpected".....in a report on economics and the expectations of economists......is the norm. These people with all their PHD's have no clue and are uniformly WRONG. BUT....economic data....especially weekly data.....is worthless to investors that have any sort of long term horizan.
