The Long Term Investor

Roadtonowhere08......you had GREAT returns.

In FACT.....2020 turned out to be a highly abnormal year.....to the HIGH SIDE for investors. The returns that everyone on here got are HIGHLY ABNORMAL......to the positive side of the long term markets. Over the long term a total return of 10-11% is EXCEPTIONAL. A year like 2020....with many investors across America getting these sorts of high returns is an example of......a once in a while year....that kick starts your compounding. Last year was another one.....with the SP500 having a total return of 31.4%. Put these two years back to back and you have many long term investors.....EASILY.....above 50% in just two years. This represents a doubling of your money in LESS THAN TWO YEARS. OUTRAGEOUS STUFF.

Of course....there will be two years at times that are a similar percentage LOSS. That is just the REALITY of being an investor.

The good news.....is.......this sort of thing happens much less than the years with a gain. The ONLY problem with doing so well is it sets UNREALISTIC expectations in the minds of investors....especially inexperienced investors. Everyone becomes an expert and starts to chase unrealistic returns and invest in more and more dangerous stocks thinking they can do no wrong and taking on more and more risk. It sneaks up on you. Those of us that have been investing......successfully....for a long time have had a lot of this BEATEN OUT of us.....so we stay more focused on the long term and more realistic. That is why my number one investing goal has......always been and remains.....to achieve a long term total return of 10% or more. That seems pretty low after a few years like the last two......but......over a lifetime of investing will GROW a huge amount of money from a relatively small amount of money. To me........the key to investing success is EXTREME FOCUS on the long term and the ability to VISUALIZE yourself and your life 10, 20, 30 years in the future.

SO......here at the NEW YEAR I am mentally renewing my two life long investing goals:

1. Achieve a lifetime total return of 10% or more.
2. Beat the SP500 for the year.

I will.......remain fully invested for the long term as usual.

 

ENOUGH pure investing talk.....we are on a market break and we are starting a new year at 0%......so I will mention:

I have two family members that got the Covid vaccine last week.........as first responders....police officers. I dont know which one they got. One had no issues. The other within 24 hours had a fever, headache, and extremely sore arm and a little bit of a reaction. NOTHING serious or requiring any attention. At least they now know they are having a good response to the vaccine and will definitely produce antibodies.

Our state has now opened up the vaccine to anyone over age 65 or those with medical conditions.......although......with the rush to get the vaccine there are not a lot of places that have availability. My wife and I are on the waiting list at a local pharmacy. I suspect we will get the vaccine some time over the next 2-4 weeks.

My day today...... I leave at 10:00 for a rehearsal at noon and then when I get home about 5:00 I will watch the Fiesta Bowl which I have set to record. Some real EXTREME results yesterday with Alabama and Ohio State.

 

ANOTHER milestone:

Tesla reports nearly 500,000 vehicle deliveries for 2020, in line with guidance

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/02/tesla-tsla-q4-2020-vehicle-delivery-and-production-numbers.html

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

Key Points

• Tesla just published its fourth quarter vehicle production and deliveries report for 2020.
• The company’s previous best quarter saw electric vehicle deliveries reach 139,300 in the period ending September 30, 2020, despite the global coronavirus pandemic.

Tesla said Saturday that it delivered180,570 electric vehicles in the fourth quarter, beating its previous record as well as Wall Street expectations. The electric automaker produced 170,757vehicles total.

For the year, Tesla delivered 499,550 vehicles in 2020, largely in line with its guidance of around 500,000 vehicles. At an annual shareholder meeting this year, CEO Elon Musk told shareholders he expected deliveries to hit an implied range between 477,750 and 514,500 cars for the year, despite the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Q4 numbers represent a new record for Musk’s auto business, which set its previous best in the third quarter of 2020 with deliveries reaching 139,300 then.

As of Thursday, Wall Street expected Tesla to report fourth-quarter deliveries of 174,000 vehicles over the last three months, according to a consensus of analysts surveyed by FactSet. Estimates ranged from 151,000 at the low end to 184,000 at the high end, and included forecasts published between October and mid-December.

In its quarterly reports, Tesla does not break out delivery and production numbers by region. Tesla also combines delivery numbers for its older Model S and Model X electric cars, and newer, more popular Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

Throughout 2020 Tesla was able to increase vehicle production and deliveries by successfully operating a new car plant in Shanghai, and bringing on new battery cell suppliers (alongside its longstanding partner Panasonic) to make more of the high voltage battery packs that power its electric cars.

Tesla said Model Y production has begun in Shanghai with deliveries expected to begin shortly.

Musk has proclaimed that he wants to increase Tesla’s vehicle sales volume from about 500,000 in 2020 to 20 million annually over the next decade with plans for an electric vehicle that costs $25,000, its Cybertruck and revamped Roadster in the works.

After Tesla’s Model S reveal brought in higher than anticipated pre-orders in 2016, Musk said the company aimed to produce 500,000 cars per year at the Fremont plant by the end of 2018. He also said that Tesla would produce 800,000 to 1 million cars per year at Fremont by 2020 then, reiterating the goal in 2018 with a slight hedge saying it could look more like 750,000 per year in Fremont. The company hasn’t apparently hit that goal yet in California.

But looking ahead to 2021, Tesla is building new factories in Austin, Texas and Brandenburg, Germany, among other efforts to grow its production and sales volume. Musk cautioned shareholders on the company’s last earnings call that it could take 12 to 24 months to hit full capacity at new factories after they begin operations — significantly slower than what Tesla achieved in Shanghai.

As Tesla faces a greater number of competitors the world over, in luxury and lower priced segments, IHS Markit forecasts electric vehicle sales will represent 10.2%, or 9.4 million, of the nearly 92.3 million vehicles it expects to sell globally in 2024.

MY COMMENT

The PERFECT ending to 2020 and the beginning of 2021. AND....keep in mind that the ACTUAL figure may be higher:

"the exact number will be released with the Q4 Earnings Call later this month. Figures can vary up to .5%, the company says."

HAPPY NEW YEAR from Tesla and Elon Musk.

 

Good for you Trahn....taking care of the next generation.....GREAT results. If your boys are old enough this will definately get them interested in investing. Happy Investing.....back to you.

 

My opinion......as someone that really does not follow Bitcoin......it will continue to be EXTREMELY speculative and erratic. As an investment at this level......I would not buy.......but.....dont blame me when it goes to $50,000 or $100,000.

I DID buy ONE BITCOIN about 3-5 years ago...I cant remember when. I paid about $2900. Later I sold off approximately 2/3 of my one Bitcoin. I sold off the remaining 1/3 of a Bitcoin about 4-6 months ago when I was raising money to buy a really nice painting of the type that I collect. I got about $4000 for my 1/3 Bitcoin at that time. I do not follow it or research it.

HERE is a pretty good article that I ran into in my daily reading this morning that seems to have some pretty good information on the current things that are driving the price at the moment.

Bitcoin breaks $32,000 as 2020 surge continues into new year

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-keeps-hitting-new-records-193106428.html

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

"It took bitcoin (BTC) 10 years in existence to reach the $20,000 mark, on Dec. 15. Then it took just 17 days to reach $30,000. It took the Dow Jones almost three years to make the same move.

Bitcoin started 2020 at $7,200. It ended the year at nearly $30,000, up 296%. (For comparison, the Nasdaq rose 43% in 2020, the S&P 500 rose 16%, the Dow rose 7%.)

The surge continued full-steam into 2021: On Jan. 2, bitcoin broke through $30,000 for the first time, then broke $32,000 just hours later.

The 2020 bitcoin bonanza can be chalked up to a convergence of many positive factors, as well as a convergence of narratives.

In the past, a common criticism of bitcoin from skeptics was that it isn’t useful as a real currency—you can’t spend it in most places. In 2020, investors decided they don’t care about that, and don’t want to spend their bitcoin anyway. Institutional firms flooded in, viewing cryptocurrencies as a legitimate asset to hold in their portfolio.

At the very least, the consensus now appears to be: Bitcoin isn’t going away. It has existed for 10 years and will continue to exist.

The same cannot be said with absolute certainty about any of the other multitude of cryptocurrencies (“altcoins”), except perhaps ether (ETH), the token of the Ethereum network. (XRP, the token developed by Ripple Labs, has been in the top four cryptocurrencies by market cap for years, but is now under fire after the SEC sued Ripple Labs, alleging it conducted a $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering.)

If the late 2017 bitcoin price surge was driven by crypto newbies buying in without doing their homework, the 2020 ride has been driven by institutional buying. While newcomer retail investors are again buying bitcoin, many individual Wall Street names and consumer-facing payments companies have also warmed to crypto. This has all happened against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, with central banks pumping out stimulus money—a scenario that has served as a reminder of bitcoin’s scarcity and its appeal as “digital gold,” a hedge against inflation.

Institutional investors rush in
Wall Street firms pumped $5.75 billion into digital asset funds in 2020, up 660% from 2019, according to the Dec. 21 crypto inflows report from CoinShares Research.

The spike has pushed Grayscale Investments, the largest crypto asset fund, to $15.3 billion in assets.

In Q2 of this year, more than a dozen well-known Wall Street firms, including ARK Invest, disclosed to the SEC new investments in GBTC, Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust, a publicly traded fund pegged to the price of bitcoin, cited by JP Morgan strategists in November as a leading indicator of institutional sentiment.

“A failure by the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust to receive additional inflows over the coming weeks,” JPM strategists wrote, “would cast doubt to the idea that institutional investors such as family offices have embarked on a trend of embracing bitcoin as digital gold.” As we now see, GBTC did not fail to receive additional inflows in December.

So much bitcoin is now held by long-term institutional investors that blockchain research firm Glassnode estimates just 22% of existing bitcoin is in circulation for trading, which could be positive for the price in 2021 but could also increase volatility.

Wall Street titans change their tune
Along with the spike in institutional interest, individual Wall Street investors, known for their influence, have changed their public tune on bitcoin.

In May, hedge fund titan Paul Tudor Jones said he has nearly 2% of his portfolio in bitcoin. He ranked bitcoin No. 4 on his list of hedges against inflation, and called it a “great speculation.” This month, he expanded on his bullishness in an interview with Yahoo Finance, arguing that as cryptocurrencies proliferate, bitcoin will become even more differentiated as the “precious” coin: “the first crypto, first-mover in a world that's so compressed. It has that historical integrity within digital currencies that it will always have... And again, because of its finite supply, that might be the precious crypto.”

In November, billionaire investor Stan Druckenmiller said he owns some bitcoin, telling CNBC he owns a lot more gold than bitcoin, but “if the gold bet works, the bitcoin bet will probably work better, because it’s thinner, more illiquid and has a lot more beta to it.” Bill Miller, the veteran investor and former CIO of Legg Mason, has added his name to the chorus, saying he expects all the big banks to hold cryptocurrency soon and that he has 30% of his own hedge fund portfolio in bitcoin.

Even Ray Dalio of Bridgewater, who had said earlier this year that he sees major problems with cryptocurrencies, including the potential for governments to “outlaw” them, said in a Reddit AMA this month that bitcoin “could serve as a diversifier to gold” and that investors ought to “have some of these type of assets.”

Of course, many prominent bears remain bears. The economist Nouriel Roubini, who has the nickname “Dr. Doom,” reiterated this month on Yahoo Finance that he believes bitcoin is “not a currency... not a stable store of value... not even an asset,” and predicted that the “hyperbolic bubble is going to go bust.”

PayPal, Square, Visa, JPMorgan, Fidelity & more
PayPal (PYPL) and Square (SQ) have been credited with intensifying the 2020 surge.

On Oct. 21, PayPal announced it will soon allow bitcoin buying inside its PayPal and Venmo digital wallets (as well as paying with bitcoin, though most people are not likely to want to spend their crypto as the price rises). The news sent PayPal shares soaring along with the bitcoin price, hailed as a major milestone: a consumer-facing payments company signaling its faith in bitcoin.

Square has been all in on bitcoin (particularly fueled by bitcoin maximalist CEO Jack Dorsey) since 2018, when it added bitcoin buying and trading to its Cash App. This year, Square took the even stronger step of buying $50 million worth of bitcoin to hold on its balance sheet. (Cloud company MicroStrategy bought more than $1 billion of bitcoin this year.) Square’s bitcoin revenue was up 618% in Q3 to $1.63 billion, and its Q3 bitcoin profit was up 1,500% to $32 million. Square shares rose 246% in 2020, and bitcoin was part of it, though not the whole story.

But it isn’t just PayPal and Square.

Visa (V), over the past year, has approved a slew of Visa-branded bitcoin rewards credit and debit cards, and will add support for Circle’s USDC stablecoin (a cryptocurrency pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar) to its customer network. Visa tells Yahoo Finance it is "actively working with over 25 digital currency companies on a variety of bitcoin-related products and services, cards being just one area.”

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has similarly warmed up to cryptocurrency (despite the public comments of CEO Jamie Dimon), first by launching an internal JPM token last year, then this year by allowing customer transfers to and from U.S. crypto exchanges Coinbase and Gemini. Fidelity, which started mining bitcoin in 2016, this past summer launched its first bitcoin investment fund for institutional clients; Fidelity Investments CEO Abby Johnson told Barron’s that Fidelity’s bitcoin ventures have been “incredibly successful.”

All of these examples represent an obvious shift in sentiment from just one year ago, which is why many in the crypto space insist this time is different than the 2017 price run.

Pandemic spark
The COVID-19 pandemic, and government reaction to it, handed bitcoin its dream scenario. When the Fed has to step in, crypto flag-wavers point to digital gold, free from government interference and quantitative easing. (Bitcoin’s supply will be capped at 21 million coins, with about 18.5 million coins created so far; mining creates new coins on the road to 21 million, but the reward for mining gets halved every four years as a means to slow creation.)

“There’s so many uncertainties in this pandemic, but one thing that seems almost assured is when you print trillions of dollars more paper money, it’s going to drive up bitcoin and other cyptocurrencies,” Dan Morehead, CEO of crypto investment firm Pantera Capital, said in August. “Gold’s going to go up, bitcoin’s going to go up. It is a hedge to paper currency being debased.”

In November, as the pandemic dragged on, more investors sought hedges, and as Chainlink cofounder Sergey Nazarov said, “That seeking of safety leads them to look at alternatives. The modern global financial system is not very well set up to help people combat inflation, whereas there are alternatives, such as bitcoin, that are. Impending inflation is something that is more and more on people's minds, and inflation as a mechanism to devalue assets leads people to seek safety.”

The next question for crypto markets in 2021 will be what a President Biden administration means for crypto policy (maybe nothing), and whether bitcoin will in fact be a “safe” investment."

MY COMMENT

When I bought my one bitcoin I opened an account at Coinbase and bought it there. They are like a brokerage company for Crypto. As I said I do NOT follow it.....but.....it is obvious that putting money into Bitcoin is EXTREMELY SPECULATIVE and any funds in it will be subject to MASSIVE moves up and down. I suspect that a lot of the....young and new.....traders that are driving certain markets right now are trading Crypto. A VERY DANGEROUS investment......if you can even call it an investment. Dont bet the farm.

I would personally consider buying ONE BITCOIN again....but only if the price drops significantly......down below $5000. That would be quite a drop......so I dont expect it to happen. I would buy ONE COIN at that level.....simply......as long term SPECULATION in the event that it ever does go to $100,000 or above. When I bought my ONE COIN previously for $2900....it did get up near the $20,000 range at one point.......I rode it up and rode it back down into the $5000 to $10,000 range. I cant remember the date....but when I bought my ONE BITCOIN it was at the beginning of the last Bitcoin frenzy........whenever that was. EDIT - Looking at a chart I can see that my purchase would have been about July to August 2017.

TO ILLUSTRATE how VOLATILE and DANGEROUS it is.....my one coin purchase was in July/August of 2017.......it went up to near $20,000 by December of 2017.....went back down to about $3263 by December of 2018........up to $11,645 by July of 2019.......down to $6805 by April 2020.......and now about $32,000.

The Winklevoss twins certainly have some HUGE GAINS right now.

 

I believe I STILL have my account at Coinbase.....even though it is empty. In that sort of account you CAN buy small fractional shares of a bitcoin. I have it linked to my bank account so........I am not sure what their minimum is.......I.....or someone.... could buy $50 or $100 of Bitcoin if they wished to slowly dollar cost average in or do a set monthly investment. As I said......I personally would NOT do so at this price level........and......I would personally NEVER want to own more than A SINGLE bitcoin.

 

Bigmaix

I have NO plans to add anything to my portfolio for the coming year. I like to have between 10 and 15 individual stocks and consider 12 to be my IDEAL NUMBER. At the moment I have 12 stocks.......perfect for me. I dont have anything in mind that I am following as a possible future addition. If I was going to add anything.....I would need to skim through the NASDAQ 100 and the top 100 stocks in the SP500 and look for potential targets to look into.

I ALSO.....do not.....have any holdings that I am considering selling in the upcoming year. HOPEFULLY......I will just sit on what I have at the moment for the entire year.

In 2020 I felt like I was being more active than I like to be. I sold MMM and JNJ and bought TSLA and SNOW and NVDA. I also did the trade on the APPL split and sold out a couple of portfolios at the start of the pandemic and pushed to fully reinvest starting around March 26. I felt the moves that I did were necessary......but for me.......a little more trading than I like to do in a NORMAL year. BUT.....what has to be done has to be done.

Since I now have my IDEAL 12 stocks.......I will sit and let the markets take me........upward and onward......for 2021. I need to sit and let my portfolio.....as a whole....do the heavy lifting. TO INFINITY AND BEYOND.

 

One thing I will mention......I use this site as a place to practice....."VISUALIZATION". I have believed in the POWER of positive thinking and visualization for most of my life........in sports, school, business, and music. I STRONGLY believe in......daydreaming.....seeing in your head how to do the things you want and need to do........and.........training your brain and your body to do them. Practicing in your mind. You see the same techniques preached in ALL the various motivational books.

I use this site as a place where I can go a step further.....and.....put those thoughts down as words. That makes the thoughts even MORE powerful........through the physical act of typing them up and posting them as words and ideas and goals.

To me.....one of the greatest KEYS to investing success.......is long term FOCUS. Focus on investing techniques, focus on what works for me, and focus on my goals. EVERY INVESTOR.....is different. EVERYONE has to find what works for them and do it over and over and over for as long as it works and is achieving their goals.

SO..........I am looking forward to the new investing year that starts tomorrow.

 

WELL.....at least we are open.....a very poor open to the year and the month.

My mantra for the markets in 2021......BE WARY. I have been seeing more and more.....the vast majority.......of articles over the past 2-4 weeks with GLOWING predictions about how EVERYONE thinks things are going to be great in 2021. EVERYONE is going to make money....the markets are going to be UP, UP, UP.

When I see this sort of EXTREMELY LOPSIDED market sentiment......it is usually WRONG. AND.....I believe there is great potential for this year to be very erratic and very much in doubt. No one can predict the short term markets......one year. BUT.....we know that extreme sentiment one way or another is usually WRONG.

Of course......most of this stuff is coming from our friends in the media.......the way they currently operate based on opinion and wishful thinking....I dont trust a thing they say about investing.....or much else. The ONLY way to survive as an investor is to read, read, read.......and......form your own thoughts and opinions based on REAL facts and data.......not.....media opinion.

Over the next four years we are going to see........ALL...... the economic and business policies of the past four years reversed and in some cases demolished. I have my personal views of what creates a good powerful business environment......and.....I am taking that into account on the negative side of the ledger.......for myself.

Of course.....the elephant in the room.....the Georgia elections are generating a lot of stories lately about what might happen if the Senate switches. I would personally put the odds at 50/50.......with a slim likelihood for one win for each party. BUT......if the Dems sweep......it will be interesting to watch the DOOM&GLOOM rise up once again. SUDDENLY....we will see all the stories and opinions that we did NOT see before the general elections as the financial community starts to wake up to REALITY.

BOTTOM LINE.......If I was a "typical" investor.....I would be VERY WARY about going all EXUBERANT this year. That......to me....is where........true long term investors have the edge. They have the ability to sit back and observe in a year like 2021 and NOT make any sudden or oversize moves.......in or out of the markets. I will be in TOTAL wait and see mode for most of the year. We have had two years now.......2019 and 2020.....with 31% and 18.4% gains. We are WAY past due for a DOWN YEAR.........on top of all the other things that could SHOCK the markets this year. I would LOVE to be surprised to the upside this year........but.......I am NOT going to bet in any way that it will happen. My opinion....this is one of those years where you wait and see with caution.......make sure you are NOT too crazy in your portfolio......and......don't go out on a limb thinking we are going to see another POSITIVE year.

The potential that I see for many different forms of economic and business disaster.....due to various causes.....is a primary reason that I am a long term investor.......and.......an investor in the BIG CAP, dividend paying, leading company, side of the markets. I want that little bit of extra safety that these sorts of stocks will give me in DISMAL ECONOMIC conditions.

You know.......it hit me......the nice thing for a long term investor in a year with the negative potential like the current year is.......FULL ON defensive mode.......is exactly the same........as FULL ON positive mode. The portfolio and holdings remain the SAME. The actions of the investor remain the same......sit and watch and wait.......while remaining fully invested for the long term.

I will say.....I look at the above from a VERY CLINICAL perspective. After investing for so long and going through so many market situations over 45+ years..........my thoughts about any one year are just NOT emotion based at all. It is FUN to watch human behavior and investor behavior......and......unfortunately......this year could be a DOOZY.

 

For those that are FANS of investing in Chinese companies......and......to continue a recent "little" theme on this thread......here is an interesting story starting to seep into the media in numerous sources:

Rumors Swirl Over Whereabouts of China’s Jack Ma

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rumors-swirl-over-whereabouts-china-125854021.html

Jack Ma's disappearing act fuels speculation about billionaire's whereabouts

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-about-billionaires-whereabouts-idUSKBN2991DA

MY COMMENT

The fact that these stories even exist gives you a CLUE about investing in Chinese companies. Is he in REEDUCATION CAMP? Is he in PRISON? Has he been killed? Is he just on vacation? Is he just laying low? Is he quietly...taking care of business? Who knows.......and.......who cares.................unless you are an investor in Chinese companies.

 

THIS little article is a pretty good summary of where we are right now:

US STOCKS-S&P 500, Dow tumble from record highs on nerves over Georgia runoff elections

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-stocks-p-500-dow-172730248.html

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

"Wall Street's main indexes fell nearly 2% on the first trading day of the year on Monday as nerves over the outcome of runoff elections in Georgia this week countered optimism over a vaccine-driven recovery in the global economy.

The Dow was also dragged down by a near 4.3% fall in Boeing Co's shares after Bernstein cut its rating to "underperform", saying issues with MAX 787 could significantly hurt the U.S. planemaker's free cash flow.

The fate of President-elect Joe Biden's agenda including rewriting the tax code, boosting stimulus and infrastructure spending hinges firmly on Tuesday's twin Senate races in the battleground state that will determine control of the chamber.

"The market is going to be hard pressed to go up much until the Georgia election is decided," said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments in New Vernon, New Jersey.

"Senate race in Georgia is now a toss up," Meckler said, adding that it "is the much bigger risk as investors have already decided that COVID will be mostly behind us later in the year."

Before dipping in the red, the S&P 500 and the Dow notched record levels within the first few minutes of trading, attempting to extend a rally from 2020 fueled by monetary stimulus and the start of vaccine rollouts.

Wall Street's fear gauge touched a two-week high on Monday.

All major S&P sectors dropped with real estate, utilities and industrials posting the sharpest percentage declines. Consumer discretionary and materials hit all-time highs in early trading.

At 11:54 a.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 562.60 points, or 1.84%, to 30,043.88, the S&P 500 lost 62.89 points, or 1.67%, to 3,693.18, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 187.31 points, or 1.45%, to 12,700.71.

U.S. manufacturing activity picked up at its briskest pace in more than six years in December, a survey showed on Monday. It comes on the heels of upbeat factory activity surveys across Europe and Asia earlier in the day.

Some investors are cautious about the pace of economic growth as U.S. jobless claims remain stubbornly high, while a new round of pandemic-related restrictions last month and the discovery of a new variant of the coronavirus have cast a shadow on the outlook.

Tesla Inc's shares extended a meteoric rally to scale a record high after the electric-car maker reported better-than-expected vehicle deliveries in 2020.

Shares of FLIR Systems Inc jumped about 19% after Teledyne Technologies Inc agreed to buy the thermal imaging camera supplier for $8 billion in cash and stock. Teledyne's shares dropped about 9%.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 2.2-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and a 1.6-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P 500 posted 54 new 52-week highs and no new low, while the Nasdaq recorded 284 new highs and 14 new lows.

MY COMMENT

It is ALL about....Georgia, Georgia, Georgia.These races will determine NATIONAL tax policy as well as NATIONAL spending policy as well as the ENTIRE social and cultural direction of the country. Of course general business climate ALSO hangs in the balance tomorrow. MONETARY policy will also be decided tomorrow. AS to stimulus.....my opinion.....totally foolish for investors to hang their hat on stimulus. We have DONE ENOUGH...time to stop. I see the future types of stimulus as being a total waste of money and more of a DANGER to the economy then a help. TYPICAL Keynesian economics.......which has a distinct and total record of FAILURE.......in terms of successful capitalism.

 

Just about what you would expect today....with tomorrow hanging over the markets. I was......of course....in the red. At least.....I got a beat on the SP500 of .48% to start the year. The OTHER good thing......if you can call it good....is tomorrow we will be done with all this FOOLISHNESS and we will have an idea of what the investing conditions will be for the remainder of the next TWO YEARS.....till the midterms.

The markets HATE uncertainty......one more day till that it is out of the way.

 

FINALLY.......after today we can just move on......and....be done with the LAST remnant of the election. WELL....after today and about 2-4 days of counting and flailing around. Time to MOVE ON.......enough.

The markets HATE uncertainty and they can deal with whatever they have to deal with going forward. So....lets get going.....back to the future. We are either going to see NO tax changes and the typical split government..........or a return to the Obama policies with a good dose of WOKEISM.......as the cherry on top. Either way business will handle it......especially the tech business since they are ENTRENCHED solidly at all levels of the new administration. I personally.......really dont care at this point......lets JUST get moving one way or the other......and be done with it.

NOT a bad open today......a little WIMPY......but after yesterday......a victory to start the day.

 

WE ALL......know that corrections, bear markets and negative years for stocks are NOTHING to fear.....simply NORMAL market behavior. What some investors should fear........is getting too out of hand with old fashioned exuberant greed.

Stay Cool, the Time for Bearishness Isn't Too Far Ahead

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/ar...or_bearishness_isnt_too_far_ahead_655284.html

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

"Can anything stop this bull market? Seemingly ever fewer investors think so. The unadulterated panic ruling markets last February and March seems ancient, with increasingly optimistic pundits seeing gains ahead. That view seems justified. But its rapid spread symbolizes a warning: Just as you had to conquer your emotions to reap this nine-month-old bull market’s gains to date, you now must keep emotion at bay—just a different one. Failing at that risks falling prey to the market’s next trick: getting fooled by greed. Here’s why.

Investment legend Sir John Templeton famously said, “Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria.” We’ve seen that pattern evolve quickly since last winter. After the coronavirus’s spread sparked unprecedented economic lockdowns, panic reigned. From mid-February to mid-March, the percentage of bearish individual investors tabulated by the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) nearly doubled. It also showed bulls went from outnumbering bears by 14 points in mid-February to bears outnumbering bulls by 29 points in late May, during this bull market’s pessimistic phase. Fund managers’ collective equity allocation plunged in March and again in April, sinking to its lowest level since March 2009. Managers’ cash balances surged to their highest level since the 9/11 attacks. All backwards in retrospect.

Panic eventually waned, but pervasive pessimism and skepticism remained. Pundits called stocks’ upturn a short-term central bank sugar high—disconnected from the horrors then surrounding us. Massive “stimulus” efforts would only lead to longer-term trouble, they said, also warning any COVID resurgences could quickly squash the rally. Investors broadly pulled money from equity funds—even as stocks reached record highs.

But since November, positive vaccine news and election clarity sparked optimism. Forecasts for 2021 are near-uniformly bullish. Investors are reinvesting back into stock funds. AII surveys show bullishness surged in October and November. Signs of outright euphoria have started: Some big-name initial public offerings soared in December. Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs)—blank-check firms that go public to acquire private companies, letting the latter bypass the burdensome IPO process—are dominating debuts. Pundits fawn over folks who built small fortunes with ultra-concentrated, high-flyer portfolios dangerously lacking in diversification. Sentiment is far from uniformly stretched—many doubters still pin stocks’ strength solely on the Fed and fiscal “stimulus”—but animal spirits are stirring.

Once sentiment starts warming, it tends to continue for a good while—implying greed and euphoria will perk in the not-so-distant future. As it does, remember: Most investors’ greatest enemy is themselves, as I detailed in August.

Then, I was referencing investors who allowed rampant, widely publicized fears to keep them from the market’s powerful rebound. Now, as optimism swells, you must keep another emotion in check: greed. Greed makes investors think they can make a quick buck with little risk. They chase heat—always dangerous. Or they ditch diversification and load up on a few high flyers. Long-term plans and memories of past bear markets fade away, replaced by get-rich-quick dreams and fear of missing out. But investing isn’t about easy money. It’s about building a comfortable financial future over time, harnessing the magic of compound growth to build wealth—without taking on unnecessary risk. It’s a long journey with minimal shortcuts.

The brightening mood means you must get vigilant—but doesn’t mean the end is nigh for the bull market. Stocks can rise for a long time once sentiment warms. Optimism arrived in the middle of the 1990s, but that bull market ran until March 2000. Often exceptional years come late as optimistic investors pay crazy-more for future earnings—US stocks soared 33.4%, 28.6% and 21.0% in 1997, 1998 and 1999, respectively.

Even euphoria isn’t an immediate bear market trigger. The 2000 – 2002 bear market didn’t arrive until many months after euphoria was prevalent. For a bull market to die, sentiment needs to reach the point where a near-term negative makes lofty expectations far from attainable. In 2000, Tech froth blinded people to an inverted yield curve driven by the Fed’s reaction to overheating. Most who saw it dismissed it as part of the “old economy.”

Today, surging sentiment merely supports my take that this is a late-stage bull market—contrary to what most believe. As I explained in September, most recessions are natural resets occurring when businesses work off excesses. But 2020’s downturn came when government shutdowns sent an otherwise healthy economy into contraction. Hence, stocks aren’t acting like they would early in a new cycle. Instead, it is as if this is year 12 of the bull market that began in March 2009. That bodes ill for the value stocks pundits hype for their historical early-cycle performance. Instead, it favors typical late-stage leaders, as I’ve said since the rally began—basically, growth stocks. You’ll find plenty in the Tech sector and among Tech-like Consumer Discretionary stocks. The Luxury Goods and Pharmaceuticals industry offer more.

Warren Buffett famously says investors should “be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.” The time to be fearful isn’t here yet—but it may come sooner than many believe. Be equitized, vigilant, patient and stay soberly level-headed. The time for bearishness is not too darned far ahead."

MY COMMENT

This is NOT negativity.....simply reality and the investing cycle. If stocks always went UP the potential gains would be like buying a CD. Risk creates reward. NORMAL stock market risk incorporates the reality of recessions, corrections and bear markets. Long term investors understand this and react accordingly.....by doing nothing. On the other hand....greed equals gambling. For MOST a sure way to lose a lot of money and get severely whipsawed.