Tomorow we will have 3 elections rolling in Europe: -here, national parlament, to elect next gov (a turn right is expected) -Romania presidential second round (far right George Simion may win giving an extra headache to Zelensky, after Viktor Orban and Robert Fico) -Poland presidential first round (horizon not clear yet)
Good luck rg7803 on the elections! We are pretty much done here until mid-terms in 2026. Although the political environment here is basically non-stop now days. Seems we would get past major elections back in the day and we would have a nice quite break from all of the noise. Not so anymore, it is covered continuously now and is injected into almost everything.
I'm inclined to agree. I still have not read the article (I will, I promise), but I think we can all agree that people are not always what they label themselves as.
Golden words, my smooth and satisfying friend. Long term investing is a game of chicken. You need to be able to not blink while the whole world throws knives at your head. The media is endlessly telling us we absolutely have to sell company X because it's completely on fire and company Y is going to 1000x by tomorrow morning so best to get in on the ground floor. They haven't been right since 1952 but humans are invertebrates.
As expected the little "Moody's Credit Rating" story got carried over from late Friday to the open this morning. Apparently, they are now in line with S&P from 2011 and Fitch rating in 2023. Ok, whatever. The market has been slightly in the red most of the morning, basically ignoring the headline for the most part.
I find it interesting that the credit agencies are given so much "credit" themselves. These same agencies were giving out "high ratings" to many of the subprime risky mortgages back in 2007/2008. In fact, they ended up paying a steep fine for doing so, if I recall correctly. So, no I take their ratings with no respect or even trust for that matter.
The Credit Rating story.....MEANINGLESS.....manufactured DRAMA that had zero impact on the markets today by the close. I just got back from Dallas. I had a very TINY loss today....but the good news....five of my nine stocks were in the GREEN. My RED stocks were....PLTR, HD, AAPL, and WMT. I also lost out to the SP500 today by 0.11%. Really i was just FLAT today....so I am happy to move on with the FEAR-MONGERING story of the day.....the credit rating....having FIZZLED.
Going back to our discussion of China and the tech arms race going on: Absolutely fantastic interview talking about Apple spending hundreds of billions building up a manufacturing base in China only to find out that it gave them the means to be their greatest competition. And Tesla did it again 10-15 years later. Seriously, this is worth the time to watch. Edit: Ugh, just click on the Youtube link
My HD earnings today. Home Depot CFO says retailer doesn’t plan to raise prices due to tariffs https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/20/home-depot-hd-q1-2025-earnings.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Key Points Home Depot stuck by its full-year guidance, even though it missed Wall Street’s first-quarter earnings estimates. CFO Richard McPhail said the home improvement retailer has diversified where it sources its merchandise and doesn’t plan to raise prices because of higher tariffs. As higher interest rates slow the housing market, the retailer has attracted more business from home professionals and acquired SRS Distribution, which sells supplies to roofing, pool and landscaping professionals. Home Depot on Tuesday stuck by its full-year sales forecast as a top executive told CNBC the retailer doesn’t plan to hike prices because of tariffs. “Because of our scale, the great partnerships we have with our suppliers and productivity that we continue to drive in our business, we intend to generally maintain our current pricing levels across our portfolio,” Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail told CNBC in an interview. More than half of what the company sells comes from the U.S., he said. McPhail added that Home Depot and its suppliers have worked to diversify the source of the company’s imports over the past several years, including by decreasing the share of purchases that come from China. By this time next year, no single country outside of the U.S. will represent more than 10% of the company’s purchases, he said. Home Depot’s pricing strategy is at odds with Walmart, which said last week that it would have to raise prices as soon as late May to cover higher costs from tariffs. The decision to keep prices the same — at least for now — also comes as a sluggish housing market causes the retailer’s sales to stagnate. McPhail made his comments as Home Depot posted results for the fiscal first quarter, after weeks in which a range of corporations have either revised or withdrawn their financial guidance due to President Donald Trump’s rapidly changing tariffs. The home improvement retailer missed Wall Street’s first-quarter earnings expectations for the first time since May 2020, but beat sales estimates. The retailer is still waiting for dynamics that could drive stronger spending and bigger purchases. On an earnings call, CEO Ted Decker said “stubbornly high” interest and mortgage rates and consumers’ uncertainty about the economy have dampened home improvement spending. “People are painting again and working in their yards and doing smaller projects, but just have not engaged in the larger projects,” he said. For the full year, Home Depot said it expects total sales to grow by 2.8% and comparable sales, which take out the impact of one-time factors like store openings and calendar differences, to rise about 1%. Its forecast is based on the continuation of a U.S. agreement to temporarily lower tariffs to 30% on imports from China and to 10% for many other countries. Here’s what Home Depot reported for the fiscal first quarter compared with Wall Street’s estimates, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG: Earnings per share: $3.56, adjusted vs $3.60 expected Revenue: $39.86 billion vs. $39.31 billion expected Shares of the company rose nearly 2% in early trading. In the three-month period that ended May 4, Home Depot’s net income was $3.43 billion, or $3.45 per share, compared with $3.60 billion, or $3.63 per share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted earnings per share exclude some costs, including the impact of depreciation from acquired intangible assets. Spring is Home Depot’s peak sales season — the Christmas of the home improvement world — as homeowners and contractors typically tackle more projects because of warmer and dryer weather. Yet even with that seasonal boost, the backdrop for Home Depot remains tough as more U.S. consumers put off home purchases or major renovation projects because of higher mortgage rates and costs of borrowing. Sales growth has been muted. In the fiscal first quarter, comparable sales dropped 0.3% across the company. In the U.S., comparable sales increased 0.2% year over year. That trend has been persistent, with the exception of the previous quarter. Home Depot snapped eight consecutive quarters of falling comparable sales in the fourth quarter. In that quarter, comparable sales increased 0.8% across the company. Sales patterns improved as the quarter went on, McPhail said. Comparable sales declined 3.3% year over year in February, increased 1.3% from the prior-year period in March and rose 1.8% year over year in April, he said. He attributed negative sales results in February to poor weather. “We clawed our way back through the remainder of the quarter and had a great April, and we’ve seen the level of customer engagement that we saw in April continue into the first few weeks of May,” he said. As Home Depot stares down a more challenging housing backdrop, the company has chased more business from home professionals. It acquired SRS Distribution, a Texas-based company that sells supplies to roofing, pool and landscaping professionals, last year in a $18.25 billion deal. Sales for Home Depot – including SRS – grew roughly 9% year over year in the first quarter from $36.42 billion in the year-ago quarter. About $2.6 billion of that year-over-year gain came from SRS’ business, and a portion of sales growth came from new stores, McPhail told CNBC. In the fiscal first quarter, customer transactions across Home Depot’s website and stores rose 2.1% year over year. Average ticket, which measures the amount of spending on those store or website visits, was $90.71, just a few cents above the average in the year-ago quarter. Compared with other retailers, Home Depot caters to a more affluent U.S. consumer who tends to be employed and to have benefited from the sharp increase of property values since 2019, McPhail said. About 80% of its customers are homeowners, he said, and the home professionals who buy from Home Depot cater to homeowners who hire them to tackle projects from roofing and electrical work to a kitchen remodel. “Our customer is healthy, and we think that’s what has supported their level of engagement in home improvement,” he said. Even so, McPhail said that do-it-yourself customers are tending to defer bigger projects and engaging in smaller and spring-related projects. Home Depot saw a positive response to its spring Black Friday event and strong sales in the appliance, garden, plumbing and electrical departments, McPhail said. But he added sales have been softer in areas including kitchen countertops and bath – categories that tend to be purchased as part of pricier projects like renovations and remodels. As of Monday’s close, Home Depot’s shares are down about 2% so far this year. That trails behind the S&P 500′s gains of approximately 1% during the same period. Its shares closed at $379.38 on Monday, bringing its market value to about $377 billion." MY COMMENT A MIXED report but good enough. Considering the environment the company is doing well. Revenue being up was the primary bright spot in the earnings. All in all I am very happy to own this company.....it is "future" money in the bank.
I like this little article. Vices, Virtues, and a Little Humor: 30 Quotes from Financial History https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/inve...ittle-humor-30-quotes-from-financial-history/ (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Why do smart investors repeat the same mistakes generation after generation? Because financial instincts — like fear, envy, and overconfidence — are ancient, stubborn, and terribly unsuited for modern markets. Fortunately, financial history leaves behind a paper trail of wisdom, wit, and hard-won lessons. Sometimes, a single quote can do more to correct a bad habit than a hundred charts. That’s what brought us together. On March 19, 2025, I met Rachel Kloepfer. It was right after my keynote presentation at the Second Annual Institute of Advanced Investment Management (IAIM) conference at the University of Utah. My talk emphasized how investors can use financial history to gain a deeper understanding of current financial events and a clearer vision of the future. I closed with a few quotes from the past — concise and enduring truths which I hoped attendees could use to make better decisions. Afterward, Rachel — a former journalist and fellow financial history enthusiast — suggested expanding the list. We sifted through hundreds of quotes. Some are serious, some are funny, but all come from people who lived through the financial highs and lows of the past 200 years. The result is a curated set of 30 quotes exclusively for Enterprising Investor grouped by the vices to avoid, the virtues to adopt, and a little humor to stay sane through it all. We chose timeless quotes designed to resonate across generations, reminders that whether you’re new to investing or decades into your career, history still has something to teach you. VICES The most tragic mistakes in finance are those we could have avoided — if only we had learned from the past. Yet these errors persist because our instincts, once essential for survival, often backfire in markets. Until evolution catches up, our best remedy is historical awareness. The quotes that follow highlight some of the most damaging investor vices. Committing them to memory can help you resist these patterns — and free the mental capacity needed to cultivate more productive virtues. Envy “Nothing so undermines your financial judgement as the sight of your neighbor getting rich.” —J. PIERPONT MORGAN, financier Impatience “The delusion lies in the conception of time. The great stock-market bull seeks to condense the future into a few days, to discount the long march of history, and capture the present value of all future riches. It is [their] strident demand for everything right now — to own the future in money right now — that cannot tolerate even the notion of futurity.” —JAMES BUCHAN, author of Frozen Desire: The Meaning of Money Dishonesty “A business model that relies on trickery is doomed to fail.” —CHARLIE MUNGER, late vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Hubris “The weakness of human nature prevents men from being good judges of their own deservings.” —LOUIS BRANDEIS,author of Other People’s Money Overconfidence “When a speculator wins, he don’t stop till he loses.” —GEORGE H. LORIMER, 19th century merchant Complacency “Always remember that somewhere someone is making a product that will make your product obsolete.” —GEORGES DORIOT, founding father of venture capital Denial “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.” —JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH, financial historian Overthinking It’s remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” —CHARLIE MUNGER, late vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Herd Behavior “Once a majority of players adopts a heretofore contrarian position, the minority view becomes the widely held perspective.” —DAVID SWENSEN, late CIO of the Yale University Endowment Blind Faith “The investing public is fascinated and captured by the great financial mind. That fascination derives, in turn, from the scale of the financial operations and the feeling that, with so much money involved, the mental resources behind them cannot be less.” —JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH, financial historian VIRTUES Shedding harmful instincts is only the beginning. The next step is to fill that space with virtues — a far more difficult task. Vices are common and instinctive; virtues are behavioral anomalies. The most powerful virtues are rare, easy to dismiss, and even easier to forget. The following 10 quotes come from financial minds who successfully navigated some of the most unforgiving markets in US history. Committing them to memory is a powerful next step toward becoming a more adept investor. Passion “All the genius I have lives in this: when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I’ve made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.” —ALEXANDER HAMILTON, first US Secretary of the Treasury Thrift “I smoke four-cent cigars and I like them. If I were to smoke better ones, I might lose my taste for the cheap ones that I now find quite satisfactory.” —EDWARD ROBINSON, father of Hetty Green, the Queen of Wall Street Self-Discipline “Several decades would pass, and many vicissitudes to be undergone before I could master the simplest and most important of all the rules of material welfare: The most brilliant financial strategy consists of living well within one’s means.” —BENJAMIN GRAHAM, founder of the value investing philosophy Competence “A small bunch of people who know what they are doing can accomplish more than a big group of people who don’t know what they are doing.” —ROBERT NOYCE, founder of Intel Corporation Historical Awareness “You can’t really understand what is going on now unless you understand what came before.” —STEVE JOBS, founder of Apple Computer Education “Proper education is one long exercise in augmentation of high cognition so that our wisdom becomes strong enough to destroy wrong thinking maintained by resistance to change.” —CHARLIE MUNGER, late vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Humility “There is a prudent maxim of the economic forecaster’s trade that is too often ignored: Pick a number or pick a date, but never both.” —PAUL A. VOLCKER, late chairman of the Federal Reserve Caution “In business, don’t close a bargain until you have reflected upon it overnight.” —HETTY GREEN, the Queen of Wall Street Perspective “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.” —ALBERT EINSTEIN, Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Self-Awareness “There is one set of management skills needed to start a company and another set needed to manage a bigger company. They are rarely resident in the same person.” —DON VALENTINE, founder of Sequoia Capital HUMOR Finance and investing are not commonly associated with humor, but when human vices are stretched to their limits, they often produce situations so outrageous it’s hard not to laugh. The following set of quotes comes from witnesses to some of the more insane moments in U.S. financial history. We hope you can find humor in the insanity. “I try to invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.” —WARREN BUFFETT, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway “In the history of every great catastrophe, you will find some masterly bit of stupidity set fire to the oil-soaked rags.” —EDWIN LEFEVRE, financial journalist “Periods of speculative frenzy always draw both scoundrels and suckers to Wall Street, the way a three-alarm fire attracts onlookers and pickpockets.” —ROBERT SOBEL, financial historian “I’ve lots of enemies…I tell you the devil would fear me, as many of his satellites do here.” —HETTY GREEN, the Queen of Wall Street “It was an absurd sign of the times that ‘enhanced leverage’ had become a selling point for an investment vehicle, instead of a warning; it was like naming a new car model after its faulty brakes.” —TIMOTHY GEITHNER, former secretary of the Treasury “Upon discovering the nature of the ruse, their rage was, as may well be imagined, unbounded but fruitless, and they were obliged to content themselves with asserting in a very emphatic manner that if [Jacob] Little ever visited Boston, he would inevitably part company with his ears.” —WILLIAM ARMSTRONG, a reformed stock gambler (1848) “If you have any money in that place [the Knickerbocker Trust], get it out the first thing tomorrow. The men in that bank are too good looking. You mark my words.” —HETTY GREEN, the Queen of Wall Street “Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The Autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.” —JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH, financial historian “As a general rule of thumb, the more complexity in a Wall Street creation, the faster and further investors should run.” —DAVID SWENSEN, late CIO of the Yale Investments Office “The most common exit strategy was that we lost all our money.” —JACK MELCHOR, venture capitalist CLOSING THOUGHTS The 235-year history of US finance is filled with scoundrels, schemes, and spectacular missteps. So it’s fair to ask: How can we remain confident in such a system? The answer is that financial history is also rich with heroism, ingenuity, and selflessness — forces that have steadily driven progress. The path forward is never linear, but over time, this system has worked better than the alternatives. That’s why it’s essential to bridge generational gaps in the investment industry and ensure that future leaders benefit from the hard-earned lessons of the past. As knowledge compounds, so too can a more historically informed and self-aware financial system. Like many of the insights shared here, this one isn’t new. In 1940, Fred Schwed Jr. wrote Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?, a classic that skewered Wall Street with unmatched humor — and still arrived at the same conclusion we have. Capitalism is flawed, but it works. So we’ll let Schwed Jr. have the final word. Despite our best efforts, we simply couldn’t say it better. “I have a sneaking fondness for that wretched old hag, the capitalistic system, after watching the performance of her temperamental younger rivals. I believe we had better preserve our financial machinery even with much of the nonsense still adhering to it. The way we have been brought up, we all have a fondness for articles which can only be made in plants costing millions of dollars. Few of these articles can be produced by a fellow and his uncle working behind the garage. The only successful method so far devised for getting millions out of the public, for enterprises both good and bad, is some system similar to the devious mechanisms of Wall Street. . (Money has occasionally been raised from the public by smacking the citizens with the broad side of a saber, but the results of this were always less than satisfactory). I am willing to submit an idea to the SEC that perhaps they have thought of themselves: they are in the position of a doctor who has only one patient, with no prospect of getting another. It would be a tactical error to kill this patient, even though a commendable scientific zeal prompts the doctor to try out his whole shelf of pharmacopoeia on him. After all, there is no real danger in this case of the patient ever becoming cured.” —FRED SCHWED JR., author of Where are the Customers’ Yachts." MY COMMENT A nice light article with some EPIC lessons for investors. A few days ago I was thinking of that title: "Where are the Customers’ Yachts." I love that little question.....yes....where are they? AND......why do they NOT exist for most......"customers".....of the financial industry?
Little to nothing going on today in the markets or in the financial reporting or articles that are out there. I dont expect much from the markets today....seems like a pause and consolidate day to me. S&P 500 slips, on pace to snap 6-day winning streak https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/19/stock-market-news-today-live-updates.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "The S&P 500 slipped Tuesday, as investors digested strong gains from recent sessions. The broad market index fell 0.3%, while the Nasdaq Composite dipped 0.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 55 points, or 0.1%. Tech was the worst-performing S&P 500 sector, losing around 0.9%. Nvidia lost 2%. Meta Platforms, Apple and Microsoft were also lower on the day. The moves come a day after the S&P 500 eked out a small gain to stretch its winning streak to six days. That’s its longest run since a nine-day streak that ended earlier this month. While Monday’s gains were marginal, they did add to what has been a rapid and sharp rebound for stocks over the past five weeks. The S&P 500 has rallied more than 20% since hitting an April low on the back of President Donald Trump’s tariff announcement. It’s now is now about 3% from its record high. “I would say that the largest consideration is the fact that we’ve had the swoon related to the introduction of tariffs, the furious rally associated with the de-escalation of those tariff implementations, and now we’re awaiting clarification as many of these negotiations are ongoing,” Bill Northey, investment director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, told CNBC in an interview. Northey added that investors are stuck in a state of “optimism without clarity.” Home Depot traded slightly higher after the home improvement retailer stuck by its full-year guidance, expecting total sales for the full year to grow by 2.8%. CFO Richard McPhail also said the company doesn’t have any plans to raise prices in the face of higher tariffs. UBS says to stay invested, despite persistent volatility ahead UBS recommends staying invested going forward, even in the face of ongoing uncertainty. “We expect volatility ahead as investors contend with uncertainty on several fronts,” the bank wrote in a Tuesday note. “Still, we recommend staying invested, along with various strategies to manage volatility, as we expect the S&P 500 to edge higher over the next 12 months and the 10-year Treasury yield to fall.” UBS added that that besides stocks, investors should consider buying bonds, golds and hedge fund for diversification." MY COMMENT Sounds about right to me. We will see as the day progresses.
I start today as a continuation of the FLAT day yesterday. I have four stocks GREEN and five stocks RED. So far NOT a crazy day.....as the markets look for direction early in the day. SO......I will simply ENDURE......and.....WAIT.
We are now seeing more on market direction today and it is.....weak. I have now slipped to seven RED and two GREEN. Time to go away and let the markets do their thing in peace.
A MILD loss for me today......but....broad-based with every one of my stocks in the RED. I also got beat by the SP500 by....0.30%. MOVING ON.
The third rail that business should never touch.....unless it is an inherent part of what you sell and inherent in your ENTIRE customer base. This is a reflection of total MANAGEMENT MALPRACTICE. Target badly misses on earnings, slashes guidance as it battles DEI backlash and reinvigorated Walmart https://finance.yahoo.com/news/targ...lash-and-reinvigorated-walmart-103038522.html Just focus on BUSINESS and avoid all the RELIGION, SOCIAL, and CULTURAL issues that have nothing to do with business.
A MILD red day for me so far. BUT.....I dont see much actual market confidence in what it is doing early today. The reality is just a DRIFTING......meaningless.....market so far. NOTHING happening and probably a meaningless day.
The market today. Dow drops more than 300 points as Treasury yields spike higher https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/20/stock-market-today-live-updates.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Stocks fell Wednesday as traders fretted over another move higher in Treasury yields and monitored the progress on a new U.S. budget bill that could put pressure on the country’s deficit. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 330 points, or 0.8%. The S&P 500 shed 0.5%, and the Nasdaq Composite pulled back 0.3%. The 30-year Treasury bond yield moved back above 5% on Wednesday, while the benchmark 10-year Treasury note yield traded over 4.53%. Yields moved above those key levels earlier in the week after Moody’s downgraded U.S. bonds late Friday. The latest moves come as traders look to Washington as Republican leaders work to finalize a budget bill that would lower taxes. However, the measure has faced pressure from GOP members looking for higher deductions on state and local taxes. Investors also worry the measure could worsen the U.S. deficit. “The questions now is, from a fiscal perspective, what will the tax bill look like, and will it undo all of the recent fiscal frugality by simply raising the debt level at a slower rate of pace? So I think that’s why the 10-year yield is moving higher — because investors are worried that we’re really not doing anything to slow the pace of inflation and to reduce the debt,” Sam Stovall, CFRA Research chief investment strategist, told CNBC in an interview. “Now it seems as if there is a greater that the tax bill will pass, and that could end up simply continuing to raise the overall debt level,” he continued. UnitedHealth was the worst-performing Dow member, losing more than 5% after a downgrade from HSBC. Major tech-related stocks Apple and Amazon dropped more than 1% as rates increased. Wednesday’s action comes after a tough session for the three major averages. The S&P 500 ended a six-day win streak, while the Nasdaq saw its first negative day in three. The major averages have staged sharp recoveries since a sell-off last month that engulfed markets after Trump unveiled steep tariffs on imported goods. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are up more than 14% and 19%, respectively, in the past month. “Some [investors] are a little worried that we’ve gone too far, too fast, and are due for some digestion of recent gains,” Stovall added." MY COMMENT YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING: ".....will it undo all of the recent fiscal frugality...." I dont recall much or.....ANY....concern by the FED or the MEDIA over deficits or the historic National Debt over the last 4-5 years. What recent FRUGALITY......the last four years were rampant out of control spending and stimulus. During which....the FED was totally MUTE.......as was most of the media. PLUS........day to day market EXCUSES....are meaningless and worthless. YES.....it is simply CONSOLIDATION.
