The Long Term Investor

LOL....you got to love the short term. The SP500 and NASDAQ have now turned red and the DOW has quickly lost most of its gains.

Looks like the AI Program Trading Platforms have suddenly been hit by some headline or news item that they are all trading in concert. Pure herd behavior by AI platforms. BUT....what do you expect....these systems are designed and run by humans. It is not like they are independently thinking......they are simply trading news and headlines.....at extreme speeds.

 

We are certainly in the summer doldrums when it comes to financial media content. I am simply seeing NOTHING today of any significance in the media.

Part of the reason is the focus on politics right now with the Supreme Court dominating the news along with the debate. The other reason is that we are now done with the FED.....for the most part. The economy has finally gotten past COVID and the markets seem to be starting to take a summer PAUSE.

I dont consider a summer pause a bad thing. Markets can not just go straight up all the time. They need to pause once in a while and consolidate the earlier gains. It is the churning and back filling in the markets that sets up the next bull market run up.

We are also going to see earnings start back up in 3-4 weeks......and....till than there is really nothing positive happening to boost the markets or cause any excitement. Add in the fact that this week is the 4th of July with many investors out for the week.....and.....only 3.5 market days this week......and......we are all set up for a very mild and irrelevant week.

It is not helping that we are seeing a significant short term bump in the Ten Year Yield....now at 4.463%.

 

Regarding the above....I am certainly having a boring day today with my nine stocks.......five are up and four are down. One of the five is PLTR which is a MICRO position......so in reality I am more like.....four up and four down. I currently have a very small.....irrelevant...... loss for the day.

BORING.......

 

If this was not funny...it would be sad.

ALL the people here in the USA clamoring to work....or as Elon would say.....pretend....to work from home are going to find out that they are not needed. Pushing work from home simply means that AMERICAN jobs are going to go remote to other countries.....mostly India.

Be careful....what you wish for. If I was a company....with work that can be done remotely....why do I need those employees at all.....I can simply outsource the jobs to India and let them work remotely from white collar sweat shops. I will save on withholding taxes, L& I premiums, unemployment taxes, benefits like vacation, family leave, health,dental and life coverage, Social Security contributions, 401K contributions, etc, etc, etc.

Move over, remote jobs. CEOs say borderless talent is the future of tech work

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/30/move-over-remote-ceos-say-borderless-talent-future-tech-jobs.html

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

"Key Points

• Experts say borderless hiring for technology jobs is stealing the conversation from remote work.
• Much like services such as Uber increased access to what is essentially a private driver on demand, talent marketplaces and a digitized workforce make global hiring more than just a pricey C-suite search.
• “Remote is like the gateway drug to borderless,” said one tech talent marketplace CEO whose customers include Goldman Sachs, Github and Coursera.

To work remotely or not is no longer the question. Experts say it’s borderless hiring for technology roles that is stealing the conversation.

“Remote is like the gateway drug to borderless,” said Jeremy Johnson, CEO of AI-enabled tech talent marketplace Andela, whose customers include Goldman Sachs, Github and Coursera. “Once you realize that you don’t have to all be in the same office five days a week in order to build a compelling culture and feel connected to the mission and solve complex problems, you then start thinking there are great people all over the world.”

With tech leaders focusing concurrently on innovation and value-driven efficiency, tech hiring that eclipses national or even global time zone delineation is a growing phenomenon. Borderless tech hiring has doubled in the last three years, according to Gartner’s 2023 CEO Survey. By 2022, the tech talent workforce in cities like Beijing and Delhi far outweighed that of U.S. powerhouses like San Francisco and New York, reports CBRE Global Tech Talent Guidebook 2024. The report cites burgeoning tech talent markets like Bucharest, Romania; Cape Town, South Africa; Cebu City, Philippines; Nairobi, Kenya and more.

Global hiring is an example of a luxury that’s moving down the value chain, Johnson said. Much like services such as Uber increased access to what is essentially a private driver on demand, talent marketplaces and a digitized workforce make global hiring more than just a pricey C-suite search.

Global payment processing platform Payoneer has its hands in the borderless hiring world from an internal perspective (with about 2,200 employees in 50 countries and more than 25 offices globally), but it also benefits from and drives the borderless trend with its clients.

“The rhetoric about the globalized opportunity is powerful, but it doesn’t make any difference to the business you’re doing unless you actually have the utilities and tools to do it,” said Payoneer CEO John Caplan.

Pockets of talent worldwide

Adam Jackson, CEO of decentralized tech talent platform Braintrust, does borderless differently. “We don’t have a physical office,” he said. “Everyone works remotely. Every engineer but one who works on Braintrust is outside of the U.S.” Braintrust’s clients, from NASA to Nestlé, are building borderless teams, too, Jackson says.

“It was the case maybe 20 years ago when I moved to San Francisco that the best tech, best developers, best product managers and designers all lived here in Silicon Valley,” Jackson added. “That’s just not true anymore. There are still many here, but there are pockets all over the world.”

Some leaders, like Johnson, believe time zone coordination is still important to provide certain employees with the opportunity to work synchronously. Jackson, however, has the viewpoint that global innovation with an asynchronous workforce is a chance to create a company “where the sun never sets.”

While there are questions about work-life balance, Jackson says that doesn’t exist in startup culture anyway, but that asynchronous work can increase clarity in documentation and minimize the endless treadmill of meetings, leaving more time for creative thinking and deep work.

Johnson says local labor laws, compliance and payroll are all factors at play in global operations, which is why many organizations have opened centers in specific countries. But even these obstacles aren’t insurmountable.

AI and future of work geographies

One thing these experts agree on is that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to borderless hiring. “Every company has to find their own bespoke solution,” Caplan said. “You have to design your office footprint, your future-of-work philosophy to the business you’re building.”

Thinking about artificial intelligence innovation and, on the flip side of the same coin, AI regulation, Johnson says the European Union’s standard-setting regulatory framework will make it tough for tech operations to thrive. As more regulatory and case law settles around the globe surrounding AI and data, cross-border employment trends will shift like puzzle pieces.

“I think Europe is going to have a really tough time over the next few years,” he said. “They’re pushing a lot of data innovation out of the continent, and I think that’s an opportunity for Africa and Latin America and other parts of the world.”

Regardless of where organizations hire, Jackson emphasizes the importance of managing risk and hiring good people. “Quality still matters,” he said. “The old adage is when you’re building software, do you want to be fast, good quality, or cheap? Pick two. Now, I reject that. You can have all three, but quality still matters, no matter where you are.”

Caplan relishes in the more altruistic potential of borderless employment, namely its ability to “lift up communities around the globe.” This may be true, but at the very least, its benefits for expanded talent reach and cost effectiveness are enough for leaders in all kinds of industries to take it on. With applications for standard work-sponsored visas in the U.S. up 263% in 2023 compared to the year prior, according to Deel’s latest Tech Migration Report, and U.S. cities accounting for the top five average monthly apartment rent costs, borderless hiring could ease the burden for employment seekers and employment providers in one

“If you could make your single biggest expense, which is talent, 10% more efficient, you have a dramatic advantage,” Johnson said. Borderless hiring, it seems, will continue to infiltrate the growth playbook at all levels."

MY COMMENT

Be careful.....you might actually get your wish for remote work.....but unfortunately......the remote worker will not be YOU. It will be someone outside the USA that works much cheaper than you do.

 

Speaking of jobs leaving the USA.

Struggling with falling demand for farm equipment, Deere & Co. announces nearly 600 layoffs

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/struggling-falling-demand-farm-equipment-150031828.html

MY COMMENT

Yeah right....struggling with demand? I guess there is at least some demand:

"Early in June, Deere announced that it was moving its skid steer and track loader manufacturing from a facility in Dubuque, Iowa to Mexico by the end of 2026. The company said that it was in the process of acquiring land in Ramos, Mexico to build a new factory."

 

At least things are still extremely positive for NVDA even though the stock is lingering with earnings more than a month away.

Analyst resets Nvidia stock price target after trillion-dollar Q2

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analyst-resets-nvidia-stock-price-143017647.html

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

"Nvidia shares edged lower in early Monday trading, following a trillion-dollar market-value gain during its second quarter peak, as a top Wall Street analyst issued a bullish second-half outlook for the market-leading AI-chip maker.

Nvidia (NVDA) launched its new Blackwell system of AI-powering processors this spring. The group continues to hold a commanding share of the market for the chips and systems needed to build out the massive data systems that so-called hyperscalers — such as Meta Platforms (META) , Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT) — will use to further their new technology ambitions.

Blackwell products are more expensive than their H100 and H200 predecessors but provide more power and are more energy-efficient. Their introduction, however, had raised concern about a so-called air pocket in sales, as customers canceled orders of the legacy chips and waited for the new line of processors.

Those worries were largely mitigated by a robust near-term outlook from Nvidia in late May, which called for current-quarter revenue to rise to around $28 billion, with a 2% margin for error. The outlook came even as Nvidia noted that Blackwell wouldn't start shipping until the back half of the year.

For the three months ended in April, data-center sales, which include the group's key AI offerings, surged more than fivefold to a record $22.6 billion while gross profit margin expanded to 78.9%

Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore boosted his Nvidia price target by $28 to $144 a share on Monday while affirming an overweight rating.

He said checks from his team following visits to China and Taiwan suggest that "sales of both products will remain strong."

Morgan Stanley: No NVDA Blackwell 'air pocket'

"The catalyst path remains strong, as the very strong surge in H20 builds and demand removes any concern for us about a pre-Blackwell pause," Moore and his team wrote.

"Hopper builds continue to go up, as H100 starts to transition to H200 (bringing better memory bandwidth from HBM3e as well as higher memory content)," they added.

Nvidia, Moore and his team wrote, "remains the most compelling narrative in the AI [semiconductor] space," adding that "visibility and backlog will improve materially" as the transition from the H100 and H200 to Blackwell progresses.

Nvidia is also moving forward with Rubin, another advanced line of AI-powering chips, which CEO Jensen Huang unveiled during a speech at the National Taiwan University in Taipei.

Named after the American astronomer Vera Rubin, who is credited with discovering so-called dark matter, the new Rubin systems will be rolled out in 2026, Huang said."

“Our company has a one-year rhythm," Huang said. "Our basic philosophy is very simple: build the entire data-center scale, disaggregate and sell to you parts on a one-year rhythm, and push everything to technology limits.”

Nvidia shares were last marked 1% lower in early Monday trading to change hands at $121.86 each."

MY COMMENT

Not surprised by any of the above at all. It is fun to own and see a company that is operating on all cylinders and hitting it out of the park. Basically extremely GREAT management at work. What a machine.

 

Regarding the above post on work from home.....here....is the other big issue that workers will face going forward......FRACTIONAL HIRING. Just a fancy name for......part time....contract work. The savings for the employer are the same as outsourcing.....not having to pay all the benefits, taxes, and perks for part time......."independent contractor".....workers.

How fractional hiring creates a paradigm shift in the workplace

https://www.cnbc.com/advertorial/2024/06/24/how-fractional-hiring-creates-a-paradigm-shift-in-the-workplace.html?utm_campaign=NativeTout5&utm_source=Polar&mvt=i&mvn=dda385a85d8e4f6783c7c680683b9551&mvp=NA-CNBC-11239420&mvl=CNBC ROS_Polar - Polar Engine Backfill

MY COMMENT

As we move forward.......in many ways....the future is not too bright for full time employees with all he perks and benefits. BUT....for business.....a HUGE savings.

 

A....."happy ending".....for the markets today. At least for me. I had a good medium gain in my nine stocks. Six of nine were GREEN. The three in the red today.....COST, CMG, and HD. I also got in a beat on the SP500 by 0.45%.

MOVING ON UP.

 

TSLA up over 6% today. You think someone has advance notice of the upcoming numbers? I dont know....I hope not...I like to think that we are not that corrupt.

Tesla rises ahead of Q2 deliveries report

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-rises-ahead-q2-deliveries-174510359.html

The numbers will be reported TOMORROW.

 

HERE is the market today.

Nasdaq leads gains to kick off new quarter as Tesla pops 6%

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stoc...ff-new-quarter-as-tesla-pops-6-200103811.html

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


"US stocks edged higher on Monday to start the second half — and third quarter — of 2024 as investors began counting down to the July 4 break and the key US jobs report.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose 0.1% while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) gained 0.3%. The tech-filled Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) climbed about 0.8%.

Tesla (TSLA) stock popped roughly 6% ahead of the EV giant's quarterly delivery results due out on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Nvidia (NVDA) shares erased earlier losses, temporarily easing worries the chip heavyweight could be trading in treacherous waters.

Stocks are having a bumpy ride to kick off a trading week cut short by the Independence Day holiday. Investors are debating whether the second half will bring a pullback or a broadening in the record-breaking tech-driven rally that lifted the benchmark S&P 500 to a near-15% gain this year so far.

Coming into focus is the June jobs report due Friday, watched for signs of cooling in the labor market that could help make a case for interest rate cuts. Encouraging signs that inflation is slowing toward the Federal Reserve's target, plus emerging cracks in the economy, have spurred hopes for a policy pivot.

US manufacturing activity data released on Monday showed the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing PMI fell further into contraction territory in June, hitting a four-month low.

US political risks have also started to emerge into the picture amid questions about whether President Joe Biden's future as the Democratic Party's standard bearer."

MY COMMENT

A NOTHING day today.....but at least it ended positive. I expect this whole short week to be about the same as today.....dominated by political speculation and drama.....with little actually going on in the economy or the markets that matters.

 

SAME open we have been seeing lately.......flat, flat, flat.....slightly in the red. I hear one TV commentator saying......"well we do have a big economic report on Friday that the markets are waiting for"

Welcome to the modern market. There is ALWAYS....something....that the markets are writing for. An economic report, the FED meeting, the next earnings, etc, etc, etc. There is always some excuse for the markets.

Of course I dont buy any of it. My view....the short term markets are simply STUPID. Always looking for some excuse for IDIOCY. In reality the short term markets are irrational since they are driven by news items, fear-mongering, panic, irrational human behavior and most of all.......short term day trading by AI Platforms and professional big bank manipulative traders.

This is exactly why I simply stick to the LONG TERM

 

Looks like the big bump up in TSLA yesterday was justified.

Tesla stock pops as quarterly vehicle deliveries beat Wall Street estimates

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesl...ies-beat-wall-street-estimates-133220335.html

 

And.....of course the FED is out there to throw a wet blanket on the markets as usual.

Fed's Powell says more evidence of falling inflation needed before rate cuts

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/feds-powell-says-more-evidence-140144509.html

MY COMMENT

NOTHING new from the FED. They are simply ignoring reality. They dont want to cut rates till the late Fall and that is that. Of course the danger is that they are misreading the data and will hold rates high for too long and put the economy in the tank.

In other words.....they dont have a clue what is going on.....as usual....and are stalling for time.

I actually agree that there is no need to rush out and cut rates. It should be just fine if they wait till November or December for the first cut. BUT PLEASE......STFU......get off the media. Stop tanking the markets with your constant blather and media appearances. Shut up and simply do your job.

Although.....I dont believe the FED has any real ability to control the economy...... other than creating crashes of the economy with their idiocy.

 

And.....of course the FED is out there to throw a wet blanket on the markets as usual.

Fed's Powell says more evidence of falling inflation needed before rate cuts

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/feds-powell-says-more-evidence-140144509.html

MY COMMENT

NOTHING new from the FED. They are simply ignoring reality. They dont want to cut rates till the late Fall and that is that. Of course the danger is that they are misreading the data and will hold rates high for too long and put the economy in the tank.

In other words.....they dont have a clue what is going on.....as usual....and are stalling for time.

I actually agree that there is no need to rush out and cut rates. It should be just fine if they wait till November or December for the first cut. BUT PLEASE......STFU......get off the media. Stop tanking the markets with your constant blather and media appearances. Shut up and simply do your job.

Although.....I dont believe the FED has any real ability to control the economy...... other than creating crashes of the economy with their idiocy.

 

As to the above.

US Labor Market Shows Signs of Losing Steam, Putting the Fed on Alert

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-labor-market-shows-signs-100000508.html

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

"(Bloomberg) -- Economists and some Federal Reserve officials are increasingly on alert that pain could be on the horizon for American workers amid signs the labor market is losing steam.

Companies are posting fewer job openings this year and employees are quitting less as unemployment has begun creeping up from low levels, signaling the end of the historically-tight labor conditions that characterized the rapid recovery from the pandemic shock.

Strength in hiring has so far helped the economy weather aggressive Fed tightening, which brought interest rates to the highest levels in two decades. With inflation still running above the central bank’s 2% target, the fear is that any further softening in labor conditions could start to snowball and put economic growth at risk.

“Any change in the outlook for the labor market could have significant implications for the direction of the economy and monetary policy,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics. “If there is one thing we know for sure, it is that conditions change very quickly.”

Two key reports this week from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — Tuesday’s monthly update on job openings and Friday’s on broader employment trends — will offer more clues about where the labor market is headed.

Last month’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey release, known as JOLTS, showed total listings for open positions fell in April to 8.1 million, a three-year low. That is down more than a third from the peak of 12.2 million reached in 2022, when employers hampered by labor shortages were struggling to keep up with a surge in demand as the economy reopened.

There are now just 1.2 postings for each person looking for work, similar to pre-pandemic levels. The quits rate, at 2.2% in April, has also returned to levels that prevailed before Covid-19.

Kelly Bonn, a headhunter and executive coach in St Petersburg, Florida, said inquiries from job-seekers asking for help are up about 30% since the end of 2023. Finding a job can often take two to five months now, compared to one or two months in 2021 and 2022, according to Bonn.

“Employers are definitely taking their time and being choosier about who they bring in,” she said. Meanwhile those with jobs have become more wary about leaving stable positions for new opportunities: “They don’t want to be unemployed in this market.”

Fed officials are still mostly sanguine about the state of the labor market, though they’ve begun to acknowledge rising risks.

“Overall, we’re looking at what is still a very strong labor market, but not the superheated labor market of two years ago or even one year ago,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters on June 12, after central bank officials kept rates unchanged and scaled back projections for cuts in 2024.

‘Inflection Point’

The question some economists are asking now is whether the market is also more vulnerable to a downturn. Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius recently described it as at a potential “inflection point,” where a further material softening in demand for workers will register in higher unemployment and not just fewer openings.

“Future labor market slowing could translate into higher unemployment, as firms need to adjust not just vacancies but actual jobs,” San Francisco Fed chief Mary Daly said in a June 24 speech. “At this point, inflation is not the only risk we face.”

Monitoring the job market for that potential tipping point has become more challenging in recent months, with different indicators in the monthly BLS report on hiring sending conflicting signals.

One one hand, the data show employers have added 248,000 jobs a month so far this year on average, a robust pace that exceeded economists’ expectations, perhaps in part driven by a surge in immigration.

But the unemployment rate — derived from a survey of households instead of businesses — rose to 4% in May, up from the low of 3.4% reached last year.

“We’re left with ambiguous results and we have to deal with that uncertainty around data,” Powell said on June 12.

Making the moment all the more critical for the Fed is the awareness based on past experience that labor-market losses can pile up quickly once they get going. Unemployment rose gradually from 4.4% in March 2007 to 5.1% a year later, as the economy slowed amid the onset of the financial crisis. As the recession took hold, the jobless rate rose more rapidly, reaching 7.3% by the end of 2008 before topping out at 10% the following year.

So far, hiring and wage growth have remained steady in the data. But the backdrop has clearly shifted. One sign of that: Employers have largely stopped offering the huge incentives they were providing to attract new hires in recent years, said Becky Frankiewicz, North America president at ManpowerGroup, a staffing services company.

“It was almost like, what can we do with the workers to get their attention?” Frankiewicz said. “All of that has really stabilized. Now it’s much more back to base pay.”"

MY COMMENT

WHATEVER. There is nothing I can do regarding short term idiocy. So I will continue to hide out in the long term.

 

LOL........this guy was one of the most INCOMPETENT executives at MSFT during the time that I owned my shares from 1990 to 2002. His incompetence is the primary reason that I SOLD ALL SHARES in 2002.

When he left the company in 2014....it signaled the start of the current management which has been exceptional. After he left and I watched the company for a while....I was able to buy back in with confidence.

Talk about an empty suit.

Ballmer Is Richer Than Gates, a First for Microsoft Billionaires

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ballmer-richer-gates-first-microsoft-203825410.html

AND......I have not seen anyone since 2014....clamoring to hire him. What an idiot.

"More than 90% of Ballmer’s $157.2 billion net worth is in Microsoft shares, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index."

 

I see Powell headlines regarding his most recent comments all over the media today. The reason for the RED open today.

Now that the markets have had a chance to digest the POWELL fear mongering in the media today......we have seen the SP500 and the NASDAQ turning slightly GREEN.

In my entire investing life I have NEVER seen any time.....other than now.....where the FED was so active in constantly tanking the markets through public comments.

 

Lori Meyers said above:

"Thanks again for all your advice regarding my credit card, guys.

I have made the decision to not sell any stock. I'm going to take the new card and the 3% transfer fee and focus very hard on getting it all paid off. I have 21 months to do it. I think I can do it in under half that time. Funds to invest will be on pause for a little while but at least I don't have to sell anything off."

I think you made a good choice Lori. If you work at paying off the new card it will cost you nothing other than the 3% transfer fee. At the same time I think you went with PROBABILITY....in terms of stocks..... in your decision. The key will be sticking to the plan and paying off the card.

I BELIEVE YOU CAN AND WILL DO IT.

You certainly have made some money over the past couple of days in TSLA. So you are off to a very good start to the plan. You will be greatly rewarded if the markets go up and you stick to the pay-off plan. As I often say......NO GUTS....NO GLORY.