Regardless of what I post or do on here daily....my portfolio just sits on automatic pilot. there is nothing that I do on a typical day. My entire investing strategy is summed up by the single word....NOTHING. That is also a good word for the markets today.....NOTHING....is happening, nothing is going on, and the markets are doing nothing. I will be leaving in about an hour for an early rehearsal......so not much posting is going to happen from me till late in the day. COURAGE....PATIENCE....ENDURE.....ENJOY......in that order most of the time for investors that have the guts and mentality to think long term.
I ended in the RED today....only a single stock UP for the day.....NVDA. I did manage a very small beat on the SP500 at the close by.....0.03%.
The week that was. DOW year to date +4.51%. DOW five days +0.08%. SP500 year to date +2.68%. SP500 five days +0.94%. NASDAQ 100 year to date +2.49%. NASDAQ 100 five days +1.89%. NASDAQ year to date +1.26%. NASDAQ five days +1.60%. RUSSELL year to date +2.15%. RUSSELL five days +1.55%. All in all a good week for my account. At the close today my entire account is at.....+2.30%...year to date. Last Friday I was at....(-0.61%)...year to date for my entire account.
The very BASIC reason that I own NVDA and will continue to do so. Often the largest company by market cap in the world. A generational investment opportunity....yet....the market often treats it like some upstart, unproven, business. It is being totally disrespected right now. Chart of the Week: 2025's monster AI spend is now revealed https://finance.yahoo.com/news/char...nster-ai-spend-is-now-revealed-110012820.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "With the last of the hyperscalers having reported quarterly results, the market now has a full outlook on the year ahead from the biggest players in AI besides Nvidia (NVDA). Going into Big Tech earnings, investors had been wondering whether the prospect of potentially "affordable" AI from DeepSeek would undermine the narrative that those hyperscalers — Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon — were uniquely positioning themselves for a big win by unleashing record-breaking investments in the new technology. Already going into this week, we had an answer. Meta (META) was nearly doubling its spend, and Microsoft (MSFT) was taking its $56 billion from last year to $80 billion. Then on Tuesday, Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) put $75 billion on the board. And now, as our Chart of the Week shows, Amazon (AMZN) stepped in to hit 12 figures with $105 billion. Add up the Big Four's AI shopping lists, and you get $325 billion, a 46% increase over last year. Clearly, these companies remain all-in. And if you listen to the companies, they're not building a "field of dreams" in hopes that demand will come — companies say they're seeing demand. "The vast majority of that capex spend is on AI for AWS," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on the company's earnings call, noting that "we don't procure it unless we see significant signals of demand." Still, how much of this investment is actually making money remains the big question to answer this year — and how cagey execs are around that question may be an answer in and of itself. But as Jassy put it, these are investments for a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity, and one that will make shareholders happy "medium to long term." MY COMMENT Here is what the chart in the article shows....click the link to see the chart: FOR 2025 META.....$60BILLION MICROSOFT......$80BILLION ALPHABET.....$75BILLION AMAZON.....$105BILLION TOTAL.....$320BILLION.........in a single year. WTF.....WTF......A SINGLE YEAR. So lets drive NVDA stock DOWN by.....11.8% since January 23 and by 6.12% YTD. And these are just the tip of the WORLD-WIDE iceberg......that is AI spending build out .....that will be happening over the next TEN to FIFTEEN years.
To continue the above. Amazon, Like Microsoft, Says It Can’t Keep Up With AI Demand https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-offers-weak-outlook-rising-214216636.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. warned investors that it could face capacity constraints in its cloud computing division despite plans to invest some $100 billion this year, with most of the money going toward data centers, homegrown chips and other equipment to provide artificial intelligence services. Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy, determined to turn Amazon into an AI supermarket, is spending big to retain the company’s edge in cloud-computing services. Still, he warned growth would be “lumpy” owing to challenges securing sufficient hardware and electricity. “It is true we could be growing faster were it not for some of the constraints on capacity,” Jassy said on a conference call Thursday after the release of fourth-quarter results. The concerns echo those of rival Microsoft Corp., which last week said its cloud sales growth was hurt because it didn’t have enough data centers to handle demand for its AI products. Jassy said power capacity and the supply of chips — from third parties and Amazon’s own design unit — are limiting the ability of Amazon Web Services to bring new data centers online. Those constraints will likely ease in the second half of 2025, he said. Amazon spent $26.3 billion in capital expenditures in the last three months of 2024, the vast majority of which went toward AI-related projects within AWS. Jassy told analysts on the call that the amount was “reasonably representative” of the rate of outlays the company planned to make in 2025. The company reported that AWS revenue jumped 19% to $28.8 billion in the quarter ended Dec. 31. It was the third straight period of 19% growth for the cloud unit. “AWS growth did not accelerate as anticipated and instead matched Q3 levels, indicating that the company is challenged by the same types of capacity constraints facing rivals Google and Microsoft,” said Sky Canaves, an analyst at Emarketer. Jassy’s warning on AWS growth constraints overshadowed a fairly strong holiday quarter, suggesting the company’s main e-commerce and logistics business is fending off competition from Walmart Inc. and discount upstarts like Temu and Shein. The shares declined almost 3% as the markets opened on Friday in New York. The stock had previously gained 8.9% so far this year after a 44% jump in 2024. The AI race will likely weigh down profits. Operating income will be $14 billion to $18 billion in the period ending in March, the Seattle-based company said in a statement. Analysts, on average, projected $18.2 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. First-quarter sales will be as much as $155.5 billion, compared with an average estimate of $158.6 billion. While Amazon’s overall quarter was generally positive, “investors immediate concerns are around Q1 guidance, which was below expectations, mostly because of the impact of a big currency drag and the impact of lapping a leap year,” said Gil Luria, an analyst at DA Davidson & Co. The company said the extra day in the quarter in 2024 boosted sales by about $1.5 billion. Total revenue in the holiday quarter increased 10% to $187.8 billion, slightly ahead of analyst estimates. Operating profit was $21.2 billion, compared with the average estimate of $18.8 billion. Total operating expenses rose 6.2% to $166.6 billion — marking the eighth consecutive quarter that Amazon’s revenue increased at a higher rate than costs. The company employed more than 1.55 million full- and part-time workers at the end of the quarter, a 2% increase from a year earlier." MY COMMENT As I apply common sense.......and think I am seeing the obvious....I continue to see the financial media and others pushing negativity on these companies as well as the other AI leaders. I see this as the most MASSIVE reality disconnect in the history of the markets. BUT.......what do I know...I am a simple little investor. Perhaps.....we have now been driven to the edge of the cliff by the financial media and other short term thinkers and traders....where real world data, earnings, fundamentals, and potential....dont matter anymore in the markets.
AND..... Tech megacaps plan to spend more than $300 billion in 2025 as AI race intensifies https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/08/tec...re-than-300-billion-in-2025-to-win-in-ai.html "Key Points Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft intend to invest as much as $320 billion this year into artificial intelligence technologies. Technology companies are racing to build out data centers and AI infrastructure that will put them ahead of the competition. Amazon offered the most ambitious spending plan, aiming to shell out $100 billion."
This is a pretty good article on CMG. Some good data on their recent earnings. Chipotle’s Slip: A Short-Term Dip or Long-Term Opportunity? https://www.marketbeat.com/original...dip-or-long-term-opportunity/#google_vignette
It is hard to argue against that point made above. It has been a very noisy start to the year it seems, maybe more than before. I think some of it I actually expected. Post election there is a ton of "bait" out there for the media and all to feast on. The continuing tariff chatter, the FED, rate speculation, sweeping changes within government, further possibility of chip restrictions, continual inflation banter, piles of "economic" reports, and on and on. Add in a dash of politics, wealthy people, and some analysts and you have an endless "buffet" of noise. I think it just overshadows and bogs down the momentum of some of the earnings. They simply get lost in all of it.
The top 10 in the SP500 at the end of this week. S&P 500 Component Year to Date Returns # Company Symbol YTD Return 1 PALANTIR TECHNOLOGIES INC A PLTR 46.57% 2 CONSTELLATION ENERGY CEG 38.48% 3 UBER TECHNOLOGIES INC UBER 23.67% 4 CROWDSTRIKE HOLDINGS INC A CRWD 23.21% 5 GENERAL ELECTRIC GE 23.08% 6 TAPESTRY INC TPR 23.04% 7 STARBUCKS CORP SBUX 22.96% 8 META PLATFORMS INC CLASS A META 22.03% 9 F5 INC FFIV 21.92% 10 MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS INC MPWR 21.73%
The "Mag 7" as it is often referred to....remember when it was "FANG"....what will they come up with somewhere down the road? AAPL -6.65% AMZN + 4.06% GOOG -1.83% META +22.03% MSFT -2.11% NVDA -6.12% TSLA -4.66% The above approximate YTD totals. Of course, the year is still very young and there is a lot of ground to cover. The way this year has gone these numbers could change in one day and be the opposite of where they are now. Interesting, but not overly meaningful.
Good posts Smokie. The above Mag 7 numbers YTD are CRAZY....but as you said very early in the year. I do like #1 two posts up....PLTR. If this keeps up they are going to have to expand it to the...."Magnificat Eight". WELL.....I guess it would sound better to call them the......."GREAT EIGHT". Just kidding....it will take a while if it happens.
I agree. After all these years COST is still a GROWTH STOCK. Costco Is a Growth Stock. January Sales Prove It. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/costco-growth-stock-january-sales-110300779.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Some investors might automatically assume Costco (NASDAQ: COST) is an established, slow-growing company. They would be right on one count, but wrong on the other. It is certainly an established leader. But it's not slow-growing. In fact, the membership-based wholesale retailer's earnings per share grew by a high-teens percentage in its fiscal 2024, which ended Sept. 1. Further, sales in the months since then have accelerated compared to fiscal 2024, setting up the company for a great 2025. Put simply, Costco is still a growth stock. This is important to understand because it helps justify its premium valuation. Accelerating sales growth Helping fuel Costco's 17% year-over-year increase in earnings per share in fiscal 2024 was a 6% jump in comparable sales, adjusted to exclude the impacts of changes in gasoline prices and foreign currency exchange rates. Impressively, this was an acceleration from 5% adjusted comps growth in fiscal 2023. Of course, it's not too surprising that Costco's growth accelerated in fiscal 2024. The company's sales are normalizing after coming off of extremely tough comparisons to the years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fiscal 2021 and 2022, for instance, Costco's adjusted comparable sales rose 13% and 11%, respectively. As people's shopping habits normalized in the years following the pandemic, its growth rates naturally moderated. In fiscal 2024, however, Costco's growth rates moved upward again as the prior years of elevated growth levels faded further into the rear-view mirror. But what's really surprising is how fiscal 2025 is shaping up for the retailer. Costco's adjusted comparable sales growth rates for its retail months of December and January (which are not precisely aligned with the calendar months), for instance, were significantly above fiscal 2024 levels -- at 9.9% and 9.8%, respectively. Even more, a further adjustment to account for the fact that Costco's December results were positively impacted by a 15% boost due to the timing of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday compared to the year-ago December shows that the company's momentum is actually accelerating. Powerful catalysts Strengthening the bull case even more, there's good reason to believe that Costco's high growth rates are sustainable for the foreseeable future. This is due to the company's ongoing international expansion and its e-commerce rollout. The strength of these two parts of Costco's business is highlighted by their outsized growth rates relative to the overall business. For example, the membership-based retailer's adjusted comparable sales in Canada and the company's "other international" segments both rose by about 8% in fiscal 2024, approximately 2 percentage points faster than the company's total growth rate. In addition, Costco's adjusted comparable sales coming from e-commerce sources soared by 16%. Unsurprisingly, strength in these segments has persisted into 2025. The company reported January adjusted comparable sales growth rates for Canada, other international, and e-commerce of 12.3%, 10%, and 15.2%, respectively. With 617 of its 897 warehouse stores in the U.S. and 767 in North America, the company has significant room for international expansion. Further, the company is arguably under-penetrated in e-commerce channels, so its efforts to streamline this part of its business will help it capitalize on plenty of low-hanging fruit. Combining Costco's accelerating growth and its powerful catalysts with the magic of the company's overall business, including its extremely low prices, 90% renewal rate on memberships, and its ability to increase its annual membership prices over time, it's easy to see why the stock trades at a premium valuation of more than 61 times earnings. Costco is a growth stock with powerful and sustainable catalysts, and it should trade like one." MY COMMENT This company has been a growth stock for its entire life. it still operates like a young company. A big shout out to their EXCEPTIONAL management.
Here is where we stand on EARNINGS right now. EARNINGS INSIGHT https://advantage.factset.com/hubfs/Website/Resources Section/Research Desk/Earnings Insight/EarningsInsight_020725A.pdf Key Points • Earnings Data: For the SP500, we have seen 62% of companies report so far and 77% reported a positive EPS surprise. 63% reported a positive revenue surprise. • Growth: The earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 is 16.4%. If we can stay on this pace it will be the highest earnings growth rate reported since Q4 2021. • Revisions: To start 2025 the estimated earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 for Q4 was 11.8%. Eight sectors have reported higher earnings today based on positive EPS surprises. • PE: The current forward P/E S&P 500 is 22.1. This is above both the 5-year average and the 10-year average. As usual the link above will take you to extremely comprehensive data on the current earnings reports in the SP500. In spite of the media and their BS....earnings are coming in very nicely. We have been spoiled by an EPIC multi-year BOOM in good earnings.
I still have the following earnings to come: February 20.....WMT. February 25.....HD. February 26.....NVDA March 6.....COST.
You know I was looking at two MAJOR financial sites on Sunday and I was completely struck by the negativity. I knew it was bad....but...it made me realize that.....EVERY SINGLE WEEK....we enter the week with some big fear-mongered topic for the week. It is either the FED, or interest rates, or economic news, or an inflation report, or jobs, etc, etc. Every single week there is some topic that is RAMPED up over the weekend as critical during the week to come.....and it is always pitched in negative terms. Between the two sites last night there were at least 20 major NEGATIVE headlines on....inflation data this week, tariffs, earnings, etc, etc. I notice that now....however....when we are near the Monday open....they are all gone. I assume due to the positive futures numbers that are up right now for the big averages. Thinking back it made me realize that......we go into every single week with some negative, often trumped up......topic based on FEAR and negativity. That is just PATHETIC. When you realize that the SP500 has a positive return about 70% of all years and that market direction tends to be positive......than this negativity is out of touch with reality. It is simply obnoxious media behavior. AND....the sites I am talking about are financial sites....not general news.
I also note that over the past.....ONE MONTH....the rate on the Ten Year Treasury has been steadily going down. Who needs the FED. The rate seems to be going down on it's own. Current rate is about 4.475%. About a month ago it was at 4.8%.
