A wasted day for me today. EVERY stock in the red....of course.....NVDA and PLTR were my big down stocks today. Plus a big loss to the SP500 today by 2.07%. I missed the whole afternoon due to being in the studio. Glad to have not wasted the time one the markets. ONWARD AND UPWARD.....as usual. There were some great bargain prices out there today.....if only I had some stock money to invest.
I tried yesterday to do my part and picked up a few more shares. I must need to do a much larger purchase next time. I did notice while I was doing so, that several companies (like AAPL, NVDA, and some broad index funds) had way more "customer" buys going in vs sell. The little guys (myself included) were getting some deals....or at least we believe we are. I'll keep shopping regardless.
TSMC earnings.... Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company on Thursday maintained its annual revenue forecast after it quarterly beat profit expectations, thanks to a continued surge in demand for AI chips. Here are TSMC’s first-quarter results versus LSEG consensus estimates: Revenue: $839.25 billion New Taiwan dollars, vs. NT$835.13 billion expected Net income: NT$361.56 billion, vs. NT$354.14 billion TSMC’s net income increased 60.3% from the same period last year to NT$361.56 billion, while net revenue in the March quarter rose 41.6% to NT$839.25 billion. TSMC’s high-performance computing division which encompasses artificial intelligence and 5G applications drove sales in the quarter, increasing 7% since the last quarter to account for 59% of total revenue. Meanwhile, the company said advanced technologies, defined as 7-nanometer and less, accounted for 73% of total wafer revenue. In semiconductor technology, smaller nanometer sizes signify more compact transistor designs, which lead to greater processing power and efficiency. “Business in the fourth quarter was impacted by smartphone seasonality, partially offset by continued growth in AI related demand,” TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said in an earnings call. “Moving into the second quarter of 2025, we expect our business to be supported by strong growth of our 3-nanometer and 5-nanometer technologies,” he added. As the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, TSMC has consistently benefited from the AI boom as it produces advanced processors for clients such American chip designer Nvidia. However, the company faces potential headwinds from the trade policy of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has placed broad trade tariffs on Taiwan and stricter export controls on TSMC clients Nvidia and AMD. Semiconductor export controls could also be expanded next month under the “AI diffusion rules” first proposed by the Biden administration, further restricting the sales of chipmakers that use TSMC foundries. On the tariff front, Taiwan currently faces a blanket 10% levy from the Trump administration and that could rise to 32% after the President’s 90-day pause of his “reciprocal tariffs” ends unless it reaches a deal with the U.S. “We understand there are uncertainties and risks from the potential impact of tariff policies,” Wei said, noting, however, that the company has yet to see any changes in customer behavior. Therefore, TSMC has maintained its forecast of close to mid-20% revenue growth in 2025 amidst continued AI development. As part of efforts to diversify its supply chains, TSMC has been investing billions in overseas facilities, though the lion’s share of its manufacturing remains in Taiwan. In an apparent response to Trump’s trade policy, TSMC last month announced plans to invest an additional $100 billion in the U.S. on top of the $65 billion it has committed to three plants in the U.S. However, on the earnings call, Wei dispelled reports that the company is in discussions about entering a joint venture that would operate factories of U.S. chipmaker Intel. “TSMC is not engaged in any discussion with other companies regarding any joint venture, technology licensing or technology,” he said.
now that I have had a chance to see what happened, when, yesterday....it is pretty obvious that it was POWELL.....the FED...that tanked the afternoon yesterday. The FED loves it....they can sit and do nothing....and deflect any blame for the economy.....from themselves......to the current government. They sat MUTE as the government stimulated inflation through the roof a year or two ago. We now basically have a FED that is playing politics and passively tanking the markets and the economy.......but.....this is typical for them anyway. Stock Market Tanks After Fed Chair Powell’s Ominous Warning https://newrepublic.com/post/194080/stock-market-plummets-fed-chair-powell-warning I also note that one of my favorites......MORONIC or SENILE or both.....Janet Yellen....has also been out there recently spouting nonsense.
A mixed open today with the DOW down and the SP500 and NASDAQ up. Basically we continue in the CORRECTION of the past couple of months. Perfect timing.....with earnings coming in now. We have now seen good earnings ignored and squandered for many quarters in a row. Either they dont matter anymore......and/or......they just can not cut through the 24/7 media drama that we see every day. Either way.....stupidity in action in the markets.
Sounds like a plan to me. Buying When the Stock Market is Down 15% https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2025/04/buying-when-the-stock-market-is-down-15/ (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "At the worst point of this correction the S&P 500 closed down 18.9%. That was before the giant 10% gain the next day. I don’t know if that was the bottom or not but it’s possible we just had another near-bear market (for now): I don’t know why we’ve had so many close calls over the years but there have been a number of near bears over the years that were a hair from being down 20%. This got me thinking about stock market outcomes when you’re down 15%.1 What if you buy the market when it’s down 15% or worse? I looked back at the end of every month the S&P 500 was in a 15% peak-to-trough drawdown or worse since 1950. Then I looked at the forward 1, 3, 5 and 10 year total returns from there. The results are pretty good: The average returns were strong when you bought down 15% in the past. You can also see the percentage of time stocks were positive in each period. Most of the time stocks were up. There wasn’t a single 10 year period when they were higher. Of course, averages can mask the outliers. The worst one year return saw you go down another 26%. The worst 3 year return would have seen you lose 7% in total after buying down 15%. If you would have bought at the end of February 2004 when the stock market was still in a 20% drawdown, five years later you would have been down an additional 29% from there.2 This is the risk part of investing in risk assets. Most of the time things work out. Sometimes they don’t. That’s risk. Maybe we go much lower from here. It wouldn’t shock me because sometimes that happens in the stock market. But most of the time buying when the stock market is down double digits tends to work out for long-term investors." MY COMMENT If....."if"....you are long term it is probably a no-brainier to buy quality stocks when the markets are down by 15% or more. The key is to be....REALLY....long term......at least 5-7 years.
Speaking of earnings. TSMC Q1 profit surges 60%, beats forecasts https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tsmc-q1-profit-surges-60-053631163.html LOL...I saw this report being fear-mongered in some sources yesterday. BASICALLY......all financial media and coverage is obsessed with politics right now. AND......I continue to IGNORE all of it......at least for purposes of this thread. It is NOT relevant to long term investing and I refuse to clutter up and disrupt the message of this thread with such GARBAGE. Of course I and everyone else probably has definite feelings on politics and government......but playing that game as an investor a waste of time and thinking.
As to the.....FANTASY....looming recession. American Express CEO: April's stock market volatility hasn't sent customers into their bunkers https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amer...t-customers-into-their-bunkers-122606716.html HUH.......how can this be. Not exactly what we have been told lately.
In the current environment......it is critical to do you own research on any financial or investing issue. The media has become so SHALLOW and personal opinion based.....they can never be trusted. NOT that this is a change.....I have NEVER relied on media opinions when it comes to investing. The only research I can trust is.....my own. I highly recommend this stance to any investor.
Speaking of the FED and JP. I actually read a bit of the text from the event yesterday. He obviously mentioned some things that irked the president and keyed up some of the trading platforms. I was thinking when I read it, what a position to be in. I can include myself as complaining about the FOMC a few years back in that debacle. Of course, they at times (historically) are always battling against a very prominent and long standing issue that weaves into whatever issue they are trying to manage. Government spending. We have always spent more than we take in. Nobody has been able to solve that. I suspect we never will. The FED Chair is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Yet, they are supposed serve in a non-political way. It's like one of those "sticky" assignments or projects you get assigned at work by the boss and are told to handle it in an impartial way or how you see fit....all the while knowing how the boss feels about it. A tough spot. FED JP was appointed by the very guy that now wants to fire him. Of course, other presidents have battled it out with the FED Chair too, so it's not too surprising that anybody serving in that spot will eventually find themselves at odds. I'm not sure they could pay me enough to try to walk that tightrope. For those that might be interested in what FED JP mentioned in remarks yesterday. You can read the text of the statement here: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20250416a.htm
In the healthcare related area. Looks like United Health Care (UNH) is having a rough day based on their latest earnings. UnitedHealth Group Reports First Quarter 2025 Results and Revises Full Year Guidance (UNH) Eli Lilly (LLY) is having a good day based on some of the weight loss/diabetes late stage trials. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/17/eli...forglipron-clears-first-late-stage-trial.html It is amazing over the years the medical advances across the board. The pharmaceuticals, technology, procedures, and all other advancement is really something.
As mentioned, earnings are here and many of the banks have already reported. We are now picking up more as the calendar continues to turn. We will start seeing some more of the names discussed here and then it will just be full on for the next several weeks. A good time to get a little report card on any companies you may own and evaluate if they still fit what you want as a shareholder.
Some information on Treasury and Mortgage rates. Mortgage Type Rate Change 30 Year Fixed Mortgage 6.86% -0.02 15 Year Fixed Mortgage 6.27% -0.02 30 Year Jumbo Mortgage 7.03% -0.02 7/6 SOFR ARM Mortgage 6.42% -0.03 30 Year FHA Mortgage 6.35% -0.02 30 Year VA Mortgage 6.37% -0.01 Rates last updated on 4/16/25. US Treasury Rates The US treasury yield curve rates are updated at the end of each trading day. All data is sourced from the Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates data provided by the Treasury.gov website. Treasury Current Yield Change Previous Yield 1 Month Treasury 4.35% 0.00 4.35% 1.5 Monthnth Treasury 4.35% -0.01 4.36% 2 Month Treasury 4.35% -0.01 4.36% 3 Month Treasury 4.33% 0.00 4.33% 4 Month Treasury 4.34% 0.02 4.32% 6 Month Treasury 4.20% -0.01 4.21% 1 Year Treasury 3.96% -0.03 3.99% 2 Year Treasury 3.77% -0.07 3.84% 3 Year Treasury 3.77% -0.08 3.85% 5 Year Treasury 3.91% -0.07 3.98% 7 Year Treasury 4.08% -0.07 4.15% 10 Year Treasury 4.29% -0.06 4.35% 20 Year Treasury 4.77% -0.05 4.82% 30 Year Treasury 4.74% -0.05 4.79%
This was started under our prior government....but....I dont see much difference between the two parties on this sort of issue so far. We continue to tear apart, punish, and cannibalize our world class businesses. A DUMD thing for our country. Google found to hold illegal monopoly over online ad business https://finance.yahoo.com/news/goog...nopoly-over-online-ad-business-160129308.html
Fortunately these sorts of cases are actually decided by higher courts......on appeal.....which can take years.
A small loss day for me today. Plus a loss to the SP500 by 0.68%. Basically the CORRECTION continues. Last market day of the week tomorrow....as we head into the last half of April.
OK.....the Good Friday Tradition. Amazing that this old tradition continues. It will be good to have a three day break.
Since this is the last market day this week....here is my weekly summary: DOW year to date (-7.67%) DOW five days (-0.89%) SP500 year to date (-9.98%) SP500 five days +0.52% NASDAQ 100 year to date (-12.97%) NASDAQ 100 five days (-0.34%) NASDAQ year to date (-15.53%) NASDAQ five days (-0.44%) RUSSELL year to date (-15.73%) RUSSELL five days +2.90% And my current result for my entire portfolio.....year to date......(-13.79%).
There is an OBVIOUS disconnect between retail investors and money managers. Although it is good to keep in mind that it is the......professional managers.....that can not beat the SP500 long term. They tend to reactionary and can not stand to sit still......when something is in the news or driving the short term markets they have a problem with siting still and not doing anything. Of course....it is their customers that pay the price for stocks and funds being sold....in the form of capital gains taxes. The Sentiment Reset We’ve Seen Fund managers illustrate sentiment’s swing. https://www.fisherinvestments.com/en-us/insights/market-commentary/the-sentiment-reset-weve-seen (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "For the past two weeks, when assessing the landscape of tariffs and volatility, we have counseled readers that fear is in the marketplace—a shorthand way of saying markets reflect and have been pricing in deep tariff pessimism. When we observe that something is probably priced to a very large degree, it is kind of a fine line to walk. Not because we doubt our reasoning, but because it can risk sounding dismissive if there is no tangible evidence. We can show you rock-bottom sentiment surveys and fearful headlines, but without concrete evidence of shifting portfolio positioning, it is always a bit of a dot-connect between the anecdotal evidence of fear and market volatility. Which is where fund manager positioning reports come in. Though not a perfect indicator (nothing is), they give a good snapshot of how the news has affected actual trading decisions among a fairly wide swath of professional investors. It is the epitome of watching what people do, not just what they say. So we were quite keen to see what Bank of America’s latest Global Fund Manager Survey, published Monday, would show. The survey ran from April 4 – 10, the heart of stocks’ Liberation Day freakout and the monster rally after April 9’s partial tariff pause. And it shows fund managers took swift action. One, they raised a boatload of cash. The overall 4.8% cash allocation isn’t high relative to other deep corrections and bear markets, but the increase since February is the fastest two-month jump since April 2020. That, you may remember, was the month after the COVID lockdown-induced bear market hit its low. Not that we are calling cash raises a contrarian indicator, but it is a good comparison point for the level of panic right now. Panic then proved overblown. Whether it does so now remains to be seen, but this speaks to the worst-case scenarios driving decision making today, creating room for positive surprise. Also telling is what managers sold to raise cash: stocks, and primarily US stocks. Global and US equity allocations are at the lowest since mid-2023. The two-month slide in global stock allocations is also the biggest since April 2020, while the drop in US allocations in this same stretch is the largest on record. Now, some of this stock positioning is a function of market movement, not outright selling. But the big move to cash speaks to a large amount of selling, as do the general sentiment portions of this survey. A plurality of fund managers—42%—now expect gold to be the top-performing asset this year, dethroning global stocks, which topped expectations in March but now win the confidence of just 11% of managers.[ii] 90% expect “stagflation” this year, bringing economic sentiment near where it was entering 2023. Most managers say they are cutting risk, whatever that even means (it is always subjective, friends), but it speaks to the environment. None of this is predictive, of course. It is a snapshot of how one class of investors reacted to news in a single, wild week. But it shows how feelings and the news affected trading decisions, which colors in the pencil sketch of what everyone surmises markets have moved on. It is a way to see how this correction and its widely known, discussed and chewed over story—tariffs—swung sentiment suddenly. From here, stocks will move most on the gap between these expectations and how reality unfolds over the next 3 – 30 months. When sentiment is this low, it is generally an easier bar to clear. That doesn’t mean stocks skyrocket from here or that it is all smooth sailing if a rally is already underway. But it suggests there is little negative surprise power left at this point." MY COMMENT The professional money managers.....masters of window dressing. In the end with all their FLAILING AROUND.....most of them will still NOT beat the SP500 over the medium to long term. AND....being simply an average......the SP500 just basically sits there and takes it in a correction.
