The markets seem to be strengthening some into the final 45 minutes today. We need to just HANG ON and we will be done with the BIG TECH earnings week. It was a superb week for investors. While waiting for the close I will mention some of my music happenings. We will be playing five shows over the next eight days starting with tomorrow. Some are local and some are little road trips. ALL are weather dependent since they are all outside shows. We are now booking shows at a rate that will put us on track to hit 120 shows for this year. At that rate it is one show for every three days of the year. The five shows will end next Saturday....when I will get home about 1:30AM. On Sunday I will than get up about 5:30AM and we will drive for 700 miles. We will check into the hotel that evening and starting the next day will tour out of that city for the next three days. On Thursday we will than drive the 700 miles back to the Austin Area. Starting tomorrow....over the next 13 days we will cover about 2000 miles.
So far, so good I think. End of the week and the month in the green and earnings are about half way with around an 80% beat so far.
i did better than I expected today. I got a nice moderate gain. I ended with eight of ten stocks Up for the day. The DOWNERS were.....AMZN and GOOGL. Even GOOGL was only slightly down for the day. The SP500 beat me today by 0.39%. A GREAT day.....a GREAT week......and.....a GREAT year to date. LETS KEEP IT ROLLING NEXT WEEK.
STILL climbing that big old wall of worry......but a very nice week for all the primary averages. DOW year to date +2.87% DOW for the week +0.86% SP500 year to date +8.59% SP500 for the week +0.87% NASDAQ 100 year to date +21.16% NASDAQ 100 for the week +1.90% NASDAQ year to date +16.82% NASDAQ for the week +1.28% RUSSELL year to date +0.44% RUSSELL for the week (-1.26%) We are now OFFICIALLY done with the first four months of the year......April is lock in and recorded in the historical record. My year to date after four months......+19.03%.
This is how the markets did today: Dow gains more than 250 points Friday as index finishes best month since January https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/27/stock-market-today-live-updates.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose on Friday, notching its best month since January. The blue-chip index closed 272 points, or 0.8%, higher at 34,098.16. The S&P 500 added 0.83% to finish at 4,169.48. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.69% to end at 12,226.58 as investors parsed the latest crop of technology earnings. The Dow finished April 2.5% higher, its best monthly showing since January, when the average ended up 2.8%. The S&P 500 logged a 1.5% monthly gain — its second positive month in a row — while the Nasdaq ended the month only slightly higher. On a weekly basis, the Nasdaq saw the largest gain, at 1.3%, in what was considered Big Tech’s marquee earnings week. The Dow and S&P 500 each finished the week about 0.9% higher. CNBC Just over half of S&P 500 companies have reported earnings thus far. Of those companies, 80% have beaten expectations, according to data from FactSet. That beat rate is roughly in line with a three-year average, according to data from The Earnings Scout. “The market should follow earnings,” said Gina Bolvin, president of Bolvin Wealth Management. “That is the mother’s milk of the market.” Amazon shares closed down nearly 4%. When reporting first-quarter results, the online retailer said its cloud business decelerated, though it did beat Wall Street’s expectations for revenue in the quarter. Snap tumbled 17% following a revenue miss. Pinterest shares dropped 15.7% after issuing disappointing second-quarter revenue growth expectations. First Solar slid more than 9% after missing Wall Street expectations for the first quarter. Not every tech stock was down following their respective releases. Intel shares climbed 4% after the semiconductor firm beat estimates on the top and bottom lines. Data released Friday morning showed the personal consumption expenditures price index rose 0.3% in March, which was in line with economist expectations. The index is a key gauge of inflation for the Federal Reserve, which has a policy meeting scheduled for next week. “Today is reflective of sort of a three-legged stool,” said Greg Bassuk, CEO of AXS Investments. “Earnings, economic data and the Fed continue to be the investor narrative.” Also of note, shares of troubled First Republic Bank plunged more than 43% after CNBC’s David Faber reported that the most likely outcome for the regional bank is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation taking receivership. The stock has lost more than 97% of its value since the start of the year. Earnings running above expectations so far, according to FactSet With earnings season now more than halfway through, major companies are topping Wall Street expectations at a healthy rate, according to FactSet. John Butters, the firm’s senior earnings analyst, said in a note to clients on Friday that 53% of S&P 500 companies have reported so far. Of those names, 79% have beat estimates on earnings per share and 74% have beat on revenue. Earnings are now on track to be down 3.7% for the quarter, a smaller decline than the 6.7% decline projected on March 31." MY COMMENT Economic data.....check. Earnings.....check. Next week the last FED hike.......perhaps. We next to check off that last item and hopefully we will be in for a long nap for the FED after next week. The DOW may have had a good week and it's best month since January......but it is severely lagging the other big averages....the SP500 and the NASDAQ......this year. It is just barley positive at +2.87% for the year to date.
This should somewhat clean up the negative news going forward....as we get this one behind us and out of the way. U.S. regulator set to take over First Republic-source https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-regulator-set-over-first-203340365.html "NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is preparing to place First Republic under receivership imminently, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday. The U.S. banking regulator has decided that the troubled regional lender's position has deteriorated and there is no more time to pursue a rescue through the private sector, the source said, requesting anonymity because the matter is confidential. First Republic and FDIC representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment." MY COMMENT Time to pull the plug. This bank is toast. It is a healthy thing to get worthless companies up and out of the markets. This is what happens when management and the business model are DUMB. A niche bank focusing on serving WEALTHY people with sweetheart mortgage deals. What could possibly go wrong.
I see that this thread is now ONLY......610....."views" away from 1MILLION views. I have decided that the lucky person that gets view number 1MILLION view.......should get a NO EXPENSES PAID......dinner date with JANICE YELLEN. The bad news......being a 12 course dinner it will take a minimum of 6 hours. So you will be stuck with her for that long. The conversation for that entire six hours will be limited to ECONOMICS. I am still trying to line this up......and unfortunately there is NO consolation prize if I am not able to do so.
OK....I see that APPLE reports on May 4......next week. Looking forward to their report and seeing if they follow the rest of the big tech world with a nice BEAT.
I don't think the implications of the giant advances in AI lately can be overstated. This is huge, and it will drive software and hardware growth for decades to come. Big tech is going to make a fortune. I'll give a quick example: Topaz Labs Gigapixel is a software I use often. The results I get now in 60 seconds would be almost impossible just a year or two ago without a number of masks, layers, and hours of tweaking in Photoshop. It's not perfect, but it is an amazing piece of software.
HERE is what you get for doing business in China and/or investing in Chinese companies. China detains staff, raids office of US due diligence firm Mintz Group https://www.reuters.com/world/us-du...office-raided-five-staff-detained-2023-03-24/ (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "WASHINGTON/BEIJING, March 24 (Reuters) - Chinese authorities raided the office of U.S. corporate due diligence firm Mintz Group in Beijing and detained five local staff, the company said, putting foreign companies in China on alert just as the country hosts an international economic forum. News of the raid and detentions comes as Sino-U.S. relations have spiraled downwards following months of diplomatic tensions, including over the U.S. military downing in February of a suspected Chinese spy balloon and a planned U.S. transit next week by the president of Taiwan, the self-governed island China claims as its territory. "We can confirm that Chinese authorities have detained the five staff in Mintz Group's Beijing office, all of them Chinese nationals, and have closed our operations there," the company said in an emailed statement to Reuters late on Thursday. It said it was ready to work with the Chinese authorities to "resolve any misunderstanding that may have led to these events", and that its top concern was the safety and wellbeing of colleagues in China. "Mintz Group has not received any official legal notice regarding a case against the company and has requested that the authorities release its employees," the company said. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Friday she was not aware of this case. The Beijing public security bureau did not respond to a request for comment. A source at the New York-headquartered firm earlier told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the company's local legal counsel said the raid occurred on the afternoon of March 20, and that the employees were being held incommunicado somewhere outside of Beijing. 'RED ALERTS' As per Mintz Group's website, the Beijing office is its only one in mainland China. The website says the company specialises in background checking, fact gathering and internal investigations. Its wide-ranging clients include the National Football League, New York City and The Beatles, according to media reports. Mintz has 18 offices around the world and hundreds of employees. Randal Phillips, a partner at the firm who heads its Asia operations but is based outside of China, is listed on its website as the Central Intelligence Agency's former chief representative in China. Phillips worked in Beijing for years after leaving the CIA. There was no indication the incident was related to him, and Reuters was unable to reach him for comment. The news of the raid and detentions comes as Beijing is gearing up to hold the three-day China Development Forum from Saturday, where executives from multinationals and representatives from international organisations will be among the more than 100 overseas delegates present. One U.S. business community person told Reuters the Mintz Group incident sent a "remarkable signal" that Beijing wants foreign money and technology but that it won't accept credible U.S. firms conducting due diligence on Chinese partners or the business environment. "Red alerts should be going off in all boardrooms right now about risks in China," the source, who did not wish to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the matter, said. China has said it welcomes foreign trade and investment but stressed that security comes before development. U.S. businesses operating in China are increasingly pessimistic about their prospects in the world's second-largest economy, according to a survey released this month by the American Chamber of Commerce in China. Two-thirds of the respondents cited rising U.S.-China tensions as the top business challenge. Western due diligence companies have got into trouble with Chinese authorities before. British corporate investigator Peter Humphrey and his American wife Yu Yingzeng, who ran risk consultancy ChinaWhys, were detained in 2013 following work they did for British pharmaceuticals group GSK. Humphrey, who spent two years in jail for allegedly acquiring personal information by illegal means, which he denied, told Reuters that providing due diligence in China was even harder now because of a "massive tightening in access to information." "The foreign business community needs due diligence in order to conduct safe business, to pick the right partners and the right hires, to invest in the right companies without losing their shirt ... But Beijing has made it impossible to do this," he said in an email. "This is at a time when Western companies need transparency more than ever," he added. MY COMMENT What do you expect when you are doing business with or owning stocks in companies that are totally controled by the worlds most brutal communist dictatorship. Here is ALL you need to know: "...the Mintz Group incident sent a "remarkable signal" that Beijing wants foreign money and technology but that it won't accept credible U.S. firms conducting due diligence on Chinese partners or the business environment." "Red alerts should be going off in all boardrooms right now about risks in China..." The Chinese simply dont care.......and this sort of business response is going to just encourage them to do more and more: Mintz Group said....."It said it was ready to work with the Chinese authorities to "resolve any misunderstanding that may have led to these events" As I have said many times it is TOTALLY corporate malpractice to do manufacturing or any sort of technology business in China. They are a lawless society totally under the control of a dictator. I will NEVER buy a Chinese stock.......the handwriting is on the wall in HUGE LETTERS.
AND....for those that want to IGNORE REALITY....here is another example just a day ago: China: Another US Firm Is Raided https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/global-hr/pages/china-another-firm-raided.aspx (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Another U.S.-headquartered firm, Bain & Co., was raided by Chinese authorities—this time in Shanghai—where police took away computers and phones and questioned staff. No employees were detained. The raid happened after Mintz Group, also based in the U.S., was raided in March. We've gathered articles on the news from SHRM Online and other media outlets. Increased Pressure on U.S. Companies Chinese authorities have recently been increasing pressure on selected U.S. and other Western businesses. Bain & Co., which is based in Boston, said on April 26 that it was cooperating with authorities and declined to comment further. Shanghai police didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the reason for the visit. The episode highlights the increasingly risky environment for businesses in the world's second-largest economy. Detention of Japanese Citizens China has detained Japanese citizens in recent years for alleged espionage, including most recently an employee of drugmaker Astrellas Pharma, headquartered in Tokyo. The employee was detained in March. Other Actions Chinese authorities also suspended Deloitte's operations in Beijing for three months and fined the accounting firm for alleged deficiencies in past audits. The commerce ministry recently banned several Raytheon and Lockheed Martin executives from entering the country and prohibited Chinese groups from selling to the two U.S. defense contractors. At the same time, China is welcoming some U.S. businesses, such as Apple, that it considers central to its future. Top Chinese officials, including Premier Li Qiang, have said the country is open for business, encouraging foreign investment. Espionage Law May Have Chilling Effect China's rewritten law against espionage tightens state control over data and digital activities, an expansion of power that raises the risks for businesses operating in the country. Executives say the expanded scope of the legislation threatens to turn everyday interactions into national security offenses. The amended law raises concerns that normal business activities, such as gathering intelligence on local markets, rivals and business partners, could be included in the broadened definition of espionage. The revised law, which takes effect July 1, will require Chinese government agencies and media outlets to conduct publicity campaigns to promote awareness of espionage and ways of countering such activities. Codification of Existing Practices The espionage law amendments codified expansions that had largely been put into practice already through other legal implementations and rules, according to Jeremy Daum, a senior fellow at the Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center. Increasingly Pessimistic Business Climate A March raid of the Beijing office of Mintz Group, a corporate investigations firm headquartered in the U.S., and the detention of its five Chinese employees raised concerns among those conducting due diligence in China. U.S. businesses operating in China are increasingly pessimistic about their prospects there, according to a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China. Two-thirds of respondents cited rising U.S.-China tensions as the top business challenge." (BBC News and SHRM Online) MY COMMENT Anyone doing business in China......BEWARE. This country is out of control and totally unafraid of any consequences.....since there will not be any.
You will NOT see much about the above on any mainstream source. HERE is a nice little article. I have read it and it seems to be credible and well reasoned.....BUT.....I do not know the source so I will not post the whole thing. I do recommend reading it. It was on one of my go-to sources for business information. What I Think Is Going On 1) with China-US Relations, 2) with Their Relations with Other Countries, and 3) in China https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-i-think-going-1-china-us-relations-2-other-countries-ray-dalio/ MY COMMENT Some scary stuff above if it is true. Seems like a credible source. OUR perceived and actual weakness is not a good thing when dealing with a BRUTAL country like china. Here is the writers BIO: About "A global macro investor for more than 50 years, Ray Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates out of his two-bedroom apartment in NYC and ran it for most of its 47 years, building it into the largest hedge fund in the world. Ray remains an investor and mentor at Bridgewater and serves on its board. He is also the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Principles: Life and Work, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order, and Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises. He graduated with a B.S. in Finance from C.W. Post College in 1971 and received an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1973. He has been married to his wife, Barbara, for more than 40 years and has three grown sons and five grandchildren. He is an active philanthropist with special interests in ocean exploration and helping to rectify the absence of equal opportunity in education, healthcare, and finance."
There was a story a week or so ago where they were operating a "police station" of sorts in NYC. A few arrests were made. They were up to all sorts of sinister operations for their homeland apparently. This alone, and the above stories should be enough to change course. We have several large companies that keep expanding there. What is to keep them from just playing along and the taking it over or shutting it down and controlling it? Nothing, and all of that investment of capital is gone in a puff of smoke. It will happen eventually to one of these major players. It would be drastic and not without some pain, but at this point I would support every single US company ceasing all operations there and closing up shop. Take your company to many of the other business friendly countries around the globe. We have been ignorant to the facts for too long.
Of course what I posted and proposed would likely be an economic train wreck. We do need to consider how "tied" up we are there though. I think some companies realized during the great "shutdown" how troublesome this can be. It's important to remember who you can rely on and trust to a certain degree. We seem to ignore the obvious there. Definitely a tough nut to crack at this point. Easier said than done as they say. I mentioned awhile back holding some international with one of my funds. I still hold it, but it excludes China. I did that on purpose when I selected it.
Back to our little corner of the globe.... It appears the First Republic deal has a Sunday deadline for final bids for buyers. Hurry up boys and submit your bids....if you are interested in owning. Maybe this little noisemaker will get put to rest finally. Not that it is anything different from some of the others that suffered the same fate, but squashing it will give the media less drama to gin up next week.
The silence is deafening from all the "experts"....that said earnings were going to suck. Key Takeaways From a Better-Than-Feared Start to Earnings Season https://finance.yahoo.com/news/key-takeaways-better-feared-start-090000935.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) ("Bloomberg) -- Investors have had plenty to cheer this earnings season so far — resilient consumer spending, upbeat Big Tech results and confident economic outlooks from corporate executives. Yet, the stock market is not reflecting the optimism. The sharp US and European equities rally ahead of results stretched valuations and raised the bar for further gains, but worries about a recession and higher interest rates have capped sentiment. With investors now preparing to hear from US industrials, automakers and retailers for further clues on the health of the consumer, here are four key takeaways from the season so far: ‘Investor Exhaustion’ The US stock rally leading up to the season was at odds with the trend in the previous three quarters, when the market had sold off, according to Morgan Stanley strategists. That has made it difficult for equities to extend their advance amid concerns about a staunchly hawkish Federal Reserve and declining earnings, Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson, one of the most bearish voices on Wall Street, wrote in a recent note. Even as nearly 81% of S&P 500 companies have beaten analysts’ estimates — the biggest proportion since the third quarter of 2021 — the median stock has outperformed the index by just 0.1% on the day of results, according to data from Bloomberg Intelligence. In Europe, too, over 70% of firms have reported better-than-feared profit so far, but a rally in the Stoxx 600 Index has stalled. “While first-quarter results are coming in better than expected, share prices have not rebounded as investors are increasingly concerned about delayed declines in fundamentals as a result of an impending recession,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research. JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategists also warned that a better season may not lead to a sustained rally given the “strong run” in the preceding weeks. An analysis by the team at Wells Fargo Securities LLC showed that companies beating profit estimates are outperforming the index by only 10 basis points, compared with an average of 73 basis points over 2022. The breadth has also narrowed, with 53% of beats outperforming this season, compared with an average of 58% last year, their data show. “It is becoming an unforgiving market,” Wells Fargo strategist Christopher Harvey said. “We suspect this could point to signs of investor exhaustion.” Solid Big Tech Results Going into the season, analysts were forecasting the steepest drop in quarterly profits for US technology stocks since at least 2006. Early reports show those expectations may have been too pessimistic. Heavyweights Microsoft Corp., Google-owner Alphabet Inc. and Facebook-parent Meta Platforms Inc. all delivered upbeat results last week, sparking a bounce in the Nasdaq 100 Index and calming worries that a 20% rally in the gauge had gone too far. Amazon.com Inc. also had strong results, although a downbeat outlook fueled a slide in its shares. Ron Saba, senior portfolio manager at Horizon Investments LLC, said that while cost cuts could continue to support tech earnings over the next few quarters, the outlook could darken beyond that. “It’s difficult for companies to post strong earnings growth with such modest sales growth expectations,” Saba said. Sustained Pricing Power The impact of sticky inflation was seen as one of the main risks to earnings in the first quarter. But a range of companies, including Procter & Gamble Co. and Nestle SA, have been able to pass on higher prices as consumers prove willing to dip into pandemic-era savings despite slowing economic growth. Mentions of pricing power in news articles are on the rise, while those of cost cuts are dropping, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. And with the likes of PepsiCo Inc. and Danone expecting demand to remain solid, a Citigroup Inc. index shows earnings downgrades are starting to slow. Seasonality also stands to benefit the earnings outlook as most cuts to S&P 500 forecasts on average are done by April or May, said Lori Calvasina, head of US equity strategy at RBC Capital Markets. “While there is a lot of frustration among buy-siders that numbers haven’t come down enough yet for next year,” the trends so far in 2023 suggest “sell-side analysts have done a good job of pulling down numbers,” she wrote in a note. That’s not to say all sectors have been able to sustain higher prices. Where consumer-goods firms have had a strong showing, Tesla Inc. has been among the most high-profile companies to announce cuts in recent months as competition in the electric-vehicle market heats up. No Recession Alarms The chorus of economists warning about a possible US recession has grown following recent turmoil in the banking sector. The tone among company executives, however, has been more “balanced” as they “acknowledged rising risks of a downturn but weren’t baking one in explicitly,” RBC’s Calvasina said. While JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon warned about the risks of a contraction in the world’s biggest economy, he said it won’t necessarily happen even if more US regional banks fail. “I’m not surprised that there isn’t yet much broader pessimism about the outlook,” said James Athey, investment director at Abrdn. “The reality is that the job market looks very strong, therefore consumption is for now holding up well and CEOs don’t want to talk down their own stock or the economy.”" MY COMMENT YEP......but as seen above the negativity is still out there. The first question for anyone these days when looking at ANY economic commentary.........is the commentary driving the markets or is it reflecting the markets? Most of the ACTUAL FACTS above are very positive. It is the opinions of the various people quoted that tend toward the negative. They just can not stop. NO......the actual facts above are NOT....."early reports" suggesting something.....we are done with 50% of earnings reports. The facts above reflect the TRUTH of the market. The nice things is that over the long run......opinion does not matter. What counts is REAL results. That is money in the bank for an investor. As to the current rally being at odds with the trend of the past three quarters......NO WAY. The past three quarters also had earnings reports that were at or better than expectations. AND......for anyone that cares to just look at a simple chart of the SP500 for the past year.......we have been in a rising market since last JULY......nearly TEN MONTHS now. What is at odds with the markets is the inability of many to see what is actually happening. For some reason....psychological, bias, self interest, publicity, etc......many people just can not see the REALITY of what has been happening. I do actually like to see this happening......it is a very nice indicator of the staying power of the current rally. Good BULL MARKETS are always disrespected for a good length of time when they are in the early stages.
