I am looking forward to my COSTCO earnings. I dont really know why....the markets in typical fashion will probably punish the stock for good earnings based on some minute comment or data. I continue to push my one person campaign to convince the company to split their stock. I think 3 for 1 would be about right. The last time the stock split was 23 years ago. The stock sits at an all time high $628. This price makes the stock unattractive to many investors. Someone with a few thousand dollars to invest is not psychologically motivated to put all their funds into a stock and only see 2-3 shares siting in their account. Of course a split is a neutral event.....but somehow this neutral event.....often results in a nice price gain for investors over the year following the split. In fact I.....somewhat tongue in cheek..... see this current FAD of allowing share prices to get higher and higher with no splits as anti-democratic and anti-small-investor. It is ELITIST. You want to allow regular people to own individual stocks and participate in the markets and the American dream.....split your stock when it gets into a high range. Of course the best way for a regular person to be able to afford all the best companies.....regardless of the high share prices.....is to simply buy the SP500 Index.
We continue to make slow and good progress today in the markets. Nothing more for me to say or do....so I will sign off till later in the day.
SHHHHHHHH.....dont say anything....but it looks to me like we are at the start of a nice year end SANTA CLAUSE RALLY. I dont see much being said in the media.....so keep it on the QT....it is a stealth rally right now. The more gains we can rack up and the more we can get this rally going before everyone starts talking about it and trying to micro-analyze it.....the better.
COSTCO has been on a tear lately.....over the past three months UP by 0ver 12%. Over the past one month UP by nearly 8.5%. What is really AMAZING is that over the past FIVE YEARS....the stock is up by 202%. Talk about compounding and massive impact on a portfolio. This is what you hold for as a long term investor. YES....it does not happen all the time and you have to hold through the bad times to get these gains.....but.....this is how you really multiply your money. And remember.....this five year 202% gain....includes the DISMAL YEAR 2022. GO BABY GO.
Yeah.....the FED 2% target is simply RIDICULOUS. There’s only one type of inflation left https://finance.yahoo.com/news/theres-only-one-type-of-inflation-left-195240841.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "If you’re still worried about inflation, it’s probably safe to start relaxing. The biggest economic problem of the last two years has been steadily improving, with the inflation rate dropping from a peak of 8.9% in June 2022 to just 3.1% now. In some important categories, there’s barely any inflation to speak of. Since the start of 2021, Yahoo Finance has tracked month-by-month inflation in 28 categories that cover most things people spend their money on. At the peak in 2022, every category except one—electronics—showed positive inflation, and the inflation rate was in double digits in eight categories. Earnings were growing by 5.4%, but inflation was higher than that in 16 out of 28 categories, including the most important ones: rent, food, transportation and energy. It’s a much better picture now. There’s deflation, or falling prices, in 10 categories. Food inflation has dropped to just 1.7%. The inflation rate for all goods combined, which hit 13.2% last year, is 0. Gasoline, unofficial arbiter of the national mood, is 9% cheaper than a year ago. There’s just one problem left: rent. On our monthly tracker, below, there are only four categories where prices are still rising by more than incomes. Rent is at the top, with a 6.9% increase year-over-year. Housing, which includes rent and other factors, is up 5.2%. The other two categories up by more than earnings are personal care, which is a small part of the typical budget, and restaurant meals, which are a treat most people can do without if they must. Inflated rents reflect the same problems many home buyers are intensely aware of. Real-estates costs in many areas surged during the Covid pandemic and never came back down. Rising interest rates, meanwhile, have made mortgages more expensive. There’s not enough new housing, so supply is tight. Landlords face many of the same cost pressures home buyers do, and pass as much of the cost onto tenants as they can. Good news is coming, though. Rent is an unusual product to measure, because most people sign leases for a year or more. So the price many people pay was set in the past, and doesn’t reflect current conditions. Many renters will get a break the next time they sign a lease, however. The Apartment List rental index, which better measures the current market, dropped 0.9% in the latest monthly reading and has fallen for four months in a row. It’s likely to keep declining, as least for a couple more months. That will eventually show up in the official inflation data, bringing the last of the big expenditure categories back to a normal range. Inflation still feels oppressive to some people, for a couple of reasons. In most categories, price hikes of the last two years haven’t gone away. We’re just seeing smaller price hikes now. Food prices during the last year are up just 1.7%, but they’ve grown by 25% since 2019, which is about five percentage points more than incomes have risen. So food costs eat a little more of the family budget than they used to. We’ve also exited a period of extraordinarily low interest rates, engineered by the Federal Reserve, that dates all the way to 2008. That’s when the Fed began “quantitative easing,” designed to bring long-term interest rates down, in addition to the more familiar Fed move of lowering short-term rates during a downturn. The Fed began QE to combat the financial crash during the Great Recession, and never changed course until inflation began to heat up in 2021. Long term rates, which affect mortgages, car loans and other types of consumer financing, are now closer to historical averages, where they’ll probably stay. Now that it has pulled the bandage off, the Fed is unlikely to return to QE unless there’s a crisis. Consumers will get used to all this, but it may take longer for psychology to adapt than for inflation to come down. Inflation began rising by more than incomes in 2021, which meant the typical consumer was falling behind. That only reversed this past summer, when income growth finally surpassed inflation. So people are getting ahead again; they just have a lot of ground to recover. As long as that continues, inflation will fade, along with the psychological scarring from two years of devastating price hikes." MY COMMENT The big danger with the FED now is that they will trigger a DEFLATIONARY RECESSION or DEPRESSION. YES....there is no inflation. Most everything is back into the normal 2.5-4% range that is the historic norm for a good economy. BUT....people are still suffering from all the big price hikes on goods and services that will only come down over the long term as supply and demand come into play along with market forces.
IMO, our economy is way too sensitive to S&D factors. It always matters but a rumor of a shortage on something causes near instant price multiples from EVERY seller. Our supply chain is in OK shape but not as good as we need for a stable economy. Worse, it's in flux. As we re-shore and move production to non-Chinese countries which are also trying to ruin us financially, there are going to be glitches and problems. China has become a reliable supplier. I've recently taken an interest in micro manufacturing and localized manufacturing. Some young engineers are working hard on 3d print farms and automated manufacture of a surprising range of parts. They believe localized manufacture is the future. They also tell me 3d Printed parts will be cheaper than injection molded parts, one day very soon. This is difficult to believe but the trend is on their side.
I agree Tom that our supply chain is sensitive and at times irrational. It was this way even before the pandemic. I have seen local shortages of gas and items in the grocery store hit our little local area due to some news item or rumor. This happens even though stores just 3-5 miles away have no shortage. A sign of the deterioration of the country......and our lack of ability to supply and provide our needed products. We are still having a BIG issue with medications.
I just made my annual Christmas donation to.....TUNNEL TO TOWERS. One of the few charities that I know of that has a......100% four star rating.....from Charity Navigator. If you are thinking about donating this Holiday Season.....I encourage you to look at this charity.
More good news for the economy and indirectly for investors. Oil Falls to Five-Month Lows as US, Russia Bolster Glut Concerns https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-steady-near-lowest-since-000105587.html I got gas the other day here in Central Texas for $2.47. Many stations have gas at $2.49 right now. I am now driving a Hybrid and am currently getting 40.5 miles to the gallon. A tank gives me a 620 mile range. So....we will fill up 4-5 times a month. YES......we do a lot of driving......about 30,000 to 35,000 miles per year on our primary vehicle and about 5000 miles on our second vehicle. I have personally driven well over a million miles in the last 20 years......not counting over 400,000 miles of touring in one three year span.
A very good day for me today on.....FED EVE. I had six of seven stocks UP today. My lone loser was GOOGL. I also beat the SP500 today by 0.67% I dont expect anything unusual from the FED....little chance of anything negative and a bit of a chance for some positive commentary or news. We are solidly on track for yet another POSITIVE week.
The SUPER POWER of long term investing Stock market news today: Dow, S&P close at highest level since Jan. '22 as stocks rally ahead of Fed https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stoc...2-as-stocks-rally-ahead-of-fed-210430711.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "US stocks closed firmly in the green on Tuesday as a key inflation report showed prices largely holding steady ahead of the Federal Reserve's final 2023 policy meeting. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) closed up about 0.5%, or more than 150 points — its third-highest close ever. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) also finished the day up around 0.5%, notching its best close since Jan. 14, 2022. Contracts on the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led the day, up roughly 0.6%, after all three major gauges closed Monday at their highest levels since early 2022. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed prices ticked up slightly at 0.1% over last month and 3.1% over the prior year in November, as Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal reported. Investors are widely expecting a pause to rate hikes at the end of the central bank's two-day meeting, which starts Tuesday. But traders are easing back on their bets on a rate cut in March, according to CME FedWatch data. While consumer inflation is expected to remain flat for the second straight month, the "core" reading — which excludes food and energy prices — could prove stickier. That would likely prompt investors to rethink when the Fed might start lowering rates. Following the report, US bond yields retreated slightly, with 10-year Treasury yields (^TNX) down roughly 3 basis points to trade near 4.21%. In individual stocks, Oracle (ORCL) shares closed down more than 12% after the software giant's second quarter sales fell short of estimates." MY COMMENT This thread is starting to be a pretty good lesson in long term investing. It has been going for a little over FIVE YEARS now. That time includes the pandemic and economic shut- down and totally DISMAL year 2022. Yet.....we got through it all and most of us on here are thriving. I am now definately at a new all time high. Want to see how and why long term investing works.....just review all that has happened in this thread and where we are now at the end of the past five years. I strongly doubt that we will see as EXTREME a five year time span as the past five years any time soon. The simple lessons: YOU have to be invested and in the markets to capture the gains and get maximum compounding. YOU have to avoid market timing and trading. YOU have to invest in rational and realistic choices of stocks and funds and ETF's. YOU have to invest for the long term YOU have to avoid fear and emotion in your investing. YOU have to trust the proven probabilities of investing. YOU have to trust and use fundamental investing to do the above. DISCLOSURE.....by using the word "YOU" I am speaking in general and not trying to give investment advice or tell any one person what to do or how to invest......everyone has to find what works for them and simply do it over, and over, and over, and over.....for as long as it works.
Cruised through some of the financial news this morning. As usual not much of any value...as expected. Of course it is FED JP day in the spotlight once again. The media read about like a cheap tabloid or one of those really dumb infomercials. It really does just come off as some type of cheap program.
To go along with my little theme of ignoring a lot of the "noise" we hear too much about, I read a line from a little letter I receive about once a month. "The uncertainty inherent in investing is one reason there is such a large audience for economic and market predictions." There it is in a nutshell if you ever wondered why we seem over ran with information and noise.
My first comment of the day on the market......YES....the Ten Year yield is down and continues to push down toward the 3% range. What? I dont see many articles about this? How can that be.....this is the critical market criteria when it goes up. What about when it goes down?
The economic news of the day.....which no one really cares about. Wholesale prices held flat in November, providing another encouraging inflation signal https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/who...ing-another-encouraging-inflation-signal.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Wholesale prices were flat in November, providing a leading indicator that inflation is easing, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The producer price index, which measures a broad range of prices on final demand items, was unchanged for the month, following a 0.4% decrease in October but less than the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.1% gain. On a year-over-year basis, headline PPI accelerated just 0.9%, after peaking above 11.5% in March 2022. Excluding food and energy, the index also was unchanged against an estimate for a 0.2% increase. Excluding food, energy and trade services, PPI increased 0.1%, posting a sixth straight increase and good for a 12-month gain of 2.5%. The release comes a day after the Labor Department said its consumer price index rose just 0.1% in November and 3.1% from a year ago. The PPI gauges the prices producers receive for what they produce while CPI measures what consumers pay and is considered a leading signal for prices in the pipeline. Together, the easing inflation data, along with other economic signals, likely will give the Federal Reserve enough room to hold benchmark interest rates steady when its policy meeting concludes Wednesday. At the wholesale level, indexes for both goods and services were unchanged, though there were some big swings within components. Gasoline, for instance, fell 4.1% while chicken eggs soared 58.8%. The index for final demand energy fell 1.2%, offsetting increases of 0.6% for foods and 0.2% for goods less food and energy." MY COMMENT If you have been keeping track.....the vast majority of the economic data for the past 4-6 months has been extremely positive for investors in terms of keeping the FED off our backs. this is yet another item in that category. YES.......the FED is done. It is time for investors and the markets to simply move on. The FED no longer has any power....if people refuse to give it to them. Let them talk till they are blue in the face....let them fear monger....let them rant....it is all meaningless.
Ok...markets looking very good early in the day. The NASDAQ and the SP500 have been dong well and the DOW just turned green. We have turned the corner to where FED DAYS are actually a market positive. I am doing very nicely so far today.....I believe my only down stock right now is HD.
There is little to nothing going on today....including the FED.....and little to nothing being said in the media. I can not find much of anything to post or comment on today. That is GREAT NEWS. Welcome back to a normal market. It will be nice to get back to a good old fashioned FUNDAMENTAL and results oriented market.....NOT. Sorry....short term this will not happen. There will always be something for everyone to fear monger over the short term. Do you really think all the experts and managers and media are going to simply sit mute every day? No.....they thrive on the sensationalism and PR attention.....they need the drama to stay relevant. BUT......that does not mean you have to pay attention to any of the blather. As usual....IGNORE IT ALL.
Can you believe it? We are down to the final FED meeting of the year. Nothing is going to happen and we have a relatively clear runway to open up the new year in a few weeks. We are in the final couple of weeks of the pre-holiday shopping time span......and...within about three weeks.....the new year. It has been a great run for the markets this year. We all have a lot to be thankful for. I dont see a lot of frenzied shopping for the Holiday Season yet. But it does appear to be slowly and steadily building. Thanksgiving was early and Christmas seems late this year. I am looking for a STRONG shopping season....to end this year and kick off next year. It has been 2-3 years....at least.... since we have had a nice Santa Claus Rally. BUT....we are in the middle of a good one right now. I dont see a whole lot being said about it. So, a typical stealth rally. The SP500 is UP by 5.44% over the past last month. That represents about half of the average annual gain for the average....in just one month.
