The Long Term Investor

Looks like you have the RECORD for 2023....Tire Smoke.

As to the above post.....I like the analogy to what the gains would pay for.....BUT.....I hope people realize...you need to reinvest those gains. You cant go out and do the steak dinner or the small vacation. Reinvest those gains to get the compounding.

 

I think you have at least one candy bar covered TomB16. Now if you want two.....possible....but not necessarily likely, unless you gained at least 20% or more.

 

All I can say is.....what a DISGUSTING day in the markets today. And to think I had so much hope for 2024. Looks like we are all screwed this year. Looking forward to 2025.

 

Sounds like some good goals there.....TireSmoke. At some point you DO have to treat yourself and enjoy some of those BIG GAINS.

 

A PERFECT start to the new year.....every stock down today. Plus....a loss to the SP500 by 1.40%.

I have NOTHING more to say.

 

Here is the day today.

S&P 500 closes lower to begin 2024, Nasdaq notches worst day since October

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/01/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

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

"The S&P 500 fell Tuesday, the first trading day of the year, as bond yields inched higher and investors took some money off the table following a surprisingly strong 2023.

The broad market index lost 0.57%, and the Nasdaq Composite pulled back by 1.63%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average
added about 25 points, or 0.07%. Markets were closed Monday for New Year’s Day.

Apple shares slid more than 3% after Barclays downgraded the member of the Magnificent 7 market leaders basket to an underweight rating. On the other hand, the Dow remained in positive territory as defensive stocks like Johnson & Johnson and Merck strengthened.

The stock market finished 2023 with a bang, as the S&P 500 climbed for nine weeks in a row to end the year, notching its best weekly win streak since 2004. Risk assets enjoyed a big relief rally as the economy remained resilient and inflation cooled, while the Federal Reserve signaled an end to rate hikes and forecasted rate cuts later this year. The market also endured a regional banking crisis as well as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Technology shares, especially megacap stocks, led the 2023 advance with Apple soaring 48%, Microsoft surging nearly 57% and Nvidia skyrocketing 239%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ended the year up 43.4% for its best year since 2020.

The blue-chip Dow logged a 13.7% gain and notched a new record during 2023. Part of that rally was helped by a turn in interest rates. The 10-year Treasury yield had spooked investors by climbing above 5% at one point in October, before it topped out and closed the year out lower than 3.9%. On Tuesday, the 10-year yield was back up 8 basis points, approaching 4% again. (1 basis point equals 0.01%.)

That trend was reversing on Tuesday as the new year of trading began with those same stocks declining in early trading. Apple shares were down 2% after the negative call from Barclays. The firm said Apple could lose about 17% this year because of lackluster iPhone sales. Microsoft and Nvidia shares were also in the red.

Tuesday’s losses put the Nasdaq on track for its worst day since October.

This reversal is fairly common in the first day of trading, according to Infrastructure Capital Management CEO Jay Hatfield.

“This is perfectly normal, somewhat expected activities,” he told CNBC. “It’s a normal seasonal pattern that you have tax loss selling in the period before year-end, and then you have gain harvesting in the period after ... And I would say the trigger point too was this Apple downgrade.”

Despite this slight pullback, Hatfield is still bullish on equities in the new year. He expects stocks to pick back up once earnings season rolls back around."

MY COMMENT

I always love it when the market takes a big hit....for no reason. It shows the foolishness of the professionals and the skittish amateurs. I am sure....the typical retail investor....simply did NOTHING today.

Move on.....nothing to see in the markets today.

 

The usual market stuff today.

10-year Treasury yield rises back above 4% Wednesday

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/03/us-treasury-yields-investors-look-to-fresh-economic-data.html

"U.S. Treasury yields rose on Wednesday as investor attention turned to economic reports due this week that could provide insights into the labor market and hints about the outlook for interest rates.

The 10-year Treasury was up by 4 basis points at 3.988%, closing in on the 4% mark again. The 2-year Treasury yield was last trading at 4.353% after rising more than 2 basis points."

MY COMMENT

YES......more obsession with historically low ten year rates. This sort of short term rate stuff is really meaningless.....but.....whatever.

 

The start today.

Stocks slip, bond yields rise as rate-cut bets cool

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stoc...lds-rise-as-rate-cut-bets-cool-122011263.html

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

"US stocks slid on Wednesday as bond yields rose, as optimism for fast interest-rate cuts waned ahead of fresh jobs data and the release of Federal Reserve meeting minutes.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell 0.3% while the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) slipped about 0.5%. The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) dropped roughly 0.7% after a bruising session that saw tech stocks shed almost 1.6%.

Hopes that the year-end market rally would roll on into 2024 took a battering on Tuesday as stock indexes and bond prices sank in tandem for their worst start to a year in decades. Bonds are headed lower for a fourth day, pushing the 10-year Treasury yield (^TNX) up near 4%.

Traders have started pulling back on bets on Fed interest-rate cuts, with 74% now pricing in a March pivot, compared with 89% a week ago, per the CME FedWatch Tool.

Minutes of the Fed's December meeting due later could give a window into how near officials think they are to easing up on tightening, so they can nail a "soft landing" for the economy.

Eyes will also be on the JOLTS report on job openings, given the unexpected resilience of the labor market has fed into expectations of a Fed shift. Wednesday's data will set expectations for the December US monthly jobs report coming Friday.

MY COMMENT

LOL....there is no way the average retail investor cares about anything above. The average investor is just siting and doing nothing.

 

Uniformly down big averages right now. the Ten Year Yield is back below 4% at the moment. A very BORING market today......nothing to do but sit and wait. It is like fishing. I have all my lines in the water and I wait.

 

WOW....for the first time in 2024....I actually have some stocks in the green.....COST, MSFT, and AMZN.

 

A continuation of the recent good news.

US job openings fall moderately in November

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-job-openings-fall-moderately-151442477.html

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

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. job openings fell for the third straight month in November as labor market conditions gradually ease.

Job openings, a measure of labor demand, dropped 62,000 to 8.790 million on the last day of November, the Labor Department said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, on Wednesday.

Data for October was revised slightly higher to show 8.852 million job openings instead of the previously reported 8.733 million. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 8.850 million job openings in November. Job openings are down from a record high of 12.0 million in March 2022.

The labor market is steadily cooling following 525 basis points worth of interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve since March 2022. The unemployment rate has, however, remained below 4% as companies hoard workers following difficulties finding labor in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. central bank last month held its policy rate steady at the current 5.25-5.50% range and policymakers signaled in new economic projections that the historic monetary policy tightening engineered over the last two years is at an end and lower borrowing costs are coming in 2024.

The labor market's resilience has kept a recession at bay. The government is expected to report on Friday that nonfarm payrolls increased by 168,000 jobs in December, according to a Reuters survey of economists, after rising 199,000 in November.

December's anticipated job count would be below the average monthly gain of 240,000 over the prior 12 months, but well above the roughly 100,000 needed per month to keep up with growth in the working age population. The unemployment rate is forecast edging up to 3.8% from 3.7% in November.

MY COMMENT

A good report...but of course....the markets apparently did not like it. A very dysfunctional short term market environment right now. I can not imagine trying to be any sort of stock trader in the CRAZY environment.

 

YES.....no doubt we are seeing some......after the first of the year selling and selling for portfolio re-balancing. It is now safe for people to capture some of the gains from 2023 and not have to pay the capital gains taxes till April of 2025.

We should be done with this soon. I agree.....ONWARD AND UPWARD.....TO INFINITY AND BEYOND.

 

As to the FED minutes.

Federal Reserve minutes: Officials saw inflation cooling but were cautious about timing of rate cuts

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/federal-minutes-officials-saw-inflation-191005129.html

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


"WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve's policymakers concluded last month that inflationary pressures were easing and that the job market was cooling. In response, the officials chose to leave their key interest rate unchanged for the third straight time and signaled that they expected to cut rates three times in 2024.

According to the minutes of their Dec. 12-13 meeting released Wednesday, Fed officials indicated in their own interest-rate forecasts that a lower benchmark rate “would be appropriate by the end of 2024'' given "clear progress'' toward taming inflation.

But they ”stressed the importance'' of remaining vigilant and keeping rates high “until inflation was clearly moving down sustainably'' toward their 2% target. And though Chair Jerome Powell suggested at a news conference after the meeting that the Fed was likely done raising rates, the minutes show that Fed officials felt the economic outlook was uncertain enough that that further hikes were still "possible.''

Still, the policymakers sounded optimistic about the outlook for inflation. They mentioned the end of supply chain backlogs that had caused shortages and higher prices, a drop in rents that is beginning to move through the economy and an increase in job seekers, which makes it easier for companies to fill vacancies without having to raise pay aggressively.

The central bank began raising rates in March 2022 to combat an unexpected resurgence in consumer prices that had begun nearly a year earlier. The Fed has since raised its benchmark rate 11 times to a 22-year high of about 5.4%.

The anti-inflation campaign has made steady progress, allowing the Fed to leave its benchmark rate unchanged since July. Consumer prices were up 3.1% in November from a year earlier — down from a four-decade high 9.1% in June 2022.

Higher rates were widely expected to trigger a recession in the United States, the world’s largest economy. But the economy and the job market have proved unexpectedly resilient.

The U.S. gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — grew at a robust 4.9% annual rate from July through September on strong consumer spending and business investment. At their meeting last month, some Fed officials noted that toward the end of 2023, the economy appeared to have slowed.

American employers added a healthy 232,000 jobs a month through November last year. The December jobs report, which the government will issue Friday, is expected to show that the economy added 155,000 jobs last month and that unemployment rose slightly to 3.8%. It would mark the 23rd straight month it’s come in below 4%, longest such streak since the 1960s.

Hiring has decelerated, and the Labor Department reported Wednesday that job openings had fallen in November to the lowest level since March 2021. The Fed sees a reduction in job openings as a painless way — compared with layoffs — to reduce pressure on companies to raise wages to attract and keep workers, which can lead to higher prices.

The combination of decelerating inflation and a sturdy economy has raised hopes that the Fed can engineer a so-called soft landing — slowing economic activity just enough to tame inflation without causing a recession."

MY COMMENT

As has been the case for what....about a year now.....the data and the FED stuff continues to come in very nicely. We are way over the HUMP now even though the daily commentary is still trying to hype the FED stuff.

EVERYTHING....is lined up for a good year in 2024....as far as thee eye can see.