The Long Term Investor

YES.....where is the split? NVIDIA? COSTCO?

 

A silly little market overhang at the moment. The "good" averages are down (SP500 and NASDAQ)

Same as yesterday.....nothing going on today or this week. SO....we should have good potential for the market to flip to the green as the day takes hold and the sellers that are late to the sell button finish up.

Some time the markets just have to pause for a few days to consolidate the prior gains. This is just part of the normal market process. There is no doubt that the general market BIAS is still UP......the bull market is alive and well.

 

At least the jump in the Ten Year yield seems to have stopped at the moment. NOW......the focus of the rest of the week should be on nothing but....earnings. And....at some point investors....perhaps even traders.....will have to admit that earnings are going nicely.

I believe that we are now at over TEN quarters in a row that the....."experts"....have been totally wrong on earnings predictions.

 

I do not own any of these funds. And I dont expect to ever own any. To me this is what happens when you chase returns and invest with a media celebrity manager. Apologies to those that do own ARK funds and are believers.

Morningstar Calls Cathie Wood The Worst 'Wealth Destroyer'

https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-...e-wood-the-worst-wealth-destroyer/?src=A00220

As I have said before....there is no way this lady is the long term investor she claims to be. She trades constantly.

 

Looks like the market is exactly like it was when I left this morning. Oh well.

 

For Zukodany.

Palantir stock surge shows investors haven’t had enough of AI — yet

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pala...s-havent-had-enough-of-ai--yet-150712969.html

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

"Palantir (PLTR) stock soared more than 25% Tuesday morning as investors cheered the defense software maker's latest artificial intelligence advancements.

"I've never before seen the level of customer enthusiasm and demand that we are currently seeing from [artificial intelligence platforms] in US commercial," Palantir CFO Ryan Taylor told investors during the company's earnings call on Monday night.

The software company's Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP, was mentioned nearly 50 times throughout the call. And according to Palantir, it's a key reason it expects US commercial revenue to grow nearly 40% in 2024.

It's also the reason the stock surged more than 100% over the past year, as AI euphoria sent many tech stocks roaring. Amid calls that Denver-based Palantir's stock was already overvalued, Tuesday's market action is the latest sign that investors haven't had enough of the AI trade — even if Wall Street believes parts of the trade have extended beyond any fundamental backing.

"We are incredibly bullish on Palantir," Morningstar equity analyst Malik Ahmed Khan told Yahoo Finance Live. "If you look at our forecasts you would see us being above consensus on profitability, on revenue, etc."

"At the same time," he added, "we can not rationalize Palantir's current valuation in the base case."

Jefferies equity analyst Brent Thill, who entered the earnings report with a sell rating on Palantir, conceded in a research note after the release that the AIP growth is exceeding expectations. But even after upgrading the stock to a Hold rating, Thill still warned about the cost of the stock.

"The biggest concern is valuation with [the] stock trading at a 23% premium to the large cap average," Thill wrote.

It's not just Palantir that's been catching a fresh bid on AI hopes to start 2024. On Monday, Goldman Sachs boosted its price target on Nvidia stock (NVDA) to $800 from $625, citing "robust AI demand," among other things. The stock jumped almost 5% to a fresh all-time high.

Also, IBM (IBM) stock is up about 15% over the past month after AI demand fueled a revenue beat. AI leader Microsoft (MSFT) saw a muted reaction to earnings, even as the company attributed AI services to 6 percentage points of growth to Azure revenue. But in fairness, the stock is also trading just short of an all-time high and is up more than 10% in the last month. The same could be said for AMD (AMD), which didn't soar on its AI-driven earnings beat but is up over 25% in the last month and hovering near an all-time high.

The moves raise the question for investors: When will AI euphoria reach a price that investors are no longer willing to pay? To Khan at Morningstar, that could rely on how the US economy performs for the rest of the year.

"There is a chance that if the economy remains strong, customers will continue to invest in some of those newer growth areas," Khan said. "At the same time, if we're looking at a recession or we're looking at something else going on in the wider economy and the economy is is not as strong at that point, you will probably have investors sort of dial back some of their investments."

MY COMMENT

All the AI related stocks are flying high. I own a number of them obviously.

I would remind others that....it might be a good time to evaluate the percentage of your portfolio that is exposed to these stocks. If you are WAY OVERWEIGHT it might be a good time to take some profits and make a lateral move into something else.

I am of course....long term.....but.....in the past I have seen times when people got WAY TOO EXPOSED to single stock risk and did not appreciate what they were doing. If it is intentional and educated......good. But if it has just randomly happened and you dont have the margin for error if the stock goes down....you might want to take a look at your risk tolerance. Your portfolio might have gotten much more risky than your risk tolerance can stand.

Personally.....I have ZERO plans to sell anything or take any profits. Of course.....I do not rely on my stock market money in any way....so I can take more extreme market risk.

 

A medium level LOSS for me today. I also got beat by the SP500 by 0.71% today. My loss was driven by NVDA, COST, AMZN, and MSFT.

Tomorrow is a new day.

 

Yep.....NVIDA and all the other big cap tech stocks are at or near all time highs. I assume that many smaller cap tech stocks like PLTR are also.

I personally NEVER re-balance....well....not often. When I bought my 1000 shares of MSFT back in about 1990 and made massive gains.....I did periodically sell some shares and move the funds into other holdings.

I like to ride the wave for as long as possible. BUT.....there are times when it is a good thing to "consider" a little re-balance. If your account is keeping you up at night...it might be time to think about it. There is nothing wrong with making a lateral move by selling some shares.......but keeping the money in the markets....perhaps in an Index like the SP500.

Bottom line....do what is right for you and your family. Everyone is different.

 

I like this little article.

Powell Didn’t Break Any News on 60 Minutes
Beware reading into Fedspeak.

https://www.fisherinvestments.com/e...ary/powell-didnt-break-any-news-on-60-minutes

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

"Stop obsessing over central bankers’ words. This is our main takeaway after Fed head Jerome Powell’s epic 60 Minutes interview Sunday night. We say this because several headlines pinned US Treasury yields’ Monday morning jump on Powell’s comments, yet after reading through all 7,894 words of the transcript Monday morning, we saw next to nothing actually new. Just the usual: Decisions are data-dependent, policymakers’ consensus forecast is for some rate cuts this year, they feel bad about inflation, and the economy is growing. In our view, none of this is actionable for investors.

Powell always looks like a jolly fellow, so we don’t mean anything personal when we say: This interview was boring. Actually, we think it is a compliment, because one of a Fed head’s toughest tasks is to satisfy the people’s desire for communication without painting policymakers into a corner. Former Fed head Alan Greenspan was the maestro of this “Fedspeak,” saying: “Since I’ve become a central banker, I’ve learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.” Well, this interview was chock full of Fedspeak, with many words saying very little. CBS’s Scott Pelley would ask straightforward questions about the timing of interest rate cuts, and Powell would unleash 100 words that boiled down to “it depends on the data.” What are you looking at as you determine whether to cut rates? Data. What will determine when you cut them? Data. What do you say to people disappointed you didn’t already cut rates? We are looking at data. Will you cut rates in March? Depends on the data. Have Fed forecasts changed since December? We will update those in March, and they will depend on the data. Data, data, data!

Where Powell was a little clearer, he largely matched his prior comments after last week’s Fed meeting, which alluded to the prospect of rate cuts when data—there is that word again!— support it. Avoiding prior Fed heads’ mistaken use of hard targets, he said it wasn’t necessary for inflation to get back to 2% y/y for the Fed to cut, just heading that way. But also that they didn’t have enough data to be convinced cutting rates is correct right now. It was all so noncommittal that headlines were torn over whether the earthshattering revelation was that the Fed wasn’t cutting imminently or that rate cuts were actually on the table. Yet neither is new! He talked about rate cuts but downplayed them for March’s meeting last Wednesday. The 60 Minutes chat simply reiterated the prior message.

So did Powell’s words move the market? In taking a page from his non-committal book, we would say: Maybe, but maybe not. Considering Treasury yields’ jump was part of a global move, it seems weird to say he was the culprit. That would be an odd reason for yields to rise in Britain, Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, Italy and a host of others. We guess stranger things have happened, but we don’t think reading into daily moves is a great use of time. Sometimes volatility is just volatility.

Even if Powell had been more committal, with firm guidance and clear targets, we don’t think it would be much use for investors. Prior Fed heads have done this, then changed their minds when they reached whatever thresholds they had set and the other data didn’t support a policy change. Powell’s predecessor, Janet Yellen, said in early 2014 that rate hikes would probably come “six months or so” after quantitative easing ended, but those six months came and went. Before that, Ben Bernanke said ending zero interest rate policy wouldn’t be on the table until unemployment was at least down to 6.5%, which everyone interpreted as a threshold—and which came and went with no rate hikes for years afterward. And lest you think this is unique to the Fed, former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney’s defiance of his own forward guidance led a Member of Parliament to call him Britain’s “unreliable boyfriend” during an infamous committee hearing.

Whether central bankers say everything or nothing, we just don’t think their decisions are predictable. As Powell made such a Herculean effort to get across, their decisions depend on incoming data—a whole range of it. Predicting decisions requires not just predicting how the data will look, but how a slew of people with differing views, philosophies and biases will interpret those data and translate those interpretations into beliefs about monetary policy. These are all messy, human processes—not the kind of market-based functions you can assign probabilities.

Thankfully, it also isn’t necessary to predict the Fed’s next move. Not only does monetary policy hit the economy at a lag, giving time to assess decisions’ merit and potential impact, but interest rates are just one variable affecting the economy. And a small one at that. They matter, but a host of other things matter more.

As for stocks, we think they are looking through all of this. This bull market is nearly 15 months old now. For its duration, the Fed has either been hiking or on pause. So we think it is logical to deduce that markets don’t need rate cuts. Yes, people think rates must fall to justify today’s valuations, but in our view, this is a function of skepticism. Valuations very often fail to predict market direction and it is common for people to think stocks are overvalued early in bull markets—an expression of sentiment still tainted by the prior bear market. It is also normal for people to think stocks need a new reason to rise once a bull market has been chugging along for a while. Few fathom that stocks’ natural tendency is to rise unless they have a reason not to. So the obsession with rate hikes’ driving the next leg higher tells us there is more wall of worry for this young bull market to climb."

MY COMMENT

A non-event.......bootstrapped by the speculative traders into a market mover. Nothing more....nothing less. Simply NOISE to the long term.....as usual.

 

A good open today after the foolishness earlier this week. I know I am UP for the day....so far....without looking since only AAPL is down today fo the stocks that I own.

I see yet another negative article about ELON MUSK today. He is under relentless media attack. How IDIOTIC is that?

All the averages are doing very nicely at the open today. Time to get back on track and ignore the speculative short term.