The Long Term Investor

Here is where we stand on earnings.

EARNINGS INSIGHT

https://advantage.factset.com/hubfs/Website/Resources Section/Research Desk/Earnings Insight/EarningsInsight_041924.pdf


Key Metrics
Earnings Scorecard: For Q1 2024 (with 14% of S&P 500 companies reporting actual results), 74% of S&P 500
companies have reported a positive EPS surprise and 58% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive revenue
surprise.

Earnings Growth: For Q1 2024, the blended (year-over-year) earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 is 0.5%. If
0.5% is the actual growth rate for the quarter, it will mark the third-straight quarter of year-over-year earnings growth
for the index.

Earnings Revisions: On March 31, the estimated (year-over-year) earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 for Q1
2024 was 3.4%. Six sectors are reporting (or are expected to report) lower earnings today (compared to March 31)
due to negative EPS surprises and downward revisions to EPS estimates.

Earnings Guidance: For Q2 2024, 7 S&P 500 companies have issued negative EPS guidance and 5 S&P 500
companies have issued positive EPS guidance.

Valuation: The forward 12-month P/E ratio for the S&P 500 is 19.9. This P/E ratio is above the 5-year average
(19.1) and above the 10-year average."

PLEASE....read the entire article for detail and context.

MY COMMENT

YES....earnings are good for this stage of the releases. If this trend continues we are going to see a very nice BEAT in earnings this time around. The question.....does anyone care and does it matter? Judging by what we are seeing short term....probably.....NO.

Obviously no one in the media cares.....when there are other more dramatic topics to fear monger. And obviously the TRADERS dont care....they are looking to drive short term trading profits.

SO.....as usual lately.....the earnings will be VERY GOOD and they will be mostly WASTED.....at least short term. Where they will matter is over the long term as fundamentals drive stocks higher.....slowly and very erratically. What does this mean for long term investors......it takes....PATIENCE AND COURAGE.

 

The week to come.....as we finish out and move on from the month of April.

Fed's favorite inflation gauge and Big Tech earnings greet a slumping stock market: What to know this week

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/feds...-market-what-to-know-this-week-114204074.html

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

"The market rally is at its most fragile point in months.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) ended Friday below 5,000, its first close below that mark since late February. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) dropped more than 5% on the week while the Dow held flat.

This week, critical readings on economic growth and inflation, as well as the start of Big Tech earnings, will determine if the malaise continues.

On the economic data side, the advanced reading of first quarter economic growth is slated for Thursday, followed by the March reading of the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, on Friday.

In corporate news, a slew of S&P 500 companies are expected to report quarterly results headlined by Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG), Tesla (TSLA), and Chipotle (CMG).

The Fed's preferred inflation gauge

Several months of bumpy inflation readings have forced investors to scale back their projections for Federal Reserve interest rate cuts this year.

On Friday, Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee said "progress on inflation has stalled" when noting that it "makes sense" for the central bank to wait for more clarity on inflation's path.

This makes Friday's PCE reading all the more critical.

Economists expect "core" PCE clocked in at 2.7% in March from the previous year, down from February's 2.8% annual gain. Over the prior month, economists expect "core" PCE rose 0.3%, in line with last month's change.

"Should core PCE inflation come in around 0.25% [month-over-month] for March and April, the year-on-year reading will slow from 2.8% to 2.6%, giving the Fed cover to begin 'gradually' adjusting policy rates lower starting in June or July," Citi economist Andrew Hollenhorst wrote in a note to clients on April 17.

Growth update

Part of the reason investors had largely taken the repricing of Fed interest rate cuts in stride has been an increasingly positive economic backdrop. Throughout the first quarter, economists have been raising their projections for economic growth. Thursday will bring the first look at whether the US economy grew as fast as forecast in the first three months of this year.

Economists expect that the US economy grew at an annualized rate of 2.5% in the first quarter, lower than the 3.4% seen in the fourth quarter of 2023.

"Incoming data continue to point to ongoing economic resilience in an environment of higher rates," Bank of America US economist Michael Gapen wrote in a note to clients on Friday. "The consumer continues to remain strong. The economy has cooled modestly since the outsized 4.9% growth rate seen in 3Q, but what cooling there is has been gradual."

Earnings aren't impressing

Given the significant run-up in share price that some of the market rally's darlings have experienced this year, even better-than-expected earnings aren't moving the needle for stocks.

"The broader market is having digestion problems in and around this earnings season," Julian Emanuel, who leads Evercore ISI's equity, derivatives, and quantitative strategy, told Yahoo Finance.

This has broadly been seen across stock reactions the day following the release of quarterly results for the 65 S&P 500 companies that have reported results so far this season. Stocks that top Wall Street's estimates have risen 0.8% in the next trading session, slightly lower than the 0.9% average seen over the last few years, per Emanuel's research.

Meanwhile, companies that disappoint on both metrics are taking a bigger hit than normal, with the average stock falling 5.8% in the next trading action, compared to the usual 3.1% decline seen over the past five years.

"Given these extended valuations [in the S&P 500], even good news may not be good news, particularly in these names that have run as far as they have," Emanuel said.

Big Tech on deck

With earnings reports not satisfying investors, the baton will be passed to one of the strongest parts of the market over the past year: Big Tech.

Despite a sell-off across tech last week after disappointing results from chipmakers and Netflix (NFLX), earnings growth expectations are still sky-high for Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet, which are all expected to report in the week ahead.

FactSet noted on Friday that these companies, along with Nvidia (NVDA) and Amazon (AMZN), are expected to have grown earnings by 64.3% in the first quarter. The other 495 companies are projected to see earnings decline by 6%.

Surging yields

Outside of earnings, investors will closely watch the economic data this week to see how it might shift movements in rising bond yields, which are becoming a pain point for investors again.

The 2-year Treasury yield shot up to 5% on Tuesday for the first time since the most recent stock market bottom in October 2023. The move came as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said it's taking "longer than expected" for inflation to fall to its 2% target.

And Evercore ISI's Emanuel believes this will be a key pain point for stocks, just as it was during a sell-off in the market last fall.

"The reason it might be more of the concern at this point is because of that implicit promise that markets have traded on of three [Fed rate] cuts dialed back," Emanuel said. "And if you look at it going back to March, I think it's a lot more than a confidence the market rolled over from the highs literally precisely the moment the market started pricing in fewer than those three promised cuts."

Emanuel cautioned that it might be time to get defensive in the market because of this. He recommended exposure to sectors such as Health Care (XLV) and Consumer Staples (XLP) while also noting the roughly 5% that can be earned by holding cash in a money market account is still a viable portion of a portfolio."

MY COMMENT

YES....more of the same regarding the FED and the media coverage of the FED. Nothing we can do about that.

Now earnings.....it is insane that investors are ignoring good earnings....but if people want to be simply stupid that is their problem. Reality is the key to investing.....whether people want to practice it or not.

 

I like this little article...good basic discussion without the....breathless, typical......fear-mongering.

Breaking down the market sell-off and odds this 5% pullback turns into a 10% correction

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/20/bre...llback-turns-into-a-10percent-correction.html

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

"From relentless rally to persistent pullback, five straight winning months without a 2% decline were then followed by three straight down weeks, featuring a rare six-day S&P 500 losing streak and five successive sessions last week of failed intraday rallies.

As with all market retrenchments from a record high, the current 5.5% setback in the S&P 500 is accompanied by a litany of proximate causes, ready excuses and plausible cover stories — in addition to the simple “we were due” catch-all.

The sticky-inflation and patient-Fed theme has carried the 10-year Treasury yield from 4.2% to above 4.6% in three weeks while expectations of a potential Federal Reserve rate cut have been shoved to the outer edge of traders’ time horizon. Typical seasonal headwinds starting in April of election years and after a strong first quarter apparently arrived on time. Hard-to-handicap geopolitical conflict never helps, even if it rarely serves as the key swing factor in a market trend.

And then there was simply the elevated valuation and over-optimistic sentiment that had built up over that five-month, 28% rally that culminated at the end of March. The dominant momentum leadership that broke stride a few weeks ago (and was previewed here as it peaked) has continued to unwind, a self-reinforcing process in the short term.

Friday’s treacherous rotation out of big-tech winners and into less-loved value sectors (semis down 4%, regional banks up 3%) was particularly stark and seemingly part of an ongoing reversal of extreme positioning among systematic trend-following strategies. We entered 2024 with a market whose most crowded stocks also happened to be some of the largest and most expensive in the world, granted a hefty premium for perceived predictability and the scarcity value of powerful secular-growth plays.

Which takes us to the moment that’s featured in all pullbacks, when the question becomes whether the tape is stretched enough to the downside to expect at least a forceful rebound attempt.

Bounce coming?

Things are at least starting to line up in that direction. The Nasdaq Composite is doubled over in a grueling gut check, dropping nearly 8% from its recent high, cutting back below its old November 2021 peak, slicing below its 100-day average. In the process, it’s grown pretty oversold, with its 14-day relative strength reading (a measure of price relative to a longer-term trend) pretty close to levels seen in the vicinity of past trading lows.






Some market-breadth readings (the low percentage of S&P 500 stocks above a 20-day average, say), elevated put-option volumes and the inversion of the Volatility Index (VIX) relative to VIX futures prices are all similarly hinting at a tightly coiled market susceptible to a high-velocity snapback attempt before long.

This is where the caveats must be noted: Extremes can always grow more extreme and severe liquidation-type selloffs tend to start with oversold readings, with the ever-present chance that stressed trading mechanics among quantitative players can exacerbate pullbacks when they get into risk-reduction mode. Nothing works every time, nor are such oversold indicators always timely when they are prescient. Arguably the decline so far has been a touch too orderly, at least until Friday’s ferocious purge in semis.

And while indicators of traders’ mood have shown increasing caution, most sentiment indicators are merely coming off excessive bullishness and not yet in outright fear mode.

Over the long span of time, about 40% of all 5% market pullbacks deepened into full 10% corrections.

According to Warren Pies, co-founder of 3Fourteen Research, after the Global Financial Crisis, “the 5% dip-buying odds…improved.” From 2009 through 2021, buying 5% dips was “a consistent winner.” On average, the market recovered to new highs within three months of any 5% dip and “only 35% of cases went on to become 10% corrections.”

And yet, Pies stepped back from his previous bullish market view last Thursday, noting that the pattern may have shifted again since 2022, with the upward trend in Treasury yields helping to drive stock corrections rather than the former pattern of yields declining and acting as a buffer as stocks fell, leading most 5% drops to worsen into a 10% haircut.

While observably true, it’s crucial to note that yields haven’t had to retrace all the way back to their levels from before the equity correction in order for stocks to get relief. They have simply needed to stop rising and settle back somewhat. Remember, since 2022, stock investors have successively fretted that 3%, 3.5%, 4% and now perhaps 4.6% 10-year Treasury yields would be kryptonite to stocks. Yet under the right conditions, once the economy shows it can absorb such yields, equities have been able to make a tentative peace with them.

A 10%-ish correction from the S&P 500 high of 5254 would pull the index down below 4800, the former record high from early 2022, and so would be a test of the first-quarter breakout. (In 2013, after the S&P 500 had made its first record high in over five years, it doubled back to briefly test the former record level within a few months before resuming its advance.)

It’s useful to keep in mind that when stocks go down in price they also go back in time, returning to some prior point against which we can assess current fundamentals and ask whether anything substantive has changed.

A week ago, I noted the S&P had closed at the exact level from March 8 – the moment of peak “We can have it all” sentiment, with Fed Chair Jerome Powell implying rate cuts soon on the 7th and a just-strong-enough jobs report that day underscoring economic resilience, and with an AI-stock buying crescendo as a sweetener.

Last week’s 3% decline took the index back to Feb 21 and thereby closed the “Nvidia gap,” the 100-point S&P 500 pop the day after Nvidia’s blowout fourth-quarter earnings report. Nvidia shares themselves closed just above its Feb. 22 level, though are a couple of P/E points lower (29-times forward earnings now versus 31.5 then) thanks to rising profit forecasts.

Valuation check

As for the broader market, the S&P 500′s forward multiple is down from 21 a month ago to 20, no one’s definition of cheap, though as ever the equal-weighted index sits at a glaring discount to the marquee version.





Betting on the wider field of stocks to do well relative to the dominant trillion-dollar-and-up market-cap has been tricky due in part to those rising bond yields, which in recent times have smothered any broadening action.

Not only are cash-rich, secular-growth mega-caps inured to higher financing costs, they are deemed generally defensive against macro flux. Not to mention the fact that Big Tech dominates the earnings-momentum scoreboard, with significant upward profit revisions in recent quarters.




Barclays
With Treasury yields taking a breather on Friday from their recent project of probing for the economy’s pain threshold, energy and traditional defensive groups were the main leaders, along with financials. Whether this reflects healthy rotation in response to economic resilience or more the erratic flight from crowded bets by fast professional players is a question to hold in mind into next week.

Regional banks, up 3% Friday, are now four quarters removed from the mini-crisis around Silicon Valley Bank, with credit and deposit pressures looking manageable for now, and the stocks as a group trading at just 90% of book value in what most are now arguing is a briskly growing economy.

Next week brings the PCE report which will mark inflation to market relative to the Fed’s target, leaving open the prospect of another narrative shift in a less-hawkish direction now that the market has migrated to assumptions of an indomitable consumer and a higher-for-longer rate assumption.

On a trading basis, aside from the oversold readings starting to accumulate, it would seem the pullback has helped at least to clean up aggressive positioning and cool off investor expectations just in time for the heaviest week of big-cap earnings reports."

MY COMMENT

The preliminary question to this commentary is....do you even care if the markets go into correction? I dont really care one way or the other. I dont like to lose money on paper.....but...corrections dont signal much of anything....they are simply normal in any market. They are not something that I try to anticipate or avoid.

The SP500 is not in a correction yet....although some stocks are definately in correction territory. The BIG FACTOR in all this continues to be the Ten Year Yield......which is probably going to make a run at 5% sooner or later. As a stock investor for the long term....I dont invest based on treasury yields....that is the short term stuff of the trader community. I also do not invest based on economic data.....the markets are NOT the economy.

What I do consider the most important is fundamental data from the specific companies that I own. Some of that data will be happening this week. It will give us a hindsight snapshot of how those companies are performing.

Along with those earnings reports will be all the media and "expert" BLATHER....that will also set the short term direction for the reporting stocks. That BLATHER is not fact....it is mostly opinion. AND....as such......I really dont care what they have to say.....I prefer the REALITY and FACT that will be the actual earning reports.

 

"Nighthawks"


I have seen that image before although before this post by ......rg.....I had no idea of the history, artist, or background of the painting.

 

I was with one of my kids and their spouse today.

They have an extra $5000 that will be going into the market tomorrow......3 shares NVDA, 3 shares APPL, and the rest into the SP500. They currently own the same stocks as my Portfolio Model....minus....SMCI and PLTR.

I am glad that they are long term investors and see the current prices as a buying opportunity.

 

A new week and a new beginning....for the markets to show some guts, some rationality, and some business sense.

I have been waiting for the markets to settle into the day a bit.....so far all the big averages are GREEN. We will know more in an hour or two after all the early orders and trades are filled.

 

A relevant topic and a little article that I like.

Demand for Treasurys Is Alive and Well
Uncle Sam has plenty of buyers.

https://www.fisherinvestments.com/e...entary/demand-for-treasurys-is-alive-and-well

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

"There are few pure certainties in investing. The fact that markets will be closed on Christmas in the West is one. Another potential contender: People will seemingly always be scared of high US debt. The fear never seems to go away, even during good times. It also takes on different flavors depending on the national conversation. Recently, many concerns center on bond demand. As in, who is going to buy all the bonds Uncle Sam needs to sell to finance the deficit? Analyses fretting allegedly weak auctions are creeping up, along with those breathing outsized relief when demand comes in higher than feared. To us, it is all overstated.

For one, recent auctions aren’t all that weak. A handy measure of demand is the bid-to-cover ratio, which compares total demand in dollars to the amount of bonds on offer. Exhibit 1 shows bid-to-cover ratios at 10-year US Treasury auctions since 1999, displaying the yearly average in order to account for the varying number and timing of auctions per year. The Treasury has held four auctions thus far in 2024, with an average bid-to-cover of 2.49. That is higher than all full-year averages since 2019.

Exhibit 1: Treasury Auction Demand by Year


Source: US Treasury, as of 4/18/2024. Bid-to-cover ratio at all auctions of 10-year notes, January 1999 – April 2024.

Now, demand at April’s auction was a tad lower than the prior few months, down to 2.34 after four straight auctions in the 2.5s. But we saw plenty of auctions in the 2.3s throughout the 2010s. Bid-to-cover ratios were routinely in the low twos and even the ones in the early and mid-2000s. In 2002, all but one auction fetched bid-to-cover ratios below two. In 2003, only two topped that mark. Are we all forgetting the terrible US debt crisis of 2002 – 2003? Or was demand ok then and therefore very likely to prove ok now?

Some argue the real problem is that the US is dependent on the kindness of strangers—aka demand from foreign governments and investors—to finance its debt. The implication: As less friendly foreign governments diversify their dollar reserves, debt will become much harder to sell. This is an old argument, but it stepped up after the US put sanctions on Russia’s overseas assets in 2022, supposedly an incentive for other governments to sanction-proof their reserves. Reality indicates it isn’t happening in any meaningful sense. As Exhibit 2 shows, despite falling initially in 2022, foreign US Treasury holdings are up since Russia invaded Ukraine and stand at all-time highs.

Exhibit 2: Foreign Investors Love US Treasurys


Source: FactSet, as of 4/18/2024. Total foreign holdings of US Treasury Securities, December 2011 – February 2024.

There are some other interesting nuggets to key in on here. The latest downtick, which ran from December 2021 to October 2022, didn’t correspond with a major demand drop at Treasury auctions. Nor did demand at auction plunge in 2016, when foreign Treasury holdings fell as China pared its pile. Speaking of which, China isn’t the US’s biggest foreign creditor. That honor goes to Japan, which owns nearly $1.17 trillion in US Treasurys. China clocks in at just $775 billion, or 2.83% of total US net public debt.[ii] For all the headlines China’s US debt ownership generates, it barely rates once you do the math.

Foreign investors actually own a smaller share of US debt now than in years past. In 2011, they owned nearly half of all net public debt. That gradually slipped to 40% in 2018, and for the past year it has waffled between 28.5% and 30%.[iii] Yet bond auction demand has remained robust, which tells us US investor demand is high and rising. That seems … good? Not bad?

The fear that investors will lose their appetite for US debt is as old as the hills and, in our view, is false. When you consider the competition, it is easy to see why. People will always need bonds, whether it is pension funds trying to manage liabilities, governments needing reserves, banks needing stable yield-generating assets to bolster balance sheets or individual investors seeking to reduce their portfolio’s expected volatility. The global bond pool is large but fragmented, and no other issuer comes close to matching the US Treasury market’s breadth, depth, liquidity and long history of stability. Other markets may have higher credit ratings, but they are minnows in comparison. And ratings don’t mean much in practical investment terms.

So no, we don’t think the available data support all the talk of weak bond demand being poised to ripple through the economy and other financial markets. It all looks to us like business as usual, with investors wanting to buy more bonds than the Treasury sells."

MY COMMENT

Most of the stories that you see about bond yields and the issues above are simply....FALSE. If you look at the historic data on all these issues what are being pushed in media opinion right now is far from the truth. As I have said many, many, times the yields are near historic lows....although....the story-line is high yields.

Same with demand for bonds. The USA bonds will always....be the standard in safety and security for the world......the gold standard Other countries and investors buy TREASURIES because they can be counted on for the long term. The key consideration for any bond is safety. There is no other country in the world that can come anywhere close to matching the quality of USA bonds. Investors know this, buyers know this......even communist countries like RUSSIA and CHINA know this as shown by their actions.

 

I find it amazing that GOOGLE is not paying any dividends. They are a long established company that has a license to mint money. They have HUGE piles of cash. It is way past time for them to return....even...some token amount of money to their shareholders. They will still be sitting on a mountain of money.

Alphabet’s cash boom is raising dividend hopes on Wall Street

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alphabet-cash-boom-raising-dividend-115953191.html

"Among the six biggest US technology companies by market value, Alphabet and Amazon.com Inc. are the only ones that don’t have a quarterly payout."

MY COMMENT

They are plowing massive amounts of money into stock buy-backs. It is way past time to give some of those profits to the shareholders. It would be nice to reinvest dividend funds in additional shares.....part of the way stocks compound for investors.

 

I see that the green is dissipating a bit in all the averages. Right on time. I told my kid and their spouse yesterday to wait till about 10:00 this morning to buy their......three shares of NVDA and three shares of AAPL.....today. That is about when we see the typical daily market weakness.

They now have a mini version of my Portfolio Model with about 18% of their funds in the same stocks that I own (minus SMCI and PLTR).

The rest of the $5000 that they have to invest right now will go into the SP500 Index where about 82% of their funds are invested.

They got to the point about 6-12 months ago where it was time to start to own individual stocks. I had them in the SP500 as their sole investment....but when their two accounts got to a total of about $400,000 it was time to hit the individual stocks.

 

As to the above my kid bought at 9:30AM. Right at the low of the day....so far....for both stocks. Price paid....NVDA $776...APPL $165. Going forward into the long term........bargain prices.

 

The open today as we hit the first week of BIG TECH earnings and the last week of April.

S&P 500 rises to start the week, tries to snap 6-day decline

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/21/sto...h-sp-500-nasdaq-on-six-day-losing-streak.html

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

"The S&P 500 rose Monday as Wall Street tried to rebound from a pullback last week, with Middle East tensions easing. Traders also looked ahead to the release of major tech earnings.

The broad market index traded 0.3% higher, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 110 points, or 0.3%. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are riding six-day losing streaks and fell 3.1% and 5.5%, respectively, last week.

U.S. crude prices fell more than 1% after Iran said it will not escalate the conflict with Israel.

The moves higher come as ahead a potentially big week for earnings, with the focus on Magnificent Seven tech companies. Chipmaker and artificial intelligence favorite Nvidia climbed 2.2%, rebounding from a nearly 14% selloff last week. Arm Holdings also rebounded more than 5% Monday.

“There are probably two dynamics at work behind the better tone in global stock markets this morning, the decline in gold and oil prices, and the steadiness (rather than rise) in the USD,” said Thierry Wizman, global FX & rates Strategist at Macquarie. “For one, concern over a spreading regional war in the Middle-East has faded. The movement away from a wider conflagration, and back to a ’shadow war is probably why US bond yields are higher today.”

Companies including Tesla, Meta Platforms, American Airlines, Microsoft and Alphabet all set to report in the week ahead. Tesla reports after the bell Tuesday, Facebook-parent Meta is on deck Wednesday, while Apple, Intel and Microsoft all report Thursday.

There is some potentially bigger news in the back part of this this week, with GDP due out on Thursday and a key inflation reading on Friday, when the Commerce Department reports personal consumption expenditures price index data for March. The PCE deflator is the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge.

The Fed meets again April 30-May 1, with officials now in the quiet period ahead of the meeting."

MY COMMENT

Potentially a big week for investors and the markets. Certainly an interesting one. I am looking forward to the MSFT and GOOGL earnings this week. It will be nice to see some actual fundamental data....a distraction from the market insanity.

 

OK.....right on schedule.....NASDAQ goes RED at 10:15AM central time. NOW....the real day starts. We have cleared out all the bargain hunters buying at the open and in the first hour.

One thing is definately FACT.....stocks selectively bought today....like NVDA and APPL....will generate some big gains over the long term.

I am not a market timer....but....If I have market money that is not invested I will use a time period like right now to put those funds to work. I WOULD NOT be buying with short term money...now or ever.....there is simply no RATIONALITY or REASON to the short term markets and trying to do market timing.

 

GREAT MINDS think alike Tiresmoke.

I was like.......WOW....I have got to do something....where can I get some money....enough to really add a good chunk of shares of NVDA. I did not want to sell any of my other BIG CAP tech monster stocks....so....that left PLTR and SMCI as the potential victims.

PTR was a no-go since I only own about 108 mostly free shares worth less than $3000....not enough to do much.....so that left only one choice.......SMCI......they were my sacrificial victim.

At least I held onto one third of my prior SMCI share balance for the future. It is definately a very "junior" position now in my portfolio. But much larger than PLTR. I will let it sit and watch how it does over the next 12-18 months. If it produces....good. If not....it will be a potential source of invest-able funds later.

 

AND....nicely right now it is....RALLY TIME.....in the markets. We have managed to come back from a little weakness this morning.