Global Market Comments
June 24, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(TAKING OFF FOR THE 2022 MAD HEDGE WORLD TOUR)
By the time you read this, I will be on a Lockheed C5 A Galaxy escorting 100 Javelin missiles to RAF Lakenheath in England.
From there, I have no idea where the anti-tank missiles are headed. The largest plane in the US Air Force won’t offer the comfortable first class accommodations that I’m used to. But I can’t argue with the price: it’s free.
It was only weeks ago that I received an early morning phone call from a familiar number in Washington DC. At age 70, I was expecting to get a mandatory retirement and a “Job well done.”
Not for me.
Instead, I received a promotion to Major in the United States Marine Corps and was asked how soon could I get to North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels, Belgium? I answered, “As soon as I get rid of this Covid thing.”
It turns out that suddenly, so many people now want to be America’s friends that we have a shortage of senior people on our side to meet them. So senior people like me all over the country are getting called up and pressed into duty.
Instead of fine dining in London and the best wurst and wines in Switzerland, I’m going to be eating army food for my summer vacation. At least it will be French army food. That has to be some kind of improvement.
I will be expounding on my global view to the top generals at NATO. I’ll outline the long-term consequences of the Ukraine War. I’ll also be meeting with individual NATO members as well as future potential ones.
I still hope to eventually end up at my chalet in Zermatt, Switzerland where I traditionally restart my year and have not visited in three years. Weather permitting, I will climb the 14,692-foot Matterhorn again. Is it seven times this year, or eight?
Otherwise, I’ll rejoin Zermatt Search and Rescue again visiting old friends and pulling lost Americans off of Alpine slopes. It seems I’m the only one up there who has a sense of humor.
I have worked the hardest in my life the past year, and it is time for a break. I have also put myself through the most grueling training regimen ever, hiking 2,000 miles in torrential rains and snowshoeing another 600, all with a 50-pound pack. Covid took a lot out of me.
Every year, it seems to get harder to keep the calendar at bay.
Getting out into the real world and soaking up new data and opinions is invaluable in shaping my own global view, and your performance benefits from it.
I will be traveling with my laptop and keeping touch with the markets. While 18th century Internet service is passable, the bandwidth can be snail-like. So, unless I see something extraordinary, I will cut back on new Trade Alerts.
After running up a 50% profit so far in 2022, I deserve a break. I am risking over trading. I need to spend some time alone on a mountaintop, communing with the spirits, attempting to discover the new long-term market trends through the mist.
While on the road, I will continue writing my newsletter, giving you my daily dose of market insight. I will also be re-running some of my favorite research pieces from the past when my travel schedule does not allow Internet access.
This is to expose my thousands of new subscribers to the golden oldies, and to remind the legacy readers who have since forgotten them.
I will be back in San Francisco in early August, glued to my screens once again for another year of toil in the salt mines. In the meantime, please feel free to email me.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter author Arthur Henry will be working straight through the summer. No rest for the wicked!
In the meantime, I shall be raising a glass to all of you at dinner, the loyal readers of The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader. Salute! Prost! Kampai, and Cheers! Thanks for making this letter a huge success!
If you want to take the opportunity to meet me in person, please find my strategy luncheon schedule below. To purchase tickets for the luncheons, please go to my online store and click on the country and city of your choice.
Wednesday, June 29, 12:00 PM London, England
Friday, July 22, 3:00 PM Zermatt, Switzerland
Thursday, July 28, 12:00 PM Venice Italy
I look forward to seeing you there, and thanks for supporting my research.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Now Which One of These is for Belgium?
Global Market Comments
June 23, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(JUNE 2 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(PYPL), (JPM), (BAC), (C), (MS), (GS) (TLT), (TBT), (NASDAQ), (SNOW), (ZG), (FCX), (META), (JNK), (HYG), (ABNB)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the June 22 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA.
Q: Where would you recommend getting involved in Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX) again?
A: We’ve just come off from $51 to $31, and $30 has been the support level for the last year and a half. The problem with (FCX) is that copper is a commodity, and if you think a recession is coming, the last thing in the world you want to own is a commodity. That’s because commodities don’t pay dividends, don’t pay interests, cost money to store, and thus should be avoided like the plague during recessions. Even if we don’t have a recession, the market will discount one anyway—remember the market has discounted twelve out of the last six recessions. This could be one of those non-recession recessions. So, $30 may hold; if it doesn’t, the two hundred day moving average is at $22. Long term, I'm looking for $100 with Freeport. You might want to buy half a position here, and then half if we break all the way down to $22 and discount the full recession. Long term I love it, short term it will have a lot of volatility—it’s already come off 40% in a couple of months.
Q: Will JP Morgan (JPM) and Goldman Sachs (GS) go up when interest rates are going up?
A: Yes. They’re going down now because of recession fears. When recession fears are no longer an issue, you can expect the entire financial sector to double over the next three years. The reason is that when you eliminate the recession fears, you eliminate default fears on the debts of big banks. And that knocks off a major credit issue for these companies, which in the meantime benefit enormously from high interest rates. They increase their profit margins on their loans. So definitely JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Citicorp (C), Morgan Stanley (MS), and Goldman Sachs (GS) are the plays there. And we’re probably pretty close to a bottom on the whole group.
Q: What about PayPal (PYPL)?
A: It’s down about 75% from its high. I think the smaller non-earning tech companies are going to take a long time to recover, probably years. But once they do recover, they will triple and quadruple. If you’re willing to tie up money for a long time for a bigger return, PayPal (PYPL), Square (SQ), and the other fintech stocks are going to be your cup of tea.
Q: Can you see a recession dragging into the next election?
A: I think not. The shocker is that the Republicans seem to be basing their entire campaign on inflation, and that could be a problem if inflation disappears by November, which it could very well do. A lot of things could eliminate inflation like a collapse of the oil market, which is happening right now, by the way. We’ve had a massive drop in oil prices—the end of the Ukraine war and good weather would also help with the food inflation. So those are all possibilities. My personal bet is that we get down to 4% by November, which is tolerable. And it’s 4% on the way to 2%. We could be down to 2% in two years—or at least that's what the Federal Reserve thinks. So be ready for surprises when it comes to the election. It’s five months off, and that's like 5,000 years in political terms.
Q: Why is the Fed funds rate 1.70% against an inflation rate of 8.6%?
A: Virtually everybody in the business thinks the inflation rate at 8.6% will be completely gone in a year. Recessions and even the fear of recessions cure inflation, even if we don’t actually get one. And that is in the process of happening now. You’re starting to see some big swings on the job market, collapsing oil prices, etc. So that kind of confirms that view.
Q: Why is the Fed funds rate so low now?
A: We have probably the most gradualist Fed in history. Jerome Powell likes to announce everything way in advance and do things slowly, and he’s continuing in that vein.
Q: I’m getting the Mad Hedge Technology Letter, which currently has no positions.
A: That’s true. Tech has been a horrible place to be. One of the jobs of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader is to not only get you into the good positions but to keep you away from the terrible ones, especially when they’re crashing, and that’s pretty much what the tech letter has been doing all year. We have done a lot of trades this year in tech, but they’ve been short-term trades on extremely oversold bounces. We’ve made money there, up 12% so far in 2022 with NASDAQ down 36%. And again, that is the job of the hedge fund.
Q: What will stop the ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury (TLT) short trade?
A: When the Fed skips an interest rate rise, and that could happen in September. We could still keep selling five-point rallies in the (TLT), but we’re reaching the end of the road.
Q: Why have a retirement fund if you’re never going to retire?
A: The tax advantages are tremendous, although, the IRS is forcing me to take social security now because they’re not increasing the amount anymore if you defer payments. I'm going to start getting my checks soon.
Q: I’m not getting the text alerts on my phone.
A: Contact Filomena at customer support at (347) 480-1034 and she will get you set up on that; that’s an easy fix.
Q: Should we buy energy? If so, gas or oil?
A: None of the above—we are peaking now in energy. Almost the entire industry thinks we’re going to be down by half in a year, and more if the Ukraine war ends.
Q: Should we add to our ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury (TBT) position?
A: No. I think you’re going to get real resistance at the $30 level. $14 is where you should have been buying (TBT) last November when we were screaming at you to please do this in large size, and do it in LEAPS which give you lots of leverage. People who did that doubled their money in 7 months, including me.
Q: What do you think about Snowflake Inc. (SNOW)?
A: I love it, it’s a great database firm for the long term, also heavily involved in cybersecurity. The stock is down 70% in a year. But it is a small non-money-making tech company, so you may have to wait a long time to actually get performance. Another one of these “you may get a 10X on this but may have to wait years for the move to start,” like hundreds of other stocks in the same category.
Q: What do you think about Zillow Group Inc. (ZG)?
A: Don’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. It has been a real disaster of a stock, down 86% since November. If real estate prices are peaking or moving sideways (and certainly the number of transactions is declining) you don’t want to be anywhere near real estate, home builders, and housing—that whole area is just getting slaughtered. Zillow is definitely a slaughter-ee.
Q: Is it okay to roll a 2024 LEAP into 2025 on Freeport McMoRan (FCX)?
A: Yes that is a good idea. Even if we have a recession, it will be well and done by 2025, and we might even be up to our $100 price in (FCX) because I saw a report today saying that by 2028 EVs will be 33% of the total US car market. Every one of those EVs needs 200 lbs of copper, so you do the math.
Q: Is the price of oil declining because of lack of demand, or because investors are predicting a recession?
A: They are on in the same. It’s definitely recession fears that’s causing oil to peak out, and those will probably continue for a couple more months. By the way, gasoline isn’t just an oil supply problem; it’s also a refining problem because the Koch brothers have moved a big chunk of their refining to Mexico to avoid environmental controls, and as a result, we don’t have refineries in the US anymore. Many of them shut down here during the pandemic and then reopened in Mexico.
Q: Any thoughts about Japan’s currency in freefall, and is this the path of all currencies in the future?
A: Japan is in a unique situation because unlike any central bank in the world, the bank of Japan is continuing to buy bonds and flood the system with liquidity while everybody else in the world is tightening. That is crushing the Japanese currency, and they show no sign of stopping that any time soon. They seem unable to change monetary policy in Japan—it’s the same monetary policy they’ve had for 32 years: flooding the system with free money, which has worked so well. I know a lot of people who are short Yen; I missed it because I was busy with so many other better trades.
Q: Would you invest in California real estate right now, like in Palm Springs for an Airbnb rental?
A: No, you never want to buy real estate one month into a real estate correction, which could go on for a year or two (or until the Fed starts to lower interest rates again, which could be in a couple of years.) And Airbnb, particularly in towns like Palm Springs, is placing all kinds of restrictions on Airbnb to keep short term renters out of town due to a really bad habit of having wild parties, destroying the properties, shootings, and other stuff that happen on Airbnb’s. The same is true in Incline Village—they now have a 30-day minimum rental requirement to clamp down on the Airbnb business. And, by the way, Airbnb will completely change the character of a neighborhood. I’ve seen it happen in cities like Florence, Italy.
Q: When should I pull the trigger on Meta Platforms Inc. (META), formerly known as Facebook?
A: Probably not for a couple of years. The whole metaverse idea is something where profits are very far in the future.
Q: When is the next inflationary panic?
A: July 13. 8:30 am EST is when the next CPI number is released, and our entire portfolio (we now have 7 positions) expires 2 days later. How about that for timing?
Q: Do you own stock, or do mostly LEAPS?
A: I do mostly LEAPS because I like the 10 to 1 leverage, and I’m almost always right on the name picks. It’s like printing free money.
Q: Should we buy puts on oil?
A: That’s something we talked about 3 weeks ago, and I said to go for the $80 out of money puts. If you did, you easily doubled your money on those. Now, not so much. Don’t think about doing trades after they worked.
Q: What are your thoughts on Airbnb Inc. (ABNB) stock?
A: Love it for the long term, great company, incredibly well-managed, it’s become the world’s largest hotel, and it’s a great place to stay. You get a whole house for the price of a hotel room.
Q: What was the junk bond symbol?
A: There were two of them: (JNK) and (HYG). The yields on these are now up around 7%.
To watch a replay of this webinar with all the charts, bells, whistles, and classic rock music, just log in to www.madhedgefundtrader.com, go to MY ACCOUNT, click on GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH, then WEBINARS, and all the webinars from the last 12 years are there in all their glory.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
June 22, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHICH IS THE CHEAPEST US STATE?)
Everyone knows that California is the most expensive state in which to live in the country. During the pandemic, you could do something about it, thanks to Zoom (ZM), which allows you to work from any place, anytime.
That has given rise to one of the newest concepts in the jobs and real estate market known as “Interstate Arbitrage.”
It’s really very simple. Get an online job in an expensive state where you can work online but live in a bargain basement state. Your savings will explode beyond all imagination.
This is especially important to Millennials early on the savings curve who look at real estate prices on the coasts and blanche. A cozy two-bedroom in San Francisco’s posh Pacific Heights? How about $5,000 a month for rent alone!
Of course, we all know the highest paying states; California, New York, and Washington. These all have punitive state taxes on top of high-end federal taxes, like California’s 13% rate, with millionaire surcharges on top of this. Add it all up and state and federal taxes come to a backbreaking 52% a year.
On the other hand, some nine US states have no tax at all, including Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.
Mississippi has the cheapest housing in the US at 55% the cost of California housing, followed by Alabama, Arkansas, and West Virginia at 60%.
The best place to fix stuff is in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, which is 16.6% cheaper than California. Nevada is 10.5% cheaper to buy goods. The discount is less here thanks to the proliferation of large national retail chains.
Add it all up and the cheapest state to live in is Arkansas at a 27.7% discount to CA, followed by Alabama t 26.3% and West Virginia at 25.2%.
Companies have gotten wise to “Interstate Arbitrage” and are demanding part of the action in the form of big pay cuts for distant employees. They love the cut in overhead expenses and didn’t like those nerds in their offices so much anyway.
Employees are fighting back by not actually disclosing that they put down stakes in New Hampshire, Wyoming, or Nevada. Warning: Your iPhone can bust you at any time, recording your exact location 24/7.
It’s becoming a big issue as up to 30% of stay-at-home workers are never expected to come back to the office. It partly explains why shares of these mostly tech companies have been on such a meteoric tear for the past nine months.
If you like Interstate Arbitrage, you will absolutely love international career arbitrage. You can live like a prince in Budapest for $1,000 a month, and like a king in Monte Negro for $750, or Malaysia for $500.
Riga in Latvia has become a major European tech hub and even offers a technology visa for transplanted Americans. And their broadband is better than found in most US states.
I guess you can get used to eating grits, rooting for the Razorbacks, and enjoying the Apple blossom, the state flower of Arkansas. Chances are that the equity in your California home alone will allow you to purchase a much larger home in “The Natural State” for all cash.
I have to tread lightly here because I already have many subscribers in Arkansas, the birthplace of Bill Clinton.
But you get what you pay for. It’s a good rule of thumb that the less you pay in state taxes, the worse the education system. If your kids have already grown up, it’s not an issue, as long as you don’t mind talking to stupid people every day.
Of course, those who live in the Golden State say it is worth the price, with its balmy climate, diversity of recreation opportunists, fabulous beaches, majestic mountains, and incredible rate of innovation.
It’s much better to pay high taxes on a $10 million annual income, entirely possible at a big tech company than low taxes on a $50,000 job.
As for me, I think I’ll work a little harder and keep those incredible Pacific sunsets and fantastic Dungeness crabs, sourdough bread, and Anchor Steam Beer.
To find where your state ranks on a number of parameters, please visit the interactive map by clicking here.
It’s California for Me
Global Market Comments
June 21, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD,
or PREPARING FOR THE POST-RECESSION STOCK MARKET)
(NVDA), (SPY), (MSFT), (V), (TLT), (TSLA)
What if they gave a recession, and nobody came?
Better yet, what if we’re already in a recession that is about to end?
Q1 brought us a GDP growth of negative 1.5%. All we need is for the current quarter to bring in a negative number and we meet the textbook definition of a recession. That means an economic recovery could begin in as little as two weeks.
The way all asset classes traded worldwide last week confirms this view. What has really been impressive is how energy has gone from the most loved sector in the market to the most hated….in hours. Oil and energy stocks have seen the most extreme price reversals in their history, down some 20%.
If you truly believed that we were going into a recession, oil is the last thing in the world you want to own. It cost money to store and there is no storage. The Russians have locked up all they can get to place the oil that no one is buying because of the sanctions.
Tanker charters have disappeared as new buyers of Russian oil, like India and China, re-route crude from its traditional buyers in Europe.
And if you don’t sell maturing futures contracts, you have to take physical delivery of millions of barrels of oil. This is borne out by the futures market, which already has oil trading at a lowly $70 one year out. This is why the oil industry isn’t investing a dime in their own business. They’ve seen this movie before.
It isn’t just stocks and oil that are collapsing. It is everything, from copper to new home construction to retail sales. All of the loss in share prices this year, some 20%, is due to multiple compression, from 21 down to 17. Earnings are still rising. That shows there is no logic to the selling.
People just want out.
We have just about dotted all the “I”’s and crossed all their “T”’s to meet the requirements of a bear market bottom. Only 2% of stocks are now above their 50-day moving average. Equity put to call ratios are close to one. There has been massive selling of sectors that only recently started to plunge, like energy and utilities.
This has brought us a negative wealth effect that has sucked $13.1 trillion out of the real economy since November.
Watch for the trifecta of yields ($TNX), the US dollar (UUP), and oil (USO) rolling over. The “everything” bubble is over.
That makes the Bitcoin crash particularly compelling to watch, as it has become a great risk indicator for all asset classes. It broke $19,000 over the weekend. It turns out that 24/7 trading means it can go down a lot faster.
Crypto in general is having its “Lehman Brothers” moment. Crypto banks, NFTs, and brokers are dropping like flies as cascading margin calls wash through the system.
This was a field where there was margin on margin upon margin. Celsius, a crypto lender, has frozen $11 billion worth of deposits. As a long-time hedge fund manager, I can tell you that gating an asset class and preventing withdrawals brings certain death.
Some of these banks were guaranteeing 19% interest rates. It’s proof yet again that if it’s too good to be true, it usually isn’t.
All of this presages a crash in the inflation rate of epic proportions from the current 8.6%. We could be back to the Fed target of 2% by yearend if last week’s trends continue.
Since the Fed is so slow to act, the next two 0.75% rate hikes are in the bag. After that, even the Fed will release that it has a recession on its hands. All further rise hikes will cease, and they may even be back to cutting by 2023.
What happens if the above scenario plays out? It’s back to the Roaring Twenties once again and my new American Golden Age.
And while we are talking about the possibility of stocks going up once again, let me fill you in on a trade that looks particularly compelling.
Sell Short the July 15 Tesla $500 puts.
That closed at $12.25 on Friday with 18 days until expiration. At an 82.3% implied volatility, Tesla is one of the most volatile stocks in the market so they will pay you fortunes for the puts. For each put you sell short, you earn $1,225. The $500 strike price is down 58.3% from the $1,200 high seen in January. This is for a company that is seeing vehicle sales rise by 40% this year, and gross sales up 50% (they raised prices three times).
In this trade, you WANT the share to get sold to you at $500. Just take delivery of the shares. Then you can ride them up to my ten-year forecast of $10,000 and get a 20-fold return. If you don’t get triggered on the puts, just do the trade again for August and take in another $1,225 and every month until you are, or the trade goes away.
I know this trade works as I have done it several times with these results.
How do you think I got three Teslas?
Fed Raises Rates by 75 Basis Points, the most in 28 years, lifting a great weight from the shoulders of the market. Stocks rallied as well as bonds. It was one of the most confusing market responses I can recall. Two more 75 basis point hikes are in the can. The overnight rate could be at 2.75% by September. This may not be THE bottom, but it is A bottom. I’m adding risk here.
Dow Average Breaks 30,000, for the first time in a year, down 8,000 in less than six months, or 21%. Jay Powell has really taken a whip to this market. Suddenly, money costs money. I see another 5% of downside easy, then a strong rally.
Tesla is Raising Prices on its Cars, passing on rising commodity prices directly to customers because they can. There is still a one-year wait to get a new Model X. $7.00 gasoline is a dream come true for all EV makers, which are getting overwhelmed with demand. Ford quit taking orders for their all-electric F-150 at 200,000 because they can’t fill them. It might be smart to sell short the Tesla July $500 puts expiring in 20 trading days for a generous premium. If the stock falls that far, just take delivery of the shares and then ride them up to $10,000.
Tesla Proposes 3:1 Stock Split, its third since the company went public in 2010. Elon Musk is not above financial engineering to boost the share price. A cheaper share price would suck in more Millennial investors who love the company. Keep buying (TSLA) on dips like this one.
Soaring Interest Rates Demolish New Home Construction, down 14.42% in May. It’s only going to get worse. Avoid homebuilders like the plague.
Weekly Jobless Claims come in at 229,000, down 3,000. Watch this number climb as recession fears rise. The risk of a hard landing is growing exponentially.
Bitcoin is Still in Free Fall, down 10% on the day, and is just cents from breaking the crucial $20,000 support level. There are no buyers anywhere, and margin calls are running rampant. Several cryptos are not at risk of going under. This is when you find out who’s been swimming without a swimsuit. I am so glad I avoided crypto this year.
Ten-Year Treasuries Hit 11-Year High, at a 3.48% yield. This is the beginning of the end for the bear market in bonds, the worst in history.
30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgages Rocket to 6.28%, from 5.5%, effectively shutting down the market. Now you REALLY have to worry about real estate. That’s up from 2.8% in November. Avoid homebuilders like (LEN), (PHM), and (KBH) on pain of death.
FDA Approves Covid Shots for Kids, down to six months. Two mini shots are all that is needed. It will do a lot to bring working parents back into the workforce, and address worries of grandparents like me.
Producer Price Index Jumps 10.8% YOY, fanning the flames of inflation. The April print was up 0.8% compared to 0.4% a month earlier according to the Labor Department. Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to roil food and oil supplies globally, and China has started re-imposing Covid-19 restrictions just weeks after loosening them in major cities
Strong Dollar is Demolishing US Corporate Profits, and the worst is yet to come. Weaker foreign currencies like the Euro (FXE) and the yen (FXY) means international sales bring in less dough. Blame the Fed for a steady diet of interest rate rises which make the greenback the most attractive currency in the world.
My Ten-Year View
When we come out the other side of pandemic and the recession, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With oil peaking out soon, and technology hyper accelerating, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The America coming out the other side will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 240,000 here we come!
With some of the greatest market volatility in market history, my June month-to-date performance exploded to +5.91%.
My 2022 year-to-date performance ballooned to 47.78%, a new high. The Dow Average is down -17.66% so far in 2022. It is the greatest outperformance on an index since Mad Hedge Fund Trader started 14 years ago. My trailing one-year return maintains a sky-high 69.35%.
Last week, we made an absolute killing with the June option expiration day, running six position into their maximum profit into the close. Those were in (NVDA), a double short in (SPY), (MSFT), (V), and (TLT).
I also used the big down 1,000-point days to add new July longs in (MSFT), (NVDA), (BRKB), and (TSLA). Putting on front month call spreads with the Volatility Index over $30 is like shooting fish in a barrel.
That brings my 14-year total return to 560.34%, some 2.40 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period and a new all-time high. My average annualized return has ratcheted up to 44.23%, easily the highest in the industry.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Coronavirus cases at 86.3 million, up 300,000 in a week and deaths topping 1,014,000 and have only increased by 2,000 in the past week. You can find the data here.
On Monday, June 20 markets are closed for the first-ever Juneteenth, the celebration of the freeing of the slaves.
On Tuesday, June 21 at 7:00 AM, Existing Home Sales for May are published.
On Wednesday, June 22 at 7:00 AM, MBA Mortgage Applications for the previous week are printed.
On Thursday, June 23 at 8:30 AM, Weekly Jobless Claims are announced.
On Friday, June 24 at 7:00 AM, New Home Sales for May are disclosed. At 2:00 the Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count is out.
As for me, since I hike ten miles with a 50-pound pack every evening, it is not unusual for me to wake up feeling like I was run over by a truck.
But one morning was different. I had no energy. So, I took a Covid test. It was negative. The next morning, I was still weak, so I took the test again. Still negative.
It was only on the third morning that I produced a positive test. I had Covid-19.
I don’t know how the heck I got this disease as I had been so careful for the past 2 ½ years with my background in virology. No UCLA degree helped here. That’s why they call this variant the “stealth omicron BA.2”.
The scary thing was that I tested negative for three days while I was potentially spreading the virus.
Thank goodness for the two vaccinations and two booster shots I received. They saved my life. They headed off a long hospital stay, a long covid disability, or even death. Thank you, Pfizer!
So I quarantined myself, donned a mask whenever I left my bedroom, and shoved cash under the door whenever the kids needed to eat.
I became a couch potato of the first order, binge-watching Killing Eve, Yellowstone, and every Star Trek ever made (there are hundreds).
Fortunately, I did not lose my sense of taste or smell, as do many others. But when you sleep 18 hours a day, you don’t eat. In two weeks, I lost 15 pounds. I guess every virus has a silver lining. But every day, I felt better and better.
Of course, I had to keep working. I sent out a dozen trade alerts while I had Covid, and the newsletters and Hot Tips kept pouring out every day.
One day, I had to give two webinars and I almost passed out during the second one. I had to excuse myself for a minute and place my head between my knees to keep from blacking out.
No rest for the wicked!
I’m completely over it now. I had to cut more loops in my belts because my pants kept falling off. I can get into clothes which haven’t fit for 40 years. Fortunately, men’s fashion never go out of style.
And here’s the really great news. I am totally immune to all covid variants for a year. The disease acts as a fifth super booster.
Looks like it’s time to top up that bucket list again. If nothing else, Covid reminded me of the shortness of life and the transitory nature of opportunity. The response of a lot of Covid survivors has been to trash the budget, throw caution to the wind, and go do those things you always wanted to do.
Why should I be any different? There is no tomorrow, next week, or next year, only now.
I’ll be hitting the road.
See you at Harry’s Bar in Venice!
Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Oops, I Got Covid
A Negative Test at Last
“He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither,” said Benjamin Franklin, the Revolutionary War US ambassador to Paris and signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Global Market Comments
June 17, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(A NEW THEORY OF TESLA,
or WHY I’M RAISING MY TARGET TO $10,000),
(TSLA)
