Global Market Comments
December 7, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHY TECHNICAL ANALYSIS DOESN’T WORK)
(SPY), (QQQ), (IWM), (VIX),
(TESTIMONIAL)
Global Market Comments
Global Market Comments
December 6, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHAT TO SELL SHORT ON THE NEXT RALLY)
(IWM), (RWM), (SPY)
(TAKE A RIDE IN THE NEW SHORT JUNK ETF),
(SJB), (JNK), (HYG),
(THE COOLEST TOMBSTONE CONTEST)
As much as you may think I have just gone MAD, I believe it is time to start dipping your toe in on the short side in the stock market on the next major rally.
I want to elaborate on the finer points of the rationale for doing this trade.
Whatever last gasps of the tailwind provided by last year’s tax bill are rapidly being extinguished by an escalating trade war. Just ask anybody in the real estate and auto industries which are already well into recessions.
It has reminded them how high stocks have run and how much now withering unrealized profits are sitting on their books.
The Russell 2000 (IWM) is actually misnamed as it now has only 1,650 stocks.
The rest have disappeared over the years through mergers, privatizations, or bankruptcies, and have not been replaced, as happens quarterly with the S&P 500 (SPY).
For you and me, this means that the (IWM) is more illiquid than the (SPY). When stock markets fall, the (IWM) falls about 1.5 times faster than the (SPY).
In other words, it’s a great short to have in a falling market.
I think stock markets may be starting to either top out or roll over here. The Fed is taking away the punch bowl and the party is ending.
That is especially true of the Russell 2000.
An approaching yearend is a big risk for the markets, as are overstretched valuations and prices.
The warning signs of a selloff are absolutely everywhere but, until now, have been ignored. They show that the normal life of a medium-term topping process is two months.
When will that two months end?
About the end of December, before gigantic deferred tax selling hits the market in January.
Small cap stocks have other problems.
Since they lack the sources of internal finance that the big companies do, they are much more sensitive to the economic cycle.
That makes them much more dependent on a boost from tax cuts.
Large companies don’t pay taxes anyway, so there’s nothing in the tax package for them.
Small caps also are much more dependent on domestic sales than large ones.
They lack the financing and the sophistication to create elaborate offshore structure to minimize their tax bill.
So any developments that threaten to dilute or derail tax cuts will hit small companies much greater than big ones.
Another way to play this is to buy the ProShares Short Russell 2000 ETF (RWM), a bet that small cap stocks will fall.
If you are looking for other ways to hedge your portfolios, you might consider the Trade Alert I also sent yesterday to buy gold (GLD). The last stock meltdown finally delivered some serious moves up in the barbarous relic.
Look at the chart below for the barbarous relic and you see that we have a sideways triangle formation setting up over the past month that will be a nice springboard for a sudden move upward.
All we need is one more escalation of the trade war with China which, these days, seem to be coming out of the woodwork.
Sell short the Russell 2000.
Global Market Comments
December 4, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(I HAVE AN OPENING FOR THE MAD HEDGE FUND TRADER CONCIERGE SERVICE),
(HOW TO GET A FREE TESLA), (TSLA)
Global Market Comments
December 3, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or
THE YEAR EVERYTHING WENT DOWN)
(SPY), (TLT), (COPX), (GLD), (IYR),
(FXE), (EEM), (USO), (IYR), (GM)
Last week saw the sharpest move up in stock prices in seven years. Why doesn’t it feel like it? Maybe it’s because we are all recovering losses instead of posting new profits. The mind has a funny way of working like that.
In fact, 2018 may go down as the year that EVERYTHING went down. Stocks (SPY), bonds (TLT), commodities (COPX), precious metals (GLD), foreign currencies (FXE), emerging markets (EEM), oil (USO), real estate (IYR), vintage cars, fine art, and even my neighbor’s beanie baby collection were all posting negative numbers as of a week ago.
In fact, Deutsche Bank tracks 100 global indexes and 88 of them were posting losses on the year. The normal average in any one year is 27. This is why hedge fund are having their worst year in history (except for this one). When your longs AND your shorts plunge in unison, there is nary a dime to be had. Even gold, the ultimate flight to safety asset has failed to perform.
Theoretically, this is supposed to be impossible. When stocks go down, bonds are supposed to go up and visa versa. So are emerging markets and all other hard assets.
This only happens in one set of circumstances and that is when global liquidity is shrinking. There is just not enough free cash around to support everything. So, the price of everything goes down.
The reason most of you don’t recognize this is that last time this happened was in 1980 when most of you were still a gleam in your father’s eye.
If you don’t believe me check, out the chart below from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It shows that after peaking in July 2014, the Adjusted Monetary Base has been going nowhere and recently started to decline precipitously.
This was exactly three months before the Federal Reserve ended the aggressive, expansionary monetary policy known as quantitative easing.
The rot started in commodities and spread to precious metals, agricultural prices, bonds, and real estate. In October, it spread to global equities as well. Beanie babies were the last to go.
Want some bad news? Shrinking global liquidity, which is now accelerating, is a major reason why I have been calling for a recession and bear market in 2019 all year.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Perhaps that is why 2019 recession calls are lately multiplying like rabbits. Nothing like closing the barn door after the horses have bolted. I wish you told me this in September.
Disturbing economic data is everywhere if only people looked. The S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index rate of price rise hit an 18-month low at 5.5%. With housing in free fall nationally further serious price declines are to come. With mortgage rates up a full point in a year and affordability at a decade low, who’s surprised?
General Motors (GM) closed 3 plants and laid off 15,000 workers, as trade wars wreak havoc on old-line industries. It looks like Millennials would rather ride their scooters than buy new cars.
Weekly Jobless Claims soared 10,000, to 234,000, a new five-month high. Not what stock owners want to hear. THE JOBS MIRACLE IS FADING!
October New Home Sales were a complete disaster, down a stunning 8.9% and off 12% YOY. These are the worst numbers since the 2009 housing crash. I told you not to buy homebuilders! They can’t give them away now!
Oil plunged again, off 20% in November alone. Is this punishment for Saudi Arabia chopping up a journalist or is the world headed into recession?
It seems we don’t have quiet weeks anymore. Normally, sedentary Jay Powell ripped it up with a few choice words at the New York Economic Club.
By saying that we are close to a neutral rate, the Fed Governor implied that there will be one more rate rise in December and then NO MORE. Happy president. But the historical neutral range is 3.5%-4.5%, meaning there is room for 2-6 X 25 basis point rate hikes to keep the bond vigilantes at pay. Such a card! Thread that needle!
Cyber Monday sales hit a new all-time high, up to $7.3 billion, with Amazon (AMZN) taking far and away the largest share. The stock is now up $300 from its November $1,400 low.
Salesforce, a Mad Hedge favorite, announced blockbuster earnings and was rewarded with a ballistic move upwards in the shorts. Fortunately, the Mad Hedge Technology Letter was long.
The Mad Hedge Alert Service managed to pull victory from the jaws of defeat in November with a last-minute comeback. Add October and November together and we limited out losses to 0.59% for the entire crash.
This was a period when NASDAQ fell a heart-stopping 17% and lead stocks fell as much as 60%. Most investors will take that all day long. I bet you will too. Down markets is when you define the quality of a trader, not up ones, when anyone can make a buck.
My year to date return recovered to +27.80%, boosting my trailing one-year return back up to 31.56%. November finished at a near-miraculous -1.83%. That second leg down in the NASDAQ really hurt and was a once in 18-year event. And this is against a Dow Average that is up a pitiful +2.9% so far in 2018.
My nine-year return recovered to +304.27. The average annualized return revived to +33.80.
The upcoming week is all about jobs reports, and on Friday with the big one.
Monday, December 3 at 10:00 EST, the November ISM Manufacturing Index is published. All hell will break loose at the opening as the market discounts the outcome of the Buenos Aires G-20 Summit.
On Tuesday, December 4, November Auto Vehicle Sales are released.
On Wednesday, December 5 at 8:15 AM EST, the November ADP Private Employment Report is out.
At 10:30 AM EST the Energy Information Administration announces oil inventory figures with its Petroleum Status Report.
Thursday, December 6 at 8:30 AM EST, we get the usual Weekly Jobless Claims. At 10:00 AM we learned the November ISM Nonmanufacturing Index.
On Friday, December 7, at 8:30 AM EST, the November Nonfarm Payroll Report is printed.
The Baker-Hughes Rig Count follows at 1:00 PM. At some point, we will get an announcement from the G-20 Summit of advanced industrial nations.
As for me, I’ll be driving my brand new Tesla Model X P100D which I picked up from the factory yesterday. I’ll be zooming up and down the hills and dales of the mountains around San Francisco this weekend.
I’ll also be putting to test the “ludicrous mode” to see if it really can go from zero to 60 in 2.9 seconds and give passengers motion sickness. I will go well equipped with air sickness bags which I lifted off of my latest Virgin Atlantic flight.
Talley Ho!
Good luck and good trading.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
November 30, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(NOVEMBER 28 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(VXX), (VIX), (GE), (ROKU), (AAPL),
(MSFT), (SQ), (XLK), (SPLS), (EWZ), (EEM)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader November 28 Global Strategy Webinar with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader.
Q: Is it time to get out of semiconductor stocks?
A: The time to get out is before it drops 60%, not afterwards. So, if you have semiconductor stocks, I would look for the next major rally to get out. I think we will get one of those rallies into December/January. We went negative on this sector in June, took all our profits, and didn’t go back in until last week.
Q: Is it time to buy semiconductor stocks?
A: No, that is the group you want to buy at the absolute bottom of the next recession which might be next year sometime. They lead on the downside, and they will lead on the upside as soon as they sniff a recovery in the economy.
Q: I held on to my position in Square (SQ). Should I sell now for a small profit?
A: Yes, in recessions, big companies prosper much more than small companies like Square; that’s why it had such a tremendous selloff; down 55% in six weeks. A small technology stock is not what you want to own in a recession. Big companies slow down, small ones die. At least that’s how conservative investors see it.
Q: What do you make of Fed comments this morning that asset prices are high?
A: I agree with them. They were certainly overpriced with a P/E multiple of 20 that we saw in September; they’re moderately priced now with a P/E multiple of 14.9. I think real estate markets are the overpriced assets that the Fed is talking about though, far more than the stock market, and markets like San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver are still way too high.
Q: What are your comments on Apple (AAPL)?
A: There’s an interesting thing going on here; you’ve just had a massive move out of hardware stocks like Apple, which basically makes phones and computers, into software stocks like Microsoft (MSFT), which is growing their cloud business like crazy. You may see this as a long-term industry trend, out of hardware stocks into software stocks. It’s all about the cloud now. The future is in software and that is where Apple is going to with services like the cloud, iTunes, streaming, and advertising, although they are doing it slowly.
Q: Will Trump be able to persuade Fed Chair Powell to stop hiking interest rates?
A: He will not, Powell is one of the few principled people in the government. He’s going to stick to his discipline, only look at the data, and that is going to require him to keep raising interest rates. One of the big black swans for 2019 may be that Trump fires Powell and gets a friendly rent-a-Fed chair in there who lowers interest rates on command. If Trump can hold on for nine months though, even Powell will see the economy’s in trouble and will have to respond accordingly by capping or even lowering interest rates.
Q: Why are you not stopping out of Roku (ROKU)?
A: We haven't yet approached our upper strike price on the December $30-$35 vertical bull call spread. That’s usually where I bail out; I like to give stocks plenty of room to do the right thing. Stocks have to breathe and I pick strike prices to compensate for that. Otherwise, you’d be stopping out of every trade immediately.
Q: Should we close the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX) trade or leave it open?
A: I’m looking for a bit more of a rally in stocks and a drop in the Volatility Index (VIX); then we’ll try to grab whatever additional couple of pennies we can get out of that.
Q: What do you think of Brazil (EWZ)?
A: Avoid emerging markets (EEM) as long as the U.S. is raising interest rates and the dollar is strong. Rising dollar means rising debt for emerging markets and less ability to service that debt, all bad for business.
Q: Morgan Stanley (MS) says “buy emerging markets”; are they nuts?
A: For the short term yes, for the multi-year long term they are a screaming buy. They are at historical lows in terms of valuation and already have a recession priced into them. But jumping in too soon could be painful.
Q: What are your expectations for the yield curve?
A: I expect all levels of the fixed income market to drop in price and rise in yield with the sharpest move in overnight rates. This eventually leads to a very steep inverted yield curve which causes recessions and bear markets.
Q: Thoughts on Master Limited Partnerships?
A: They could be relatively safe now that oil is at $50. There have been big selloffs recently. The yield on these are high and there is going to be big infrastructure building for energy going forward. I would say don’t put all your eggs in one basket and diversify your risk. In the Great Recession, many of these went bankrupt. I would look at the Alerian MLP (AMLP), which has fallen 15% in six weeks.
Q: Should I be rotating out of the Tech (XLK) stocks on rallies into more defensive stocks like Staples (SPLS)?
A: That’s half right. You should be rotating out of Tech stocks and rotating into cash which yields up to 2-3% these days. Nothing does well in a real bear market except cash. Defensive stocks still go down, just at a slower rate.
Q: Is General Electric (GE) good for the long term?
A: Yes, if anyone can turn around GE it’s the current management. That said, it could be a long-term slog—that’s why I had a long-term leap in this thing before it collapsed. It could turn around and still go up but these are throwaway, chapter eleven level type prices that we’re getting now. And now they are going to have to do a turnaround going into a recession.
Q: Do you see GE as good for a long-term trade?
A: Long term and trade don’t belong in the same sentence; but I’d say for a long-term investment at these levels, probably yes. It certainly is a bargain from $30 down to $7.40 in a year.
Q: Is this webinar archived?
A: A: Yes, they are always posted on the website within two hours of recording. Just go to www.madhedgefundtrader.com/, login and then hover your cursor over “MY ACCOUNT” click on “GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH,” “Mad Hedge Technology Letter” or “Newsletter” depending on your membership then click on the Webinars button. The last ten years of webinars should show up, with the most recent one at the top.
Good luck and good trading.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
"The market has been expecting the Fed to raise interest rates at its next meeting for three years now. It's been right once. In December, it will be right for the second time," said Aaron Kline of the Brookings Institution.
Global Market Comments
November 29, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(SHORT SELLING SCHOOL 101),
(SH), (SDS), (PSQ), (DOG), (RWM), (SPXU), (AAPL),
(VIX), (VXX), (IPO), (MTUM), (SPHB), (HDGE)