Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 26, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(NVIDIA EARNINGS TO SWAY THE NASDAQ)
(NVDA), (META), (BTCUSD)
Posts
It’s been a steep drop for tech stocks the last few days and there is a lot to piece through here.
It was due at some point.
Look, we are at Himalayan highs in the Nasdaq and that doesn’t mean it will be smooth sailing from here.
To find that incremental dollar to push up tech stocks is not as easy as it once was.
We aren’t in the golden years of technology anymore.
The big question is why someone should input that extra dollar when there is a flattening of momentum in the entire tech establishment.
A.I. is the big two-letter acronym that everyone is focused on so it is not a surprise that profits are being taken leading up to Nvidia’s earnings.
Nvidia isn’t as ironclad as it used to be and that worries me.
Nvidia is carrying the market on its back like it has been doing for the past year and market breadth has remarkably narrowed.
If there was no Nvidia, we would be looking at a demonstrably lower stock market than this expensive stock market we are trading right now.
Remember that I urged readers to pile into tech stocks after that mid-January Deepseek selloff and that was the perfect elixir to profits.
Now, where do we find that indicator or signal to go green?
It’s a tough one and we must be patient.
All I have left in the portfolio is a bull call spread in Meta that has been taken out to the woodshed and beaten like the proverbial red-headed stepchild.
Then we look at other signs of liquidity and alternative barometers and Bitcoin has to scare you.
The quicksand drop to $85,000 per coin questions whether the bull market in tech stocks is still alive or kicking.
At the very minimum, the kicking is getting weaker and weaker each following earnings season.
But investors can hold on to hope for a few more hours. After the bell today, the world turns to fourth-quarter earnings for the linchpin of AI euphoria, Nvidia (NVDA).
This two-plus-year bull market has weathered several multi-month periods when Nvidia's stock price sputtered. But the company's stock hasn't contributed to the bull market since last June, as its share price has effectively gone nowhere in that time.
Over the last 10 years (40 reports), buying Nvidia stock just before the earnings announcement has yielded a median return of 3% to 4% on the one-day, one-week, and one-month time frames. Holding for three months has yielded nearly 18%.
The disparity highlights the volatile earnings reactions that might net bullish results but can also cause significant discomfort in the near term.
But for the entire Nvidia obsession, investors are right to question how much AI is still a picks-and-shovels or even an energy trade (as it morphed into in 2024).
If I had to nail down a date, investors expect the 2nd half of 2025 to calculate what exactly future cash flow will look like and if the infrastructure investment in AI is really worth the hassle.
A great deal of capital was asked to front AI and we are creeping towards that day where AI will need to sink or swim.
As it stands, the AI overlords like OpenAI helmed by Sam Altman, still puts on a happy face like nothing will fail to surpass expectation. It is easier to put on a good face when someone is worth billions upon billions.
In the short, we are preparing for a buying opportunity in the best and brightest.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 19, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE EYEWEAR PIVOT NOBODY SAW COMING)
(META), (ESSILORLUXOTTICA)
Meta (META) migration into the eyewear business is a little bit of a head-scratcher until peeling back the layers and really understanding what is going on.
EssilorLuxottica’s agreement to prolong its long-term collaboration with Meta Platforms for the development of smart eyewear over the upcoming 10 years is a massive victory for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
This milestone offers meaningful insight into the direction of where the business model is heading.
Many have expected that Meta would start to branch out into other venues once their core businesses start to stagnate.
The digital ad game and social media platforms only go so far in terms of growth these days, and shareholders are waiting on the next big thing.
Short-term prospects are what drives the stock movement, and Meta is looking for that pixie dust.
EssilorLuxottica is the largest maker of eyewear in the world and the owner of many eyewear brands and retailers, including Ray-Ban, LensCrafters, and Pearle Vision in the U.S.
EssilorLuxottica also acquired Heidelberg Engineering, maker of imaging and healthcare machinery and technology, largely for the ophthalmic and eyecare markets worldwide.
Prescription glasses are not cheap, ranging into the thousands of dollars for designer frames and lenses.
If Meta can figure out how to do this all online without going to the optician, imagine the juicy margins they could extract from this sort of venture.
Meta and EssilorLuxottica have a relationship for the production of the Ray-Ban smart glasses. The glasses’ latest version gives consumers video, camera, and Bluetooth headset capability in a stylish eyewear frame with a cool brand on it.
Heidelberg Engineering makes complex, sophisticated, expensive equipment that you may be exposed to if you’re examined in an ophthalmologist’s office. Buying Heidelberg makes EssilorLuxottica more entrenched in the industry where it is the established leader.
The tie-up with EssilorLuxottica is the perfect onboarding situation to understand how to perfect the optimal glasses and lenses and then to transfer it into an online experience.
Remember, even if this investment is for VR purposes, the application revolves around virtual eyewear as well.
Meta now understands they need to secure a monopoly on eyewear, and it is a conscious decision to make that a launching point into more of their products.
In the future, Meta wants consumers to access Instagram, Whatsapp, and Facebook through EssilorLuxottica eyewear products.
Meta also hopes to secure the first mover advantage while other big tech firms lack the deep knowledge of eyewear. There have already been numerous failed attempts at smart glasses, and so Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is doubling down with a relationship with Europe’s most deeply entrenched premium eyewear firm.
Although the boost to the bottom and top line won’t happen quickly with a possible relationship with EssilorLuxottica, this could anoint Meta as the gatekeeper to the new virtual world through this new eyewear tech.
It’s becoming clear that Meta is running up to certain upper limits in regards to the growth of their 3 platforms, and they are looking for another super booster to prop up profits.
I don’t believe that Meta will be allowed to acquire this eyewear company because of anti-competitive laws, but adopting its best products and practices and hiring their best talent seems a lot more on brand from Meta.
Meta has never been shy at poaching outside talent and rewarding them handsomely.
On the flip side, EssilorLuxottica would be smart to adopt some tech now by hiring the right people and trying to digitize the experience further otherwise, Meta will get what they are coming for.
Meta pushing the envelope is one of the big reasons why they have stayed ahead of other big tech companies and why the stock has done so well the past few years.
Meta stock is a great short-term and long-term proposition for patient and impatient investors.
Global Market Comments
February 14, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(FEBRUARY 12 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(MCD), (FSLR), (META), (GOOG), (AMZN), (JNK), (HYG), (F), (GM), (NVDA), (PLTR), (INTC)
Below, please find subscribers’ Q&A for the February 12 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Incline Village, NV.
Q: Can Nvidia (NVDA) go to $200 in the next three years?
A: I would imagine probably, yes. They still have a fabulous business—enormous orders and record profits. But it's not going to happen in the next six months. You need to get us out of the current stock market malaise before anything moves dramatically one way or the other, except for META, which is at an all-time high. Their basic business is still great, and the threat posed by DeepSeek is wildly overblown.
Q: Why is McDonald's (MCD) seeing declining sales?
A: Partly, it's because they have been cutting prices. So, of course, that automatically feeds into declining sales. Also, I think the weight loss drugs Mounjaro or Ozempic are having an impact. People just don't go in and eat three Big Macs for lunch anymore. They may not need any Big Macs at all. And forget about the fries and the super-size high fructose corn syrup drink. When these drugs first came out, it was speculated that fast food companies would be the number one victim of these drugs, and that is turning out to be true. Some 15.5 million people in the United States suddenly aren't hungry anymore; they just take one bite of a meal and then push their food around the plate with their fork. That’s better than taking amphetamines, which people like Judy Garland used to take to lose weight. I think that will affect not only McDonald's, but all fast-food companies which I avoid like the plague anyway because my doctor says I shouldn't eat that food.
Q: Should I buy First Solar (FSLR) based on the revised higher sales outlook?
A: I don't want to touch alternative energy anything right now. I think the government will eliminate all subsidies for all alternative energy—be it solar, windmills, hydrogen, nuclear, whatever—and turn us back into an all-oil and coal economy. That is the announced goal of the new administration. So that eliminates the subsidies for sure. It certainly will be a blow to the earnings of all solar-type companies. If you are going to do an energy form, I would do nuclear, which benefits from deregulation, if that ever happens.
Q: Do price caps fix supply problems? Because Europe is thinking about capping energy prices in the short term.
A: Price caps never work, nor does any other attempt to artificially control prices, because all it does is dry up supply. If you cap the prices, and therefore the profits that energy companies can make, they'll quit. They'll abandon the energy business, or they'll pare it down, or they won't expand. One way or the other, you reduce the return on capital. Capital is like water; it will go where it gets the highest return, and price caps certainly are not part of that formula. But what do I know? I only drilled for natural gas for six years.
Q: What's your top AI choice?
A: Well, I would say it's Nvidia (NVDA) still, and the big AI users which include Meta (META), Google (GOOG), and Amazon (AMZN). Nothing has changed here.
Q: Is there any chance that Ford Motors (F) will be bought out anytime soon or never?
A: My view of all of the legacy car companies, including Stellantis, which is the old Chrysler, Ford (F), and General Motors (GM), is that they are basically giant mountains of scrap metal and only have a scrap metal value, which is about 5 cents on the dollar. That's what they fell to in the 2008 financial crisis, and all of them except for Ford went bankrupt. So I am not a big fan of the legacy auto industry now. And now, they have a trade war. They happen to be one of the biggest victims of trade wars because to stay competitive with Tesla, they moved a lot of their production to Canada and Mexico, and now those plans are going up in flames. So it seems like they're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't. I'm happy driving my Tesla, but I'm wondering if my next car is a BYD. Prices are so low, it might even be worth paying 100% duty just to get a cheaper car that has better self-driving capability. But the future is unknown, to say the least.
Q: Is the next big rotation out of Silicon Valley and into Chinese tech stocks?
A: Over the long term, that may happen, but with the current administration and China (the number one target in restraint of trade and trade wars), I don't want to touch anything Chinese. There are too many better things to do in the U.S. Imagine you buy a Chinese stock, and then the administration announces a total cutoff of trade with China the next day. Not good. Chinese stocks are incredibly cheap. Most of the big ones are now single-digit multiples compared to multiples in the 20s, 30s, and 40s for our stocks. But they come with a very high political risk, and that has been true for several years now. There are better fish to fry than in China. I'd rather buy Europe than China right now if you really do want to go international. But I have no idea why they're going up unless they're discounting an end to the Ukraine War.
Q: Are junk bonds (JNK) and (HYG) a good play?
A: I would say yes. Their default risk has always been over-exaggerated thanks to their unfortunate name. They're yielding 6.54% and change, but it's a very slow mover. If we do get any improvement, any economy without inflation junk will go to $100. It's currently around $96. And you know, yield is a nice thing to have these days since the capital gain side seems to have dried up and turned into dust on almost any asset class.
Q: How can I decide when to sell the stocks that we bought on your recommendations?
A: Well, our trade alerts always have a buy recommendation and a sell recommendation or an expiration date. If you bought the stocks and kept it, just read Global Trading Dispatch for an updated market view. Watch our Mad Hedge Market Timing Index. When we get up into the 70s and 80s, that is definitely sell territory. It's hard for individuals to have an economic view going out to the rest of the year, but even the people who are economists have no idea what's going to happen right now. As I said, uncertainty is at an 8-year high, and that is being reflected in the market. So nothing beats cash, especially when you can earn 4.2% on 90-day US treasury bills. No one ever got fired for taking a profit.
Q: Can Intel (INTC) make a comeback this year?
A: No. I'm sorry, but they won’t. They had a horrible manager. They dumped him after a couple of disastrous years. I knew he was a horrible manager. I fought off all the pressure to buy Intel. So far, that's working. I mean, the stock has been terrible, so it is very cheap, but there is no guarantee that they will ever recover and, in fact, may get taken over by somebody else. So—too many better things to do. I'd rather be buying more Nvidia right now at these prices than sticking my neck out and praying for a miracle at Intel.
Q: A couple of years ago, I bought a bunch of Palantir (PLTR) on your recommendation for the next 10 bagger. I now have a 10 bagger. What should I do?
A: You know, we did recommend Palantir about 10 years ago, and it did nothing for the longest time. And then last year, it just took off like a rocket—I think it's up 400% last year. Price-earnings multiples are insanely high now. So what I would do is sell half your position. That way, the remaining half is all profit. You're playing with the house's money, and you're reducing your risk in a high-risk environment. Sell half, keep the other half. If it looks like it's starting to roll over and die, then you sell your remaining half.
Q: What's your favorite currency this year, and what should we do about it?
A: My favorite currency is the US dollar. If we're not going to get any interest rate cuts this year, the dollar will remain the highest-yielding currency in the world, and then everybody wants to buy it. It's really that simple. It’s all about interest rate differentials. Everybody else in the world has low interest rates, so stick with the dollar and don't touch the foreign currencies yet.
Q: Inflation expectations have exploded higher in view of today's number. Do you expect it to get worse?
A: If the trade war continues, it will absolutely get worse. 25% price increases are inflationary—period. End of story. A price increase is the definition of inflation, and right now, we are increasing the number of countries subject to high punitive tariffs, not decreasing them. You can expect markets to worry about that. And even if they put a temporary hold on these, people are raising prices now. They are not waiting for the actual tariff to hit; they are front-running that right now. So if you don't believe me, go to the grocery store where prices are through the roof. I actually went to a grocery store the other day, and I couldn't believe what things cost.
Q: I'd like to hedge my Nvidia (NVDA) position with a covered call. Which one should I do?
A: Well, it's not actually a hedge. What a covered call does is reduce your cost price and increase income. Right now, we have NVDA at $135. If you shorted something like the February $145 calls, you might get a dollar for that. That reduces your average price by a dollar. If you shorted the March $145 calls, that'll bring in probably $5, reduce your costs by $5, or bring in an extra $5 in income. And if you keep doing this every month and Nvidia stays stuck in a range, you can end up taking $10, $20, or even $30 in premium income over the next six months. And I have a feeling that will be the winning strategy for the first half of this year, using rallies to sell covered calls. You really could get your average cost down quite a lot; that way, if we have a massive sell-off, a lot of that loss will already be covered. If we get a massive rally, your stock just gets called away, and you buy it back on the next dip. The only negative here is the tax consequences of taking capital gains on the call-aways.
Q: You mentioned that the US has a demographic problem coming up; how will that affect the market in the short term?
A: It doesn't affect the market in the short term. Demographics are a long-term game. You have to think in terms of a generation being the round lot, which is about 20 years. Suffice it to say, when demographics go against you, like they did in Japan for 30 years, markets are horrible. Demographics are going against China now, and you're getting horrible markets. Demographics are good now in the US because we have millennials just entering their peak spending years, and that's when economies boom, and that should continue up to 2030. That is how to play demographics, and we keep updated here, although the government has suddenly ceased making available all demographic data to the public—I don't know why, but it's going to make the science of demographics much more difficult to follow without the government data. I don't know why they did that. I don't know what they hope to gain by clouding the demographic picture. Maybe it has to do with the allocation of congressional seats to the states or something like that.
Q: Do you have information on how to place a LEAPS order?
A: Just go to www.madhedgefundtrader.com, go to the search box, put in LEAPS in all caps, and you will find an encyclopedia of information on how to do LEAPS or Long Term Equity Anticipation Securities.
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, TECHNOLOGY LETTER, or JACQUIE'S POST, then WEBINARS, and all the webinars from the last 12 years are there in all their glory.
Good Luck and Good Trading,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 3, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(TARIFFS COME FOR TECH STOCKS)
(NVDA), (META)
Tech stocks have felt the full effect of the volatile nature of the new federal government in charge in Washington.
Tech stocks aren’t looking too pretty today.
The new admin levied a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico only to give the Mexicans a 1-month reprieve.
Like a game of high-stakes poker, but Trump is wielding the American economy at the poker table with reckless abandon.
Tech stocks whipsawed and most stocks opened up in the red, however, a stock like Meta was able to ride out the instability by surging at the open.
Not all tech stocks are created equal.
If many investors thought Trump wouldn’t follow through with his sabre-rattling, then think again.
He is hell-bent on going full throttle and pushing allies to the brink whether they can tolerate it or not.
The surge in interest rates because of the perception of higher inflation and higher geopolitical risk was the reason tech stocks were jolted at the beginning of this week.
Indeed, tech stocks are in for a sideways correction if American government policy becomes constantly aggressive and brutal.
Tech stocks will have a narrow path to go higher, but not like the prior 10 years when stocks were cheered higher by almost everyone.
Trump said this will boost US manufacturing.
The tariffs will grow the US economy, protect jobs, and raise tax revenue, he argues.
Canada’s Trudeau declared retaliatory 25% tariffs on $107 billion dollars worth of US goods on Saturday.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has directed the Secretary of Economy to impose a plan including "tariff and non-tariff measures in defense of Mexico's interests".
Together, China, Mexico, and Canada accounted for more than 40% of imports into the US last year.
Most goods from Mexico don’t affect tech stocks such as fruits like avocado, vegetables, tequila, and beer.
Canadian goods such as steel, lumber, grains, and potatoes are also likely to get pricier.
It is expected that the car manufacturing sector could see the brunt of the effects of the tariff.
It’s not like Trump is only going after Mexico and Canada, he also has the U.K. and Europe in his crosshairs.
Do tariffs cause inflation?
In the short term, tariffs will hit consumers in the U.S. with corporations front-running price increases by passing on the higher inputs to the end buyer.
The market also senses higher inflation and interest rate yields will get bid up, which is negative for tech stocks.
It is naïve to think that tech stocks will go up in a straight line like the past 10 years – they certainly will not.
If the government is hell-bent on this type of tactic, global markets will feel the pain.
Even if this doesn’t directly affect tech stocks, the American consumer will not go unscathed.
Interest rates exploding higher will certainly mean tech stocks opening up Monday mornings 3% down.
That is not a good starting point for the week and explains why the bellwether Nvidia (NVDA) is down 15% year to date.
Then throw in the chaos from the Deepseek fiasco that threatens the valuations of many AI stocks.
It’ll be tough sledding from here on out and tech investors need to be mindful to not get caved in out of nowhere.
Global Market Comments
January 31, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(JANUARY 29 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(META), (AMZN), (NVDA), (AMD) (GS), (SPY), (TSLA), (SBUX), (CCJ), (ADBE), (LMT), (GD), (RTX), (NVDA)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the January 29 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Salt Lake City, UT.
Q: Are AI stocks going to crash?
A: Some already have, and others haven’t. It’s really about single-stock-picking the chip area and the pure AI plays, which have been enormously overextended. If you boil it down to a single sentence, if you offer AI for free, AI users like (META) and (AMZN) do really well, while AI producers, like (NVDA) and (AMD) get crushed. I’ve been warning for months that these things were getting too high. The end result is that in two weeks the price earnings multiple for Nvidia has gone from 40 to 25. You know, at 25, it really is quite attractive. It'll be even more attractive at 20 or even 15 if we get that low. I'll show you where we hit that on the charts. Don't forget their earnings are still growing at tremendous rates—we'll talk about that in a second.
Q: What stocks are good to invest in now?
A: Watch the banks. Watch the financials. They’ve hardly sold off. I was begging for Goldman Sachs (GS) to tank. It didn't—we only got a $10 drop. It's just not letting people in, which means higher highs for all the banks and financials are coming. That has become the no-brainer one-way trade of 2025. You know, I had an enormous number of bank LEAPS expire in my personal account on the January 17 option expiration. I'm waiting to get back in now. So that is the play.
Q: What's happening with Starbucks (SBUX)? Are they investable?
A: Starbucks was a disaster area until the summer when they brought in new management, which has a fantastic track record. The stock has since gone up 30%. You're kind of late to get in on this one. I don't really follow the stock anyway. Selling cups of coffee is not a high-margin business. I'd rather stick with the Tesla’s (TSLA) and Nvidia’s (NVDA) of the world where the value added is very high
Q: What will happen with Bitcoin in the new administration?
A: It's the same with everything. Higher highs first, lower lows later. If you're a Bitcoin investor now at 100,000, the big question is what happens when Donald Trump leaves office in four years? Does it go back to 5,000? We really don't know so, why touch Bitcoin when you can get 10 to 1 returns on all these other great companies which make stuff that you can actually touch and feel? Plus, you can leverage up with the LEAPS, and no one's going to steal your account, which happens frequently with Bitcoin holdings.
Q: Do you think tariffs are a good idea for the economy?
A: No, tariffs shrink global trade, they shrink globalization. It's a race to see if we can make other countries more poor than they can make us. It's an economy-shrinking strategy. It was a major contributor to causing the Great Depression in the 1930’s. That's why we abandoned tariffs 80 years ago with the end of World War II. I mean, the last cause of the 1930’s tariffs was World War II. That was a major contributing factor. So do I like tariffs? No. It turns out it's a great defensive strategy. If someone's making a fortune off you, they tend not to blow you up. So I think that's a big mistake and I will be an anti-tariff person to my grave. There are special situations like Chinese EVs, for example, where they're using a huge cost advantage to flood the emerging markets with cheap EVs. If that happened to the US, it would crash the US economy. In that one case, I'm in favor of tariffs. By the way, their EVs are using technology they basically stole from Tesla.
Q: What are your thoughts on defense stocks? With so many wars occurring all over the world.
A: Don't touch defense stocks with a 10-foot poll if the government is in favor of cost-cutting, the largest cost after Social Security is defense. We had a defense budget of about $824 billion in 2024. We have a 2.8 million man military and that cutting there and running down our weapons stocks would mean that you don't want to buy Lockheed Martin (LMT), General Dynamics (GD), Raytheon (RTX), all the big suppliers of weapons to the Ukraine war, for example, which looks like it's going to get cut off completely. They cut off all humanitarian aid to Ukraine last week. And of course, I was personally involved in delivering some of that humanitarian aid to Ukraine in the recent past. Yeah, defense looks bad if people really get serious about cost-cutting.
Q: Do you see the Fed dropping interest rates later this year?
A: That is possible. I tend to think we don't go into recession this year. It's a next year or year after type of thing. But markets can discount recession in six months to a year in advance like they did in 2007 and 2008. I don't think we get any more interest rate cuts. We'll just have to see what policies the new government implements, and how inflationary they are. And if they are inflationary, interest rates are going up, not down. That is why everybody's sitting on their hands right now and doesn't know what to do. Uncertainty at an eight-year high. You know, the government often talks one game but does the opposite. So, there’s nothing to do but wait and see.
Q: Well, what happened to the US housing market in 2025?
A: Nothing, you know volumes are shrinking. The last two years were the lowest volume sales in housing market history since the numbers were collected, and higher interest rates for longer. It's just more bad news. You know, something like 40% of all of the sales now are all cash. Prices are still going up again on paper, but there's almost no trade happening at these higher prices. And of course, the Millennials have been almost completely shut out of the market—the largest generation in history by the way—because they don't have enough money. They can't earn enough money; especially when AI is wiping out all the entry-level jobs, as it has been doing for two years in Silicon Valley.
Q: Here's a good question. How much time do we need to spend researching a company before we make an investment there?
A: Well, not that much, really. You can spend an hour or two reading the annual report, browsing through the most recent financial statement, and doing some news searches and you'll have a better read than most individual investors are going to have on a single stock. Then you start to see trends on what makes a good company, what makes a bad company, and over time, you get a feel for a company—when to get in, when to get out. That's one way. Or you can listen to the Mad Hedge Fund Trader, who's been doing this for 55 years and watching the same stocks. You wonder why you always have the same stocks up here and it's because I've been following these guys for forever or more. So you really get a handle on when they're doing well and when they're doing awful.
Q: Should we sell Nvidia (NVDA) stock for now?
A: No, I was telling people to cut positions the next time it ran to $150, which it did a few weeks ago. Now we're probably entering buy territory more than sell territory. Nvidia will come back. I just don't know where the bottom is for now, and it depends on your own investing style. If you're a five-year investor, you can forget about all this volatility, if you're a day trader, yeah, you probably should sell Nvidia now because you could buy it back $10 cheaper.
Q: Do you expect a new high after the Fed meeting?
A: No, I don't. I think we're stuck in a range for the S&P 500 for the next six months. After that, we may get a move. Depending on what effect government policies have on the economy.
Q: What about an alert for Adobe (ADBE)?
A: I didn't put out the alert to buy Adobe. The Adobe alert is part of the Mad Hedge Technology Letter service, and if you want to get purely tech trade alerts, go to the Mad Hedge website, go to the store, and you can see the technology letter is offered for sale up there. Here is the link: https://hi290.infusionsoft.app/app/orderForms/techletter
Q: What is the right size of account for doing this kind of trading?
A: We literally have college students trading with $500 accounts. We have lots of individuals trading with $5,000 accounts—that way you can buy 10 $400 positions and still have some room. We only recommend you put 10% of your cash in any one trade. A lot of retired people will keep a large portion of their money in an index like the S&P 500 (SPY) and take 10% of their money and use it to do our trade alerts, which then adds an extra return to the index position. So, the answer is different for different people.
Q: Do I see a meaningful correction like 20% or 30% in the next six months?
A: No, I really don't, but that could be 2026 business. When we get a big correction, we get a recession. Again, it's dependent on government policies and we have no idea what those are right now. People can only guess. I'm not in the guessing business. I'm in the sure thing business.
Q: Can you explain how to complete the trade alerts you send out?
A: What all the professionals do is they put out a spread of orders. If I put out an order to buy something at $9.00, you put in a bid at $9.00, $9.10, $9.20, $9.30, and $9.40. By the close, some or all of those will get done. Often they all get done by the end of the day when the high-frequency traders have to dump their positions because they're not allowed to carry overnight positions. You make them good-until-canceled orders. So if you get a low opening the next morning, you'll get entirely filled at the $9.00 level, and this is what my clients in Australia do. They only do overnight good-until-cancelled orders since the market's open from 11:30 PM until 6:00 AM in the morning, Australia time. They tend to make more money than any of my other clients because they only enter overnight GTC orders. So, people trying to outsmart the market on an intraday basis generally don't do very well.
Q: Should I sell the Cameco Corporation (CCJ) stock I bought on the nuclear trade?
A: No, I think (CCJ) recovers. I was looking at it yesterday. Elimination of the electricity trade is complete nonsense. I think the nuclear thing is real. It'll come back. And in fact, I bought Vistra Energy (VST) yesterday, so use this extreme sell-off to get into the nuclear trade if you missed it the first time around.
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, TECHNOLOGY LETTER, or JACQUIE'S POST, then WEBINARS, and all the webinars from the last 12 years are there in all their glory.
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John Thomas
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