Global Market Comments
May 10, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or THE SUSHI HITS THE FAN),
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During my senior year in High School, I had the good fortune to date the daughter of Richard Knerr, the founder of Wham-O, the inventor of Hula Hoops, Silly Putty, Super Balls, Frisbee’s, and Slip & Slides (click here).
At six feet, she was the tallest girl in the school, and at 6’4” I was an obvious choice.
After the senior prom and wearing my tux, I took her to the Los Angeles opening night of the new musical Hair. In the second act, the entire cast dropped their clothes onto the stage and stood there stark naked. The audience was stunned, shocked, embarrassed, and even gob-smacked.
Those were the reactions I saw on Friday, when the April Nonfarm Payroll Report was released showing a gain of only 266,000 jobs. A million had been expected.
So, how does that work? Red hot ADP private jobs and a year low in Weekly Jobless Claims, but a horrific monthly Payroll report?
They say economic data can be “noisy”. This time it was positively cacophonous. The fact is that these data points were never created to handle times like this, the most disruptive in history.
When the data are useless, all you have to do is take a walk down Main Street. There are “Help Wanted” signs at virtually every business.
The data dissonance created a wild day in the markets on Friday. Bonds soared, causing ten-year yields to dive to 1.48%. Then they rallied all the way back up to 1.58%.
That was seen as the end of the two-month long rally in bonds, so stock took off like a rocket. Essentially everything went up, both cyclicals, banks, AND tech.
All those bond shorts you have been nursing since March? They are about to explode to the upside. The next leg down in the year-old bear market in bonds is about to begin.
And what about that 266,000-payroll report? If you didn’t get a million jobs print in April, then you’ll almost certainly get it in May. Stocks could well keep rally until then. That’s how traders are seeing it.
Just another reason to buy.
By the way, I learned one of the great untold business stories from Richard Knerr. When the Hula Hoop was first launched in 1957, sales went ballistic. Some 25 million were sold in the first four months.
The Hula Hoop was made of a plastic tube stapled together with an oak cork made in England. Since demand seemed infinite, Wham-O ordered 50 million corks. Then the republican party claimed the toy was a communist conspiracy to destroy the youth of America as the swiveling of hips was deemed obscene. This was at the tail end of the McCarthy period.
Sales of Hula Hoops collapsed.
They cancelled the order for 50 million oak corks, which were thrown overboard mid-Atlantic. They are still floating out there somewhere today. Wham-O almost went bankrupt from the experience but was eventually saved by the Frisbee.
Richard Knerr died in 2008 at the age of 82. Wham-O was taken over by Mattel in 1995. For his obituary, please click here.
April Nonfarm Payroll Report is a huge disappointment, at 266,000 when up to one million was expected. April’s hiring boom goes bust. March was revised down massively, from 916,000 to 770,000. The headline Unemployment Rate rose to 6.1%. It was one of the most confusing reports in recent memory. Bonds rocketed, interest rates crashed, and tech stocks took off like a scalded chimp. Inflation expectations have been shattered. Leisure & Hospitality kicked in at 331,000. But Professional & Business Services collapsed by 111,000. The two million businesses that went under last year aren’t hiring. Much of the return to work has been by people who already have jobs.
Weekly Jobless Claims plunged to 488,000, one of the sharpest drops on record at 100,000. Go down any Main Street today and instead of a sea of plywood, it is plastered with “Help Wanted” signs. Productivity is soaring, while average labor costs are actually falling.
ADP Private Employment Report soars, up by 742,000 in April, the biggest gain since September. It makes the coming Friday Nonfarm Payroll Report look outstanding. The jobs market is booming, but competition for the top jobs is also fierce.
Europe’s Q1 GDP falls by 0.6%. That’s better than expected, but disastrous when compared to America’s spectacular 6.4% print. Blame the bumbled slow-motion vaccine rollout. European governments wasted time negotiating on price like it was just another government program, while the US poured billions into vaccine makers, no questions asked. European vaccines, like Astra Zeneca’s, were flawed. It’s amazing that a big government continent can’t perform a big government task, even when millions of lives depend on it.
US Factory Orders gain, up 1.1% in March, providing more evidence that stimulus is working. Most economists are expecting double-digit growth in Q2. Driving up to Lake Tahoe, the number of trucks on the road has doubled in the last month.
Personal Income Explodes, up 21.1% in March, the most since 1945 according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. What the heck happened in 1945? $1,400 stimulus checks are clearly burning holes in the pockets of consumers. Expect all numbers to hit lifetime highs in the coming months. The sun, moon, and stars are all lining up and standard of living is soaring.
Chicago PMI rockets to a 40-year high, up to 72.1 versus an expected 65. It seems everyone is already trying to buy what I am trying to buy. My bet is that the stock market is wildly underestimating the coming onslaught of economic numbers and will go to new highs once it figures out the game.
Lumber Prices are becoming a big deal, soaring 70% in two months and a staggering 340% in a year, igniting inflation fears. It’s only a tiny fraction of our tiny spending but is adding $36,000 to the cost of a new home. Someone in four homes sold today are newly built, the highest ratio ever. Punitive Trump lumber tariffs against Canada years ago shut down a lot of production and now that we need it, it isn’t there.
IBM brings out the 2-Nanometer Chip, taking semiconductor technology to the next evolutionary level. Any smaller and electrons will be too big to squeeze through the gates. The current battle is over 7 nm technology. It promises to bring much faster computing at a lower price and will act as a temporary bridge to lightening quantum computing.
When we come out the other side of pandemic, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 400% to 120,000 or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 120,000 here we come!
My Mad Hedge Global Trading Dispatch profit reached 2.38% gain during the first week of May on the heels of a spectacular 15.67% profit in April.
I took profits in my long in Goldman Sachs (GS) and my short in the United States Treasury Bond Fund (TLT). I then plowed the cash into a new June short position in the (TLT) and a new short in the S&P 500 (SPY). That gave me a heart attack on my bond shorts when bond prices soared and then an immediate rebirth when they collapsed two points in the afternoon.
That leaves me 100% invested, as I have been for the last six months.
My 2021 year-to-date performance soared to 62.14%. The Dow Average is up 14.45% so far in 2021.
That brings my 11-year total return to 484.89%, some 2.00 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period. My 11-year average annualized return now stands at an unbelievable 42.45%, easily the highest in the industry.
My trailing one-year return exploded to positively eye-popping 127.09%. I truly have to pinch myself when I see numbers like this. I bet many of you are making the biggest money of your long lives.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Coronavirus cases at 32.7 million and deaths topping 581,000, which you can find here. New cases are in free fall, with only 12 here in Washoe County Nevada out of a population of 500,000. We could approach zero by the summer.
The coming week will be weak on the data front.
On Monday, May 10, at 9:45 AM, the April ISM New York Index is out. Roblox (RBLX) and BioNTech (BNTX) report earnings.
On Tuesday, May 11, at 10:00 AM, the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for April is released. Palantir reports results (PLTR).
On Wednesday, May 12 at 2:00 PM, the US Core Inflation Rate for April is published. Softbank (SFTBY) reports results.
On Thursday, May 13 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are published. Walt Disney (DIS), Airbnb (ABNB), and Alibaba (BABA) report results.
On Friday, May 14 at 8:30 AM, Retail Sales for April are indicated. At 2:00 PM, we learn the Baker-Hughes Rig Count.
As for me, I’ve found a new series on Amazon Prime called Yellowstone. It is definitely NOT PG-rated, nor is it for the faint of heart. But it does remind me of my own cowboy days.
When General Custer was slaugherted during his last stand in Montana at the Little Big Horn in 1876, my ancestors spotted a great buying opportunity. They used the ensuing panic to pick up 50,000 acres near the Wyoming border for ten cents an acre.
Growing up as the oldest of seven kids, my parents never missed an opportunity to farm me out with relatives. That’s how I ended up with my cousins near Broadus, Montana for the summer of 1967.
When I got off the Greyhound bus in nearby Sheridan, I went into a bar to call my uncle. The bartender asked his name and when I told him “Carlat” he gave me a strange look.
It turned out that My uncle killed someone in a gunfight in the street out front a few months earlier, which was later ruled self-defense. It was the last public gunfight seen in the state, and my uncle hadn’t been seen in town since.
I was later picked up in a beat-up Ford truck and driven for two hours down a dirt road to a log cabin. There was no electricity, just kerosene lanterns and a propane-powered refrigerator.
Welcome to the 19th century!
I was hired on as a cowboy, lived in a bunkhouse with the rest of the ranch hands, and was paid the princely sum of a dollar an hour. I became popular by reading the other cowboys' newspapers and their mail since they were all illiterate. Every three days, we slaughtered a cow to feed everyone on the ranch. I ate steak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
On weekends, my cousins and I searched for Indian arrowheads on horseback, which we found by the shoebox full. Occasionally, we got lucky finding an old rusted Winchester or Colt revolver just lying out on the range, a remnant of the famous battle 90 years before. I carried my own six-shooter to help reduce the local rattlesnake population.
I really learned the meaning of work and had callouses on my hands in no time. I had to rescue cows trapped in the mud (stick a burr under their tail), round up lost ones, and saw miles of fence posts. When it came time to artificially inseminate the cows with superior semen from Scotland, it was my job to hold them still. It was all heady stuff for a 16-year-old.
The highlight of the summer was participating in the Sheridan Rodeo. With my uncle, one of the largest cattle owners in the area, I had my pick of events. So, I ended up racing a chariot made from an old oil drum, team roping (I had to pull the cow down to the ground), and riding a Brahma bull. I still have a scar on my left elbow from where a bull slashed me, the horn pigment clearly visible.
I hated to leave when I had to go home and back to school. But I did hear that the winter in Montana is pretty tough.
It was later discovered that the entire 50,000 acres was sitting on a giant coal seam 50 feet thick. You just knocked off the topsoil and backed up the truck. My cousins became millionaires. They built a modern four-bedroom house closer to town with every amenity, even a big screen TV. My cousin built a massive vintage car collection.
During the 2000s, their well water was poisoned by a neighbor’s fracking for natural gas, and water had to be hauled in by truck at great expense. In the end, my cousin was killed when the engine of the classic car he was restoring fell on top of him when the rafter above him snapped.
It all did give me a window into a lifestyle that was then fading fast. It’s an experience I’ll never forget.
Stay healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
May 3, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or THE STAIR STEP MARKET IS HERE),
(SPY), (TLT), (MRK), (EL), (UNP), (PFE), (GM), (PYPL), (REGN), (ROKU)
The last six months have been the most successful in my 52 years of trading. The only thing that comes close were the last six months of 1989 when the Tokyo market went straight up and hit a 30-year peak.
Everything I tried worked. The trades I only thought about worked. And the 50 trade alerts I abandoned on the floor because the market moved too fast worked as well. That’s how I missed Facebook (FB) and Amazon (AMZN).
It is believed that if you set a team of monkeys loose, randomly hitting keys on typewriters, they would eventually produce Romeo and Juliet. In this market, they have been producing the entire works of Shakespeare on a daily basis.
It has been that good.
President Biden has been looking pretty good too, having presided over the best starting three-month stock market results since 1933. That is no accident. The massive stimulus and the remaking of the country he has proposed have Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal-inspired handwriting all over them.
Yet, traders have been puzzled, perplexed, and befuddled by companies that announce the best earnings in history only to see their shares sell-off dramatically. However, the market has shown its hand.
We’ve now seen three quarters of tremendously improving earnings and stock dives. It’s a 12-week cycle that keeps repeating. Shares rally hard for six weeks into earnings, peak, and then go nowhere for six weeks. Wash, rinse, repeat, then go to new all-time highs.
But stocks don’t fall enough to justify getting out and back in again, especially on an after-tax basis. Therefore, it’s just best to lie back and think of England while your stocks do nothing.
If my analysis is correct, then it's best to imagine the rolling green hills of Kent and Wiltshire, the friendly neighborhood pub, and Westminster Cathedral until June. If you want to get aggressive, you might even sell short an out-of-the-money call option or two to protect your portfolio.
The Fed leaves rates unchanged, indicating that the economy is improving, but that interest rates are going nowhere. No surprise here. Jay Powell is still going for maximum dove. Strong Biden policy support and the rollout of the vaccine are major positives. $120 billion in bond buying continues. The Fed will keep interest rates at zero until the US economy reaches maximum employment by adding 8.4 million jobs. That could be a long wait as I suspect those jobs have already been destroyed by technology. Stocks popped on the news. The Bull lives!
Q1 GDP eExploded by 6.4%, and upward revisions are to come. That explains the 25% gain in the stock market during the first three months of the Biden administration, the best in 75 years. Coming quarters will show even stronger growth as the economy shakes off the pandemic and massive government spending kicks in. We will recover 2019 GDP peaks in the next quarter. Virtually, all economic data points will set records for the rest of 2021. Buy everything on dips.
Weekly Jobless Claims dive again to 553,000, a new post-pandemic low. One of a never-ending series of perfect data. It augurs well for next week’s April Nonfarm Payroll Report.
New Home Sales up a ballistic 20.7% YOY in March on the basis of a signed contract. This is in the face of rising home mortgage interest rates. The flight to the suburbs continues. Homebuilder stocks took off like a scalded chimp. Buy (LEN), (KBH), and (PHM) on dips.
Pending Home Sales fell 1.9%, far below expectations, but are still up 23% YOY. Higher prices and record low supply are the problems. The Midwest leads.
Amazon sales soar by 44% in Q1, producing some of the best earnings in American corporate history. Jeff is expecting sales to reach a staggering $110-$116 billion in Q2. That’s why he hired 500,000 last year, the most of any company since WWII. Prime subscribers have grown to 200 million, including me. Ad revenues jumped an eye-popping 77%. The shares of the huge pandemic winner leaped $140 on the news. It’s all another step toward my $5,000 target.
Tesla revenues explode for 74%, and earnings soar to an eye-popping $438 million. Sales are to double or more in 2021 and are up 104% YOY. Q1 is usually the slowest quarter of the year for the auto industry. Global demand is increasing far beyond production levels. It is ducking around chip shortages by designing in a new generation that is currently available. Production of high-end X and S Models has ceased to allow more focus on the profitable Y and 3 Models. Those will resume in Q3. The shares were unchanged on the news. Keep buying (TSLA) on dips. It’s headed for $10,000.
Copper hits new 10-year high, lighting a fire under Freeport McMoRan (FCX) which we are long. We still are in the early innings of a major commodity supercycle. The green revolution goes nowhere without increasing copper supplies tenfold. A copper shock is imminent.
US Capital Spending leaps ahead, up 0.9% in March and up 10.4% YOY. The stimulus spending is working. All is well in manufacturing land, which is 12% of the US economy.
Case-Shiller explodes to the upside, the National Home Prices Index soaring 12% in February. That’s the best report in 15 years. Phoenix (+17.4), San Diego (+17.0%), and Seattle (15.4%) continue to be the big winners. This was in the face of a 50-basis point jump in home mortgage interest rates during the month. The rush to buy homes is pulling forward future demand. The perfect storm continues.
The Fed could start tapering its $120 billion a month in bond purchases as early as October, believes the Blackrock’s (BLK) Rick Rieder. When it does, expect the sushi to hit the bond market. Keep piling on those bond shorts, as I have been doing monthly, and am currently running a triple short position. Keep selling short the (TLT) on every opportunity.
When we come out the other side of pandemic, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 400% to 120,000 or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 120,000 here we come!
My Mad Hedge Global Trading Dispatch profit reached 13.54% gain during April on the heels of a spectacular 20.60% profit in March.
I used the post-earnings dip in Microsoft (MSFT) to add a new position there. I also picked up some Delta Airlines (DAL) taking advantage of a pullback there.
That leaves me 100% invested, as I have been for the last six months.
My 2021 year-to-date performance soared to 57.63%. The Dow Average is up 11.8% so far in 2021.
That brings my 11-year total return to 480.18%, some 2.00 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period. My 11-year average annualized return now stands at an unbelievable 42.05%, easily the highest in the industry.
My trailing one-year return exploded to positively eye-popping 133.91%. I truly have to pinch myself when I see numbers like this. I bet many of you are making the biggest money of your long lives.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Coronavirus cases at 31.9 million and deaths topping 570,000, which you can find here.
The coming week will be big on the data front, with a couple of historic numbers expected.
On Monday, May 3, at 10:00 AM, the US ISM Manufacturing Index is published. Merck (MRK) and Estee Lauder (EL) report.
On Tuesday, May 4, at 8:00 AM, total US Vehicle Sales for April are out. Union Pacific (UNP) and Pfizer (PFE) report.
On Wednesday, May 5 at 2:00 PM, the ADP Private Employment Report is released. General Motors (GM) and PayPal (PYPL) report.
On Thursday, May 6 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are printed. Regeneron (REGN) and Roku (ROKU) report.
On Friday, May 7 at 8:30 AM, we learn the all-important April Nonfarm Payroll Report. At 2:00 PM, we learn the Baker-Hughes Rig Count.
As for me, I received calls from six readers last week saying I remind them of Earnest Hemingway. This, no doubt, was the result of Ken Burns’ excellent documentary about the Nobel prize-winning writer on PBS last week.
It is no accident.
My grandfather drove for the Italian Red Cross on the Alpine front during WWI, where Hemingway got his start, so we had a connection right there.
Since I read Hemingway’s books in my mid-teens, I decided I wanted to be him and became a war correspondent. In those days, you traveled by ship a lot, leaving ample time to finish off his complete works.
I visited his homes in Key West and Ketchum Idaho. His Cuban residence is high on my list, now that Castro is gone.
I used to stay in the Hemingway Suite at the Ritz Hotel on Place Vendome in Paris where he lived during WWII. I had drinks at the Hemingway Bar downstairs where war correspondent Earnest shot a German colonel in the face at point-blank range. I still have the ashtrays.
Harry’s Bar in Venice, a Hemingway favorite, was a regular stopping-off point for me. I have those ashtrays too.
I even dated his granddaughter from his first wife, Hadley, the movie star Mariel Hemingway, before she got married, and when she was still being pursued by Robert de Niro and Woody Allen. Some genes skip generations and she was a dead ringer for her grandfather. She was the only Playboy centerfold I ever went out with. We still keep in touch.
So, I’ll spend the weekend watching Farewell to Arms….again, after I finish my writing.
Oh, and if you visit the Ritz Hotel today, you’ll find the ashtrays are glued to the tables.
Stay healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Life is a Bed of Roses Right Now
Global Market Comments
March 29, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or THE WEEK THAT NEVER WAS),
(SPY), (TLT), (TBT), (TSLA), (CSCO), (ORCL), (INTC)
Of course, WWII historians know well the man who never was, the popular name for Operation Mincemeat.
In 1943, British intelligence found a homeless man who died on the streets of London, dressed him up as a Royal Marine Major William Martin, and released his body from a submarine off the coast of Spain, a German ally.
Handcuffed to his wrist was a briefcase with highly detailed plans for the allied invasion of Greece and the Balkans. The Germans shifted ten divisions to defend the region.
When the allies invaded Sicily instead, it came completely out of the blue. The invading American and British forces found the island almost undefended and inadequately manned and supplied by Italian troops. The allies planned for three months to capture Sicily. Instead, they did it in a mere 38 days. Allied losses came in at a tenth of those expected, thanks to Royal Marine Major William Martin.
The analogy here is that last week, we witnessed the market that never was. Stocks went down, then up. Bonds went up, then down. Even Tesla was virtually unchanged. It all ended up as a big fat zero for traders.
What all of this means for us investors is a subject of heated discussion among strategists. Of course, the Cassandras are always out there arguing that this is all proof that markets are peaking and that the mother of all stock market crashes is just ahead of us.
I take a different tack.
I think we are well into a long-overdue “time” correction whereby stocks go sideways for weeks or months before resuming their heroic assault on new highs. The timing will be dictated by the frantic reversal of the bond market at a ten-year Treasury yield of 2.00%.
Investors will rotate from the newly expensive recovery plays like banks into the newly cheap, such as technology stocks. Notice the sudden recent interest in legacy companies like Oracle (ORCL), Intel (INTC), and Cisco Systems (CSCO), which completely missed the great 2020 tech rally.
All of this sets up perfectly for the barbell portfolio which I have been advocating all year.
If there is a selloff, it will be by things that normal people don’t own. Those include SPACS, anything the Reddit crowd chases, stay-at-home stocks, and very high-priced tech stocks with no earnings.
Much focus has been placed on the Taiwanese-owned Ever Given stuck in the Suez Canal. As a Middle Eastern war correspondent for many years, I spent endless hours debating with my compatriots over what closure of the canal would mean.
What hasn’t been mentioned was that the accident was not caused by a Chinese captain, but Egyptian pilot ships are required to take on to raise revenues, and bribes, for the impoverished country. This all happened in the middle of a sandstorm where visibility is near zero.
I can tell you right now that they won’t get the Ever Given off there until they start to unload containers and lift off some weight so the 200,000-ton ship can rise of its own accord. Good luck with that in the middle of the Sinai Desert. Why not just sell all the contents on Amazon and have them deliver it for free as part of their prime membership?
This is a debacle that will last weeks, if not months, and will cost $9 billion a day in international trade until it’s over. In the meantime, commercial shippers have asked for protection from pirates from the US Navy as they navigate the unfamiliar water around the tip of Africa.
The Mad Hedge Summit Videos are Up, from the March 9,10, and 11 confab. Listen to 27 speakers opine on the best strategies, tactics, and instruments to use in these volatile markets. The product discounts offered last week are still valid. Start, stop, and pause the videos at your leisure. Best of all, access to the videos is FREE. Access them all by clicking here, click on CURRENT SUMMIT REPLAYS in the upper right-hand corner, and then choose the speaker of your choice.
Weekly Jobless Claims dive by 100,000, to 684,000, a one-year low. The decline was led by Illinois and Ohio. Labor shortages are popping up around the country in skilled areas, but bars and restaurants are still lagging severely.
Huge Office Cuts are coming, with execs planning a permanent 20% cut. Better to give the money to shareholders. Downtowns across the country will change beyond all recognition. How do you turn an office into an apartment?
CP Rail buys Kansas City Southern, for $25 billion, further concentrating the north American rail industry. It’s a steal because an economy entering a decade-long boom moves lots of stuff. It’s also a great North/South international trade play, which is recovering strongly with the exit of our last president. I used to ride box cars on the old Canadian Pacific back in the sixties (you can’t hitch hike where there are no cars), and occasionally the engineers would let me drive. It suddenly makes Norfolk South (NSC) and Union Pacific (UNP) look very tempting.
Another Tesla $3,000 Target was issued by Ark’s Cathie Wood, an early investor. Cathie’s Ark Innovation Fund ETF was up 180% last year largely on the strength of a massive Tesla (TSLA) holding. Her bear case is a low of $1,500 by 2025, nearly triple the current price. She has only one more triple to go to get to my own $10,000 forecast.
Biden has $3 Trillion More to Spend on top of the just passed $1.9 trillion rescue package. It's all rocket fuel for the stock market, not so much for bonds. The money will be spent on a mix of old-line freeway and bridge repair along with new spending on decarbonizing the power grid and social measures. It will be financed by tax hikes on those earning over $400,000. Remember, Roosevelt hiked the maximum tax rate to 90% on the wealthy, where it stayed for 30 years, and Biden is old enough to remember.
Daily Air Travelers top 1.5 Million, for the first time in a year. The pandemic low was 200,000 a day. It’s an indication of how anxious Americans have become to travel, and how strong the imminent economic boom will be.
Intel to build two chip fabs for $20 billion in Arizona to address the current severe shortage. US construction is a positive as it helps reduce reliance on foreign supplies. Too bad it will still leave them five years behind (AMD), but it’s a major move in the right direction. It deals with everything investors wanted to hear and moves them solidly into the 10nm architecture market. Buy (INTC) on dips.
New Home Sales Dive, off 18.2% in February, now that the free money train has left the station. Weather was blamed as a factor, with giant snowstorms slamming much of the country. Shortage of supply is another big issue. Some big builders are basically out of inventory and are reduced to selling floor plans with extended completion dates.
US Dollar (UUP) hits a four-month high, with a major assist from rising US bond interest rates. Expect the rally to continue until ten-year yields hit 2.00%, then sell the daylights out of it. With the US money supply growing at a near exponential 30% annual rate, there’s no way the dollar strength can continue. When you increase the supply, you decrease the value, simple supply and demand. My first pick is to buy the Aussie (FXA) a call option on a global synchronized economic recovery.
When we come out the other side of pandemic, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 400% to 120,000 or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 120,000, here we come!
It’s amazing how well patience can help your performance. My Mad Hedge Global Trading Dispatch profit reached a super-hot 18.61% so far in March on the heels of a spectacular 13.28% profit in February.
It was a go-nowhere week in the market, so I limited myself to a single trade all week, a double short in the bond market (TLT) on top of a welcome $5 rally. The position turned immediately profitable.
I still have a deep in-the-money call spread Tesla (TSLA) that is profitable and expires in 14 trading days. That leaves me with 70% cash and a barrel full of dry powder.
This is my fifth double-digit month in a row. My 2021 year-to-date performance soared to 42.10%. The Dow Average is up 9.9% so far in 2021.
That brings my 11-year total return to 464.65%, some 2.08 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period. My 11-year average annualized return now stands at an unbelievable 41.30%.
My trailing one-year return exploded to positively eye-popping 119.39%. I truly have to pinch myself when I see numbers like this. I bet many of you are making the biggest money of your long lives.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Corona virus cases at 30.2 million and deaths topping 550,000, which you can find here.
Thankfully, death rates have slowed dramatically, but Obituaries are still the largest sector in the newspaper. At this point, some 47% of the US population has achieved immunity through vaccination or catching the disease. Herd immunity is near.
The coming week is a big one for jobs data.
On Monday, March 29, at 9:00 AM, the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index for March is released.
On Tuesday, March 30, at 9:00 AM, the S&P Case Shiller National Home Price Index for January is published.
On Wednesday, March 31 at 8:15 AM, the ADP Challenger Private Employment Report for March is out. Pending Home Sales for February are indicated at 9:00 AM.
On Thursday, April 1 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are published.
On Friday, April 2 at 8:30 AM we get the Nonfarm Payroll Report for March. At 2:00 PM, we learn the Baker-Hughes Rig Count.
As for me, tax time is coming up and let me tell you, I have absolutely the best IRS story of all time.
It comes from my late, dear friend, Al Pinder, who I sat next to for ten years at the Foreign Correspondents of Japan in Tokyo, pounding away on antiquated Royal typewriters until our shoulders were as stiff as boards. Al then was the shipping correspondent for the New York Journal of Commerce newspaper.
Al was a colorful character, to say the least.
In the run up to WWII, Al took an extended vacation in Japan where he toured and photographed the country’s beaches, looking for the best landing sites for the US military in case war broke out.
To sneak the top-secret pictures out of the country, he bought a large steamer trunk and placed them a false bottom. Then he went to Tokyo’s red-light district in Yoshiwara, bought a dubious sex toy, an inflatable life-sized Japanese doll, and placed it on top.
When the trunk was searched, the customs officials found the doll, had a good laugh and passed him on. Al’s photos were the basis of Operation Olympic, the 1945 US invasion of Japan, made unnecessary by the dropping of the atomic bomb.
When the war broke out, Pinder parachuted into western China, where he acted as the liaison with Mao Zedong’s guerilla forces in Hunan province. In 1944, Al received a coded message from headquarters ordering him to intercept a top-secret airdrop from a DC3 in the middle of the night.
Knowing he would be mercilessly tortured by the Japanese if caught, he set up three signal fires in a triangle in a remote part of the desert and managed to find the parachute. Dodging enemy patrols all the way, he returned to his hideout in a mountain cave and opened the package.
In it was a letter from the IRS asking why he had not filed a tax return for the past three years.
I told this story at Al’s wake a few years ago and everyone had a good laugh. Al went on to run CIA operations in Japan during the fifties and sixties. When he passed away, there was a frantic search for a safe deposit box by American intelligence officials containing records of all CIA payoffs to Japan’s leading conservative party.
When the box was finally found, there was an enormous sigh of relief at the embassy. I still miss Al.
Stay healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
March 22, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or ENTERING TERRA INCOGNITA),
(TLT), (TSLA), (JPM), (VIX), (QQQ), (IWM), (BAC), (C), (SPY)
During the Middle Ages, when explorers sought new lands and their rich treasures, large sections of their navigational charts were marked with the term “terra incognita.”
That meant what lays beyond was unknown and that they should enter only at their own risk. Often there was a picture of a dragon or a sea monster to mark the spot.
There was also often a warning that you might even sail off of the edge of the earth.
Financial markets have entered a “terra incognita” of their own recently.
Here is the big unknown: How high can ten-year US Treasury bond yields soar when the Federal Reserve is promising to keep overnight interest pegged at 25 basis points until 2024 in the face of essentially unlimited monetary and fiscal stimulus?
So far, the answer is: more.
That is a really big question because we’ve never really been here before.
In fact, some Cassandras from the right are even predicting such a policy will cause us to sail off of the edge of the earth. The modern-day equivalent of running into dragons is inviting runaway inflation.
I can tell you from my own vast, almost immeasurable navigational experience (I am licensed by the US government) that “terra incognita” does not invite inordinate risk-taking or betting of ranches by traders or investors. Instead, they tend to sit on their hands, work on their golf swing, or update their Facebook pages.
That is what the Volatility Index (VIX) last week is essentially screaming at us by touching the $19 handle for the first time in a year.
Almost everyone I know has made more money in the markets than at any time in their lives. That is what a near doubling of the stock market in a year gets you.
And the new wealth was not attained because their intelligence and market insight have suddenly doubled, although a strong case for such can be made for readers of Mad Hedge Fund Trader.
So I used the Friday, March 19 option expiration to go into a rare 100% cash position. I really have gotten away with too much lately.
Then feeling guilty, I slapped on a single long in Tesla (TSLA), that old reliable money-maker. It’s worked for me since it was $3.50 a share. After all, a gigantic green energy infrastructure bill is about to pass in Congress. What better to own than the world’s largest EV car maker.
And what a tear it has been.
After bringing in a ballistic 66.64% profit in 2020, I reeled in another 40.38% gain in the first 2 ½ months of 2021. I did this via 40 trades which generated 38 wins and only two losses. That’s a success rate of an incredible 95%. I have to pinch myself when I read these numbers.
I am concerned because numbers any higher than this will look fake. It’s a rule of thumb in the investment business that when managers claim a 100% success rate, they are either high-frequency traders back by super-fast mainframe computers or running a scam.
So, I have been advising clients to pare back their biggest positions that became massively overweight purely through capital appreciation. Financials come to mind. JP Morgan (JPM) up 81% in three months? Sounds like a Ponzi Scheme.
So let me give you some upside targets in the bond market. We doubled bottomed in 2012 and 2016 at a 1.37% yield in the ten-year Treasury bond yield. We have already surpassed that level like a hot knife through butter.
At the depths of the 2008-2009 Great Recession, rates bottomed at 2.0% yield, which now seems within easy reach. The lowest yield we saw after the 2003 Dotcom Crash was a 3.0%.
When the upside targets in interest rates in this cycle are the lows of the previous economic cycles, that augurs pretty well for the future of stock prices. That is the guaranteed outcome of the tidal wave of cash now sweeping the global financial system.
The permabears are warning that the “Roaring Twenties” have already happened. I argued that they are only just getting started and that the indexes have another 4X of upside in them over the rest of the decade. When the last “Roaring Twenties” occurred, you didn’t sell in 1921.
It also reminds me of the huge “rip your face off” rally we saw from March 2009 to 2010. A lot of market gurus said then that was the peak. They were wrong. Today, they are driving for Uber and Lyft.
So when a talking head warns you that higher interest rates will cause the stock market to crash, just turn off the boob tube and go back to practicing your golf swing.
The Mad Hedge Summit Videos are Up, from the March 9,10, and 11 confab. Listen to 27 speakers opine on the best strategies, tactics, and instruments to use in these volatile markets. The product discounts offered last week are still valid. Start, stop, and pause the videos at your leisure. Best of all, access to the videos is FREE. Access them all by clicking here at www.madhedge.com, click on CURRENT SUMMIT REPLAYS in the upper right-hand corner, and then choose the speaker of your choice.
Ten Year Bond Yields (TLT) soar to a 1.75%, setting financials on fire and demolishing tech (QQQ). We are rapidly approaching a 2.00% yield, which could trigger a huge round of profit-taking on bond shorts, a domestic stock selloff, and a tech rally. The next great rotation may be just ahead of us.
Oil (USO) dives 8% on fears of an imminent Saudi production increase and a worsening Covid-19 outlook in Europe. Are we next with all these early reopening’s? Gone 100% cash at the close with the March quadruple witching option expiration.
A Tax Hike is next on the menu. Corporate tax rates are returning from 21% to 28% for the small proportion of companies that actually PAY tax. Raising taxes on earnings of more than $400,000. Pass through entities to get a haircut. Increasing estate taxes. You better die soon if you want your kids to stay rich. Increase in capital gains taxes over $1 million. I want my SALT deduction back! The grand negotiation begins on who needs bridges, rail lines, and subway extensions. Hint: for some reason, there have been no new federal projects started in California for the past four years and all the existing ones were cut back.
Value Stocks (IWM) are beating growth ones, reversing a decade-long trend. The Russell Value Index is up 11% this year, while growth is unchanged. It’s a total flip from last year when growth was tech-led. This could continue for years, or until the tech becomes the new value stocks. Big winners include Boeing (BA), JP Morgan (JPM), and Morgan Stanley (MS), all Mad Hedge moneymakers.
Bitcoin tops 61,000. Nothing else to say but that because there are no fundamentals. It’s up 80% in 2021 and 540% YOY. But it is becoming a good risk-taking indicator thought, and right now it is shouting a loud and clear “Risk On.”
It’s going to be All About Stock Picking for the Rest of 2021, says Morgan Stanley strategist Mike Wilson. Dragging on the index from here on will be the prospects of rising rates, tax hikes, and inflation. Mike especially dislikes small caps (IWM) which have already had a terrific run, with a 19% YTD gain. Stock picking? Boy, did you come to the right place!
Fed to hold off on rates hikes through 2023, said Governor Jay Powell after the open Market Committee Meeting. Bonds rallied a full half-point on the news and then crashed again, taking yields to a new 1.70% high. It sees inflation reaching a positively stratospheric 2.0% sometime this year, after which it will die, so nothing to do here. This is what a 100% dovish FOMC gets you. Let the games begin!
New Housing Starts Collapse, from an expected +2.5% to -10.3%, as high lumber, land, labor, and interest rates take their toll. This will only drive new home prices high at a faster rate and the little remaining supply dries up. Millennials need some place to live.
When we come out the other side of pandemic, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 400% to 120,000 or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 120,000 here we come!
It’s amazing how well patience can help your performance. My Mad Hedge Global Trading Dispatch profit reached a super-hot 16.89% during the first half of March on the heels of a spectacular 13.28% profit in February.
It was a tough week in the market, so I held fire and ran my seven remaining profitable positions into the March 19 options expiration. I took advantage of a meltdown in Tesla (TSLA) shares to put on my only new position of the week with a very deep-in-the-money long. That leaves me with 90% cash and a barrel full of dry powder.
This is my fifth double-digit month in a row. My 2021 year-to-date performance soared to 40.38%. The Dow Average is up a miniscule 7.7% so far in 2021.
That brings my 11-year total return to 462.93%, some 2.12 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period. My 11-year average annualized return now stands at an unbelievable 41.14%.
My trailing one-year return exploded to 121.60%, the highest in the 13-year history of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader. I truly have to pinch myself when I see numbers like this. I bet many of you are making the biggest money of your long lives.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Coronavirus cases at 29.8 million and deaths topping 542,000, which you can find here. Thankfully, death rates have slowed dramatically, but Obituaries are still the largest sector in the newspaper.
The coming week will be a boring one on the data front.
On Monday, March 22, at 9:00 AM, Existing Home Sales for February are released.
On Tuesday, March 23, at 9:00 AM, New Home Sales are published.
On Wednesday, March 24 at 8:30 AM, we learn US Durable Goods for February are printed.
On Thursday, March 25 at 8:30 AM, Weekly Jobless Claims are out. We also get the final read of US Q4 GDP.
On Friday, March 26 at 8:30 AM, US Personal Income & Spending for February are released. At 2:00 PM, we learn the Baker-Hughes Rig Count.
As for me, I have been doing a lot of high altitude winter mountain climbing lately, and with the warm spring weather, the risk of avalanches is ever present. It takes me back to the American Bicentennial Everest Expedition, which I joined in 1976.
It was led by my old friend, instructor, and climbing mentor Jim Whitaker, who pulled an ice ax out of my nose on Mt. Rainer in 1967 (you can still see the scar). Jim was the first American to summit the world’s highest mountain. I tried to break a high-speed fall and an ice ax kicked back and hit me square in the face. If I hadn’t been wearing goggles I would have been blinded.
I made it up to 22,000 feet on Everest, to Base Camp II without oxygen because there were only a limited number of canisters reserved for those planning to summit. At that altitude, you take two steps, and then break to catch your breath.
There is a surreal thing about that trip that I remember. One day, a block of ice the size of a skyscraper shifted on the Khumbu Ice Fall and out of the bottom popped a body. It was a man who went missing on the 1962 American expedition. Everyone recognized him as he hadn’t aged a day in 15 years, since he was frozen solid.
I boiled my drinking water, but at that altitude, water can’t get hot enough to purify it. So I walked 100 miles back to Katmandu with amoebic dysentery. By the time I got there, I’d lost 50 pounds, taking my weight to 120 pounds.
Jim was an Eagle Scout, the first full-time employee of Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI), and last climbed Everest when he was 61. Today, he is 92 and lives in Seattle, WA.
Jim reaffirms my belief that daily mountain climbing is a great life extension strategy, if not an aphrodisiac.
Stay healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
March 15, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or LISTEN TO THE (VIX),
(SPY), (IWM), (QQQ), (TLT), (VIX), (DAL), (BA), (ALK)
I decided to take a day off over the weekend and see what was happening in the real economy.
As I drove over the Bay Bridge, I spotted over 30 very large container ships from China loaded to the gills. They were diverted from Los Angeles where the delay to unload ships has extended to two months.
The San Francisco farmers market was jammed with a mask-wearing crowd. Standing in front of me in the line to buy lavender salt was former 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, who took his team to the Super Bowl four times. He was in great shape, looking at least 30 pounds lighter than in his heyday.
Leaving Half Moon Bay after picking up some driftwood for my garden, the traffic to get into town was at least an hour long.
It all underlies a theme for the economy and the markets that I have been expounding upon for the last year.
The Roaring Twenties have begun, the number of consumers and investors who believe this is increasing every day, and the impact on business and stocks is still being wildly underestimated.
You can see this in the Volatility Index (VIX), which has made a rare two roundtrips over the past month, and that means two possible things. Markets are undecided. When they make up their minds, they will either crash, or make a new leg up.
I vote for the latter.
I keep especially close attention on the (VIX) these days because it tells me when I can turn on or off my printing press for $100 bills. Anywhere over a (VIX) of $30 and I can strap on “free money” trades where the chances of losing money are virtually nil.
You can see this in my performance this year, where 40 roundtrips trade alerts in 11 weeks generated 38 wins and only two losses. That’s a success rate of an unprecedented 95%.
The indecision in the markets is obvious in the charts below. The large cap S&P 500 (SPX) and the small cap Russell 2000 (IWM) clawed their way to new highs last week, but the tech heavy NASDAQ (QQQ) made a feeble, halfhearted effort at best. Technology alone is being punished for rising interest rates as the ten-year US Treasury yield hit 1.62%.
This makes absolutely no sense as the larger tech companies are massive cash generators, run huge cash balances, and are enormous let lenders to the financial system. That means they make millions in interest payments from rising rates. What they are really being punished for is doubling from the pandemic low a year ago.
But never argue with Mr. Market.
Biden signs, with a record $1.8 trillion hitting the economy immediately. Money could start hitting your bank account this weekend if you are signed up for electronic payments with the IRS. Let the party begin! I already spent my money a long time ago. The Fed is forecasting a 10% GDP growth rate in Q2. Money is about to come raining down upon the economy….and the stock market. The big question is how much of this is already in the market. “Buy the rumor, sell the news”. Given the wild swings in the market, and multiple visits to a $32 (VIX), it’s clear that markets don’t know….yet.
The Next Battle is over infrastructure, which the democrats want to have an environmental. “green” slant. Look for a big gas tax rise to pay for it. They may get what they want with Senate control. Look for a September target. The economy needs $2 trillion a year in new government spending to keep the stock market rising and it will probably happen.
Nonfarm Payroll comes in at a blockbuster 379,000 in February, far better than expected. It's a preview of explosive numbers to come as the US economy crawls out of the pandemic. That’s with a huge drag from terrible winter weather. The headline Unemployment Rate is 6.2%. The U-6 “discouraged worker” rate of still a sky high 11%, those who have been jobless more than six months. Leisure & Hospitality were up an incredible 355,000 and Retail was up 41,000. Government lost 86,000 jobs. See what employers are willing to do when they see $20 trillion about to hit the economy?
Weekly Jobless Claims dive to 712,000 has pandemic restrictions fall across the country, the lowest since November. However, ongoing claims still stand at an extremely high 4.1 million. Total US joblessness still stands at 18 million. Will the pandemic come back to haunt us from these early reopenings?
California Disneyland (DIS) to reopen April 1, lifting a very dark cloud and huge expenses off the company. Cases on the west coast have fallen so dramatically that the state feels it can get away with this. Maybe this is an effort to derail the recall movement against the government. Stock is up 2% in the after-market, which Mad Hedge followers are long. Time to dig out my mouse ears. Keep buying (DIS) on dips.
Oil (USO) soars 3% on an attack on Saudi oil facilities and a building US economic recovery. $69 a barrel is printed. This is setting up as a great short. High prices in a decarbonizing economy have no future. A (USO) $34-$36 put LEAP with a January 2023 maturity might make all the sense in the world here.
Boeing (BA) announced Fist Positive Deliveries, in 14 months, finally turning around the mess with the 737 MAX. United Airlines was the biggest buyer. The perfect storm is finally over. And Boeing is about to snag another giant order, this time from Southwest (LUV). This comes on the heels of similar big order from Alaska Air (ALK). Keep buying (BA) on dips. An upside breakout is imminent.
Consumer Price Index Comes in at 0.4%, and 0.1% ex food and energy. It’s still at a nonexistent level. Rising gasoline prices were a factor, but airline ticket prices remain at all-time lows. I’ll worry about inflation when I see the whites of its eyes. Commodity prices have doubled in a year but show nowhere in the inflation numbers. With a headline Unemployment Rate at 6.1% and a U-6 at 18 million, it's unlikely we’ll see wage any time soon, which is 70% of the inflation calculation.
When we come out the other side of pandemic, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 400% to 120,000 or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 120,000 here we come!
It’s amazing how well selling tops and buying bottoms can help your performance. My Mad Hedge Global Trading Dispatch profit reached a super-hot 16.32% during the first half March on the heels of a spectacular 13.28% profit in February. The Dow Average is up a miniscule 8.2% so far in 2021.
It was a total rip your face off rally in the markets last week, so I took off my hedged and covered shorts in the S&P 500 (SPY) and the NASDAQ (QQQ). That leaves me to run my seven remaining profitable positions into the March 19 options expiration.
I also had my hands full running the three-day Mad Hedge Traders & Investors Summit, introducing some 27 speakers to a global audience of 10,000. The speakers’ videos go up on Tuesday at www.madhedge.com.
This is my fifth double-digit month in a row. My 2021 year-to-date performance soared to 39.81. That brings my 11-year total return to 465.36%, some 2.12 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period. My 11-year average annualized return now stands at an unbelievable 41.09%. I am concerned because numbers any higher than this will look fake.
My trailing one-year return exploded to 122.6%, the highest in the 13-year history of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader. I truly have to pinch myself when I see numbers like this. I bet many of you are making the biggest money of your long lives.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Coronavirus cases at 29.5 million and deaths topping 535,000, which you can find here. Thankfully, death rates have slowed dramatically, but Obituaries are still the largest sector in the newspaper.
The coming week will be a boring one on the data front.
On Monday, March 15, at 7:30 AM EST, the New York Empire State Manufacturing Index for March is released.
On Tuesday, March 16, at 8:30 AM, US Retail Sales for February are published.
On Wednesday, March 17 at 8:30 AM, we learn Housing Starts for February. At 2:00 PM we get the Federal Reserve interest rate decision and press conference.
On Thursday, March 18 at 8:30 AM, Weekly Jobless Claims are out. We also obtain the Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index.
On Friday, March 19 at 2:00 PM, we learn the Baker-Hughes Rig Count.
As for me, I was saddened to learn of the death of George Schultz, Treasury Secretary and Secretary of State under president Ronald Reagan. He was 101.
George graduated from Yale at the outbreak of WWII and immediately joined the US Marine Corps (Semper Fi) where he used his ample math background to become an anti-aircraft officer. He issued my dad’s unit the useful advice to always lead an attacking Zero fighter by four plane lengths to hit the engine with a machine gun. It’s simple ballistics.
After the war, he used the GI bill to get a PhD from MIT, and later worked for President Eisenhower. He then became the Dean of the Chicago Business School.
I first met George when The Economist magazine sent me to interview him in San Francisco as the CEO of Bechtel Corp, a major engineering and construction company in 1982. The following week, he was drafted by the incoming Reagan administration, where he stayed for eight years. We kept in touch ever since.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Schultz as Secretary of State was instrumental in managing the event so that it stayed peaceful….and moved forward. I later flew to Berlin to watch the Russian Army pull its troops out of my former home.
In his later years, George was very active in the Marines Memorial Association where I got to know him very well, he often was wearing his full-dress blues looking as new as if they came out of the factory that day, bringing a fascinating series of military speakers.
As Schultz got older, he couldn’t remember what he knew was top-secret or classified, and what wasn’t. I benefited greatly from that, but kept my mouth shut. However, I learned some amazing things.
He was also very active in arms control and flew to Moscow as recently as 2019. In recent years, I help him to the podium, George grasping my arm and walking his slow shuffle.
George Schultz was a great example of the best leaders that American can produce. He will be missed.
Stay healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
