Global Market Comments
March 8, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARCH 6 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(SPY), (SDS), (TLT), (TBT), (GE), (IYM),
(MSFT), (IWM), (AAPL), (ITB), (FCX), (FXE)
Posts
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader March 3 Global Strategy Webinar with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader. Keep those questions coming!
Q: Are you sticking to your market top (SPY), (SDS) by mid-May?
A: Yes, at the rate that economic data is deteriorating, and earnings are falling, there’s no prospect of more economic stimulation here, my May top in the market is looking better than ever. Europe going into recession will be the gasoline on the fire.
Q: Where do you see interest rates (TLT) in 1-2 years?
A: Interest rates in 2 years could be at zero. If interest rates peaked at 3.25% last year, then the next move could be to zero, or negative numbers. The world is awash in cash, and without any economic growth to support that, you could have massive cuts in interest rates.
Q: Will (TLT) be going higher when a market panic sets in?
A: It will, which is why I’m being cautious on my short positions and why I’m only using tops to sell. You can be wrong in this market but still make money on every put spread, as long as you’re going far enough in the money. That said, when the stock market starts to roll over big time, you want to go long bonds, not short, and we may do that someday.
Q: Do you see a selloff to stocks similar to last December?
A: As long as the Fed does not raise interest rates, I don’t expect to get a selloff of more than 5% or 6% initially. If we do get a dramatic worsening of economic data and it looks like we’re headed in that direction, the Fed will start cutting interest rates, the recession signal will be on and only then will we drop to the December lows—and possibly as low as 18,000 in the Dow.
Q: General Electric has gone from $6 to $10; what would you do now?
A: Short term, sell with a 66% gain in a stock. Long term, you probably want to hold on. However, their problems are massive and will take years to sort out, probably not until the other side of the next recession.
Q: Microsoft (MSFT): long term hold or sell?
A: Absolutely long-term hold; look for another double in this company over the next 3 years. This is the gold standard in technology stocks today. Short term, you’re looking at no more than $15 of downside to the December low.
Q: Would you short banks (IYF) here since interest rates have failed to push them higher?
A: I would not; they’ve been one of the worst performing sectors of the market and they’re all very low, historically. You want to short highs like I’m doing now in the (SPY), the (IWM), and Apple (AAPL), not lows.
Q: Is the China trade deal (FXI) a ‘sell the news’ event?
A: Absolutely; there’s not a hedge fund out there that isn’t waiting to go short on a China trade deal. The weakness this week is them front-running that news.
Q: Do you see emerging markets (EEM) pushing higher from the 42 level, or will a global recession bring it back to earth?
A: First of all, (EEM) will go higher as long as interest rates in the U.S. are flatlining, so I expect a rally to last until the spring; however, when a real recession does become apparent, that sector will roll over along with everything else.
Q: Would you buy homebuilders (ITB) if this lower interest rate environment persists?
A: I wouldn’t. First of all, they’ve already had a big 28% run since the beginning of the year— like everything else—and second, low-interest rates don’t help if you can’t afford the house in the first place.
Q: Would you short corporate bonds if you think there’s going to be a recession next year?
A: I’m glad you asked. Absolutely not, not even on pain of death. I would buy bonds because interest rates going to zero takes bond prices up hugely.
Q: Should you buy stocks in front of a blackout period on corporate buybacks?
A: Absolutely not. Corporate buybacks are the number one buyers of shares this year, possibly exceeding $1 trillion. Companies are not allowed to buy their own stocks anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month ahead of their earnings release. By removing the principal buyer of a share, you want to sell, not buy.
Q: What are the chances the China trade deal (FXI) breaks down this month and no signing takes place?
A: I have a feeling Trump is desperate to sign anything these days, and I think the Chinese know that as well, especially in the wake of the North Korean diplomatic disaster. He has to sign the deal or we’ll go to recession, and that would be tough to run on for reelection.
Q: Which stock or ETF would you short on real estate?
A: If you short the iShares US Home Construction ETF (ITB), you short the basket. Shorting individual stocks is always risky—you really have to know what’s going on there.
Q: What’s the best commodity play out there?
A: Copper. If China is the only country that’s stimulating its economy right now, and China is the largest consumer of copper, then you want to buy copper. The electric car boom feeds into copper because every new vehicle needs 20 pounds of copper for wiring and rotors. Copper is also cheap as it is coming off of a seven-year bear market. What do you buy at market tops? Only cheap stuff.
Q: Why did you go so far in the money in the Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) call spread with only a 10% profit on the trade in five weeks?
A: In this kind of market, I’ll take 10% in 5 weeks all day long. But additionally, when prices are this high, I want to be as conservative as possible. Going deep in the money on that is a very low-risk trade. It’s a bet that copper doesn’t go back to the December lows in five weeks, and that’s a bet I’m willing to make.
Q: Will a new round of QE in Europe affect our stock market?
A: Yes, it’s terrible news. It will weaken the Euro (FXE), strengthen the dollar (UUP), and force US companies to lower earnings guidance even further. That is bad for the market and is a reason why I have been selling short.
Sending You Trade Alerts from Africa
Global Market Comments
February 27, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHY CHINA’S US TREASURY DUMP WILL CRUSH THE BOND MARKET),
(TLT), (TBT), ($TNX), (FCX), (FXE), (FXY), (FXA),
(USO), (OXY), (ITB), (LEN), (HD), (GLD), (SLV), (CU),
(THE 13 NEW TRADING RULES FOR 2019)
Years ago, if you asked traders what one event would destroy financial markets, the answer was always the same: China dumping its $1 trillion US treasury bond hoard.
It looks like Armageddon is finally here.
Once again, the Chinese boycotted this week’s US Treasury bond auction.
With a no-show like this, you could be printing a 2.90% yield in a couple of weeks. It also helps a lot that the charts are outing in a major long term double top.
You may read the president’s punitive duties on Chinese solar panels as yet another attempt to crush California’s burgeoning solar installation industry. I took it for what it really was: a signal to double up my short in the US Treasury bond market.
For it looks like the Chinese finally got the memo. Exploding American deficits have become the number one driver of all asset classes, perhaps for the next decade.
Not only are American bonds about to fall dramatically in value, so is the US dollar (UUP) in which they are denominated. This creates a double negative hockey stick effect on their value for any foreign investor.
In fact, you can draw up an all assets class portfolio based on the assumption that the US government is now the new debt hog:
Stocks – buy inflation plays like Freeport McMoRan (FCX) and US Steel (X)
Emerging Markets – Buy asset producers like Chile (ECH)
Bonds – run a double short position in the (TLT)
Foreign Exchange – buy the Euro (FXE), Yen (FXY), and Aussie (FXA)
Commodities – Buy copper (CU) as an inflation hedge
Energy – another inflation beneficiary (USO), (OXY)
Precious Metals – entering a new bull market for gold (GLD) and silver (SLV)
Yes, all of sudden everything has become so simple, as if the fog has suddenly been lifted.
Focus on the US budget deficit which has soared from $450 billion a year ago to over $1 trillion today on its way to $2 trillion later this year, and every investment decision becomes a piece of cake.
This exponential growth of US government borrowing should take the US National Debt from $22 to $30 trillion over the next decade.
I have been dealing with the Chinese government for 45 years and have come to know them well. They never forget anything. They are still trying to get the West to atone for three Opium Wars that started 180 years ago.
Imagine how long it will take them to forget about washing machine duties?
By the way, if I look uncommonly thin in the photo below it’s because there was a famine raging in China during the Cultural Revolution in which 50 million died. You couldn’t find food to buy in the countryside for all the money in the world. This is when you find out that food has no substitutes. The Chinese government never owned up to it.
Global Market Comments
February 14, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHY I’M AVOIDING PFIZER LIKE THE PLAGUE)
(PFE), (MRK), (MVS),
(THE LIQUIDITY CRISIS COMING TO A MARKET NEAR YOU),
(TLT), (TBT), (MUB), (LQD),
(TESTIMONIAL)
I had the great pleasure of having breakfast the other morning with my longtime friend, Mohamed El-Erian, former the co-CEO of the bond giant, PIMCO.
Mohamed argues that there has been a major loss of liquidity in the financial markets in recent decades that will eventually come home to haunt us all, and sooner than we think.
The result will be a structural increase in market volatility and wild gyrations in the prices of financial assets that will become commonplace.
We have already seen a few of these. Look no further than superstar NVIDIA (NVDA), which announced earnings in line with expectations in November but nevertheless responded with a 50% decline. It was a classic “Buy the rumor, sell the news” type move.
The worst is yet to come.
It is a problem that has been evolving for years.
When I started on Wall Street during the early 1980s, the model was very simple. You had a few big brokers servicing millions of small individual customers at fixed, non-negotiable commissions.
The big houses made so much money they could spend some dough facilitating counter cycle customers trades. This means they would step up to bid in falling markets and make offers in rising ones.
In any case, volatility was so low then that this never cost all that much, except on those rare occasions, such as the 1987 crash (we at Morgan Stanley lost $75 million in a day! Ouch!).
Competitive, meaning falling, commissions rates wiped out this business model. There were no longer profits to subsidize losses on the trading side, so the large firms quit risking their capital to help out customers altogether.
Now you have a larger number of brokers selling to a greatly shrunken number of end buyers, as financial assets in the US have become concentrated at the top.
Assets have also become institutionalized as they are piled into big hedge funds and a handful of very large index mutual funds and ETFs. These assets are managed by people who are also much smarter too.
The small individual investor on which the industry was originally built has almost become an extinct species.
There is no more “dumb money” left in the market, at least until this month.
Now those placing large orders were at the complete mercy of the market, often with egregious results.
Enter volatility. Lot’s of it.
What is particularly disturbing is that the disappearance of liquidity is coming now, just as the 35-year bull market in bonds is ending.
An entire generation of bond fund managers, almost two generations worth, have only seen prices rise, save for the occasional hickey that never lasted for more than a few months. They have no idea how to manage risk on the downside whatsoever.
I am willing to bet money that you or your clients have at least some, if not a lot of your money tied up in precisely these kinds of funds. All I can say is, “Watch out below.”
When the flash fire hits the movie theater, you are unlikely to be the one guy who gets out alive.
You hear a lot about when the Federal Reserve finally gets around to raising interest rates in earnest this year. They say it will make no difference as rates are coming off such a low base.
You know what? It may make a difference, maybe a big one.
This is because it will signify a major trend change, the first one for fixed income in more than three decades. Almost all of these guys really understand are trends and the next one will have a big fat “SELL” pasted on it for the fixed income world.
El-Erian has one of the best 90,000-foot views out there. A US citizen with an Egyptian father, he started out life at the old Salomon Smith Barney in London and went on to spend 15 years at the International Monetary Fund.
He joined PIMCO in 1999 and then moved on to manage the Harvard endowment fund.
He regularly makes the list of the world’s top thinkers. A lightweight Mohamed is not.
His final piece of advice? Engage in “constructive paranoia” and structure your portfolio to take advantage of these changes, rather than fall victim to them.
See the Long Term “Head and Shoulders” Top in the (TLT)?
Global Market Comments
February 13, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(BIDDING MORE FOR THE STARS),
(SPY), (INDU), (NVDA)
(NOW THE FAT LADY IS REALLY SINGING FOR THE BOND MARKET),
(TLT), (TBT)
Global Market Comments
February 11, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE MARKET FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or DON’T STAND NEXT TO THE DUMMY),
(AAPL), (MSFT), (TSLA), (VIX), (TLT), (TBT), (FXI)
When I was a war correspondent (Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Kuwait, Indonesia), my seniors gave me a sage piece of advice that saved my life many times.
“Don’t stand next to the dummy.”
Don’t go near the guy wearing the Hawaiian shirt, NY Yankees baseball cap, and aviator sunglasses. You want to be dressed in the same color as the troops and blend in as much as possible. Otherwise, the enemy will aim at the dummy and hit you.
As much as I tried, at 6’4” I was never going to blend in anywhere in Asia. So, I went into the stock market instead.
Now 50 years later, I am facing another dummy problem. Except that the next hit I may take will be of the financial kind rather than the metallic one.
The reaction to the Trump tax cuts is going to be far worse than any benefits the privileged class was able to reap from the cuts in the first place. Listening to the proposals aired, I shudder: A maximum 70% tax rate, the end of special estate tax treatment, a millionaire’s surtax, and the banning of corporate share buybacks.
It’s that last one that that will be particularly damaging for the US economy. Often, a company’s best possible investment is in its own shares where returns are frequently higher than possible through investing in their own business. Just think of all those shares Apple (AAPL) bought at $25, now at $170, and Microsoft (MSFT) picked up at $10.
This is one of the only occasions were management and shareholder interests are one and the same. The event is tax-free as long as you don’t sell your shares. And companies don’t have to pay dividends on stock they have retired, boosting profits even further.
The media loves pandering to the most extreme views out there. I know because I used to do it myself. Cooler heads will almost certainly prevail when the tax code is completely rewritten again in two years. Still, one has to worry.
The week had plenty for we analysts and strategists to chew on.
Is the Fed pausing because of political pressure or an economy that is falling apart? Neither answer is good for equity holders. Start cutting back risk while you can. There are lots of bids on the way up, but none on the way down as December showed.
There has lately been a rising tide of weak data to confirm the negative view.
Factory orders nosedived 0.6% in November, the worst in a year. Funny how nobody wants to make stuff ahead of a recession. ISM Non-Manufacturing Index Cratered to 56.7. Should we be worried? Hell, yes! Why are we getting so many negative data points and stocks keep rising?
Farm sector bankruptcies are soaring, hitting a decade high. Apparently, the trade wars and global warming aren’t working for them. Ironically, ag prices are about to take off to the upside when a Chinese trade deal gets done. Buy the ags for a trade.
Tesla (TSLA) cut prices again in a blatant bid for market share and global domination. The low-end Tesla 3 price drops to $42,900. Next stop $35,000. Too bad they laid off my customer support personnel to cut costs. I can’t find my AM radio.
China trade talks (FXI) hit the skids, taking the stock market down with it as an administration official concedes they are “nowhere close to a deal” with the deadline 3 weeks off. Trump desperately needs a deal while the Chinese don’t, who think they can do better under the next president. If you disagree with this view in China, your organs get harvested and sold on the open market.
The European economy is also going down the drain with the EC’s forecast of economic growth cut from 1.9% to 1.3%. The US-China trade war is cited as a major factor. The global synchronizes slowdown accelerates. Looks like they’ll have more time to drink cheap wine and smoke Gauloises.
The Volatility Index (VIX) hit $15 and that seems to be the bottom for the time being. The market was more overbought than at any time since July. Is the “fear gauge” signaling that happy days are here again? I doubt it. Don’t whistle past the graveyard.
The Mad Hedge Market Timing Index is entering danger territory with a reading of 67 for the first time in five months. Better start taking profits on those aggressive leveraged longs you bought in early January. Your best performers are about to take a big hit. The market has since sold off 500 points, proving its value.
There wasn’t much to do in the market this week, given that I am trying to wind my portfolio down to 100% cash as the market peaks.
I stopped out of my short portion in Apple when my stop loss was triggered by pennies. The second I was out, it began a $6 selloff. Welcome to show business.
I used a major 3 ½ point rally in the bond market to put on a new double short position there. The yield on the ten-year US Treasury bond has to plunge to 2.40% in a month, a three-year low, for me to lose money on this position. It’s a bet that I am happy to make.
My 2019 year to date return leveled out at +10.03%, boosting my trailing one-year return back up to +35.75%.
My nine-year return maintained +310.17%, a new high. The average annualized return stabilized at +33.83%.
I am now 70% in cash and triple short the bond market.
Government data is finally starting to trickle out now that the government shutdown is over.
On Monday, February 11 there is nothing of note to report. Everything important is delayed.
On Tuesday, February 12, 10:00 AM EST, we get the January NFIB Small Business Index. Earnings for Activision Blizzard (ATVI) are out and should be a complete disaster, along with Twilio (TWLO).
On Wednesday, February 13 at 8:30 AM EST, the all-important January Consumer Price Index is published. Barrick Gold (GOLD) reports.
Thursday, February 14 at 8:30 AM EST, we get Weekly Jobless Claims. We also get December Retail Sales which should be good.
On Friday, February 15, at 8:30 AM EST, the February Empire State Index is out. The Baker-Hughes Rig Count follows at 1:00 PM.
As for me, I will be battling my way through the raging snowstorms of the High Sierras trying to get over Donner Pass to my Lake Tahoe estate. Unless I clear the six feet of snow off the roof soon, or the house will get crushed from the weight as it did three years ago.
Where are all those illegal immigrants hanging out in front of 7-Eleven now that I need them?
Good luck and good trading.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
January 18, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE GREAT DEPRESSION DEBT?),
($TNX), (TLT), (TBT),
(TESTIMONIAL)
