Global Market Comments
August 24, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(AUGUST 22 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(BIDU), (BABA), (VIX), (EEM), (SPY), (GLD), (GDX), (BITCOIN),
(SQM), (HD), (TBT), (JWN), (AMZN), (USO), (NFLX), (PIN),
(TAKING A BITE OUT OF STEALTH INFLATION)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader August 22 Global Strategy Webinar with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader.
As usual, every asset class long and short was covered. You are certainly an inquisitive lot, and keep those questions coming!
Q: How do you think the trade talks will resolve?
A: There will be no resolution this next round of trade talks. China has sent only their most hawkish negotiators who believe that China has done nothing wrong, so don’t expect results any time soon.
Also, because of the arrests in Washington, China is more inclined to just wait out Donald Trump, whether that’s 6 months or 6 1/2 years. They believe they have the upper hand now, sensing weakness in Washington, and in any case, many of the American requests are ridiculous.
Trade talks will likely overhang the market for the rest of this year and you don’t want to go running back into those China Tech plays, like Alibaba (BABA) and Baidu (BIDU) too soon. However, they are offering fantastic value at these levels.
Q: Will the Washington political storm bring down the market?
A: No, it won’t. Even in the case of impeachment, all that will happen is the market will stall and go sideways for a while until it’s over. The market went straight up during the Clinton impeachment, but that was during the tail end of the Dotcom Boom.
Q: Is Alibaba oversold here at 177?
A: Absolutely, it is a great buy. There is a double in this stock over the long term. But, be prepared for more volatility until the trade wars end, especially with China, which could be quite some time.
Q: What would you do with the Volatility Index (VIX) now?
A: Buy at 11 and buy more at 10. It’s a great hedge against your existing long portfolio. It’s at $12 right now.
Q: Are the emerging markets (EEM) a place to be again right now or do you see more carnage?
A: I see more carnage. As long as the dollar is strong, U.S. interest rates are rising, and we have trade wars, the worst victims of all of that are emerging markets as you can see in the charts. Anything emerging market, whether you’re looking at the stocks, bonds or currency, has been a disaster.
Q: Is it time to go short or neutral in the S&P 500 (SPY)?
A: Keep a minimal long just so you have some participation if the slow-motion melt-up continues, but that is it. I’m keeping risks to a minimum now. I only really have one position to prove that I’m not dead or retired. If it were up to me I’d be 100% cash right now.
Q: Would you buy Bitcoin here around $6,500?
A: No, I would not. There still is a 50/50 chance that Bitcoin goes to zero. It’s looking more and more like a Ponzi scheme every day. If we do break the $6,000 level again, look for $4,000 very quickly. Overall, there are too many better fish to fry.
Q: Is it time to buy gold (GLD) and gold miners (GDX)?
A: No, as long as the U.S. is raising interest rates, you don’t want to go anywhere near the precious metals. No yield plays do well in the current environment, and gold is part of that.
Q: What do you think about Lithium?
A: Lithium has been dragged down all year, just like the rest of the commodities. You would think that with rising electric car production around the world, and with Tesla building a second Gigafactory in Nevada, there would be a high demand for Lithium.
But, it turns out Lithium is not that rare; it’s actually one of the most common elements in the world. What is rare is cheap labor and the lack of environmental controls in the processing.
However, it’s not a terrible idea to buy a position in Sociedad Química y Minera (SQM), the major Chilean Lithium producer, but only if you have a nice long-term view, like well into next year. (SQM) was an old favorite of mine during the last commodity boom, when we caught a few doubles. (Check our research data base).
Q: How can the U.S. debt be resolved? Or can we continue on indefinitely with this level of debt?
A: Actually, we can go on indefinitely with this level of debt; what we can’t do is keep adding a trillion dollars a year, which the current federal budget is guaranteed to deliver. At some point the government will crowd out private borrowers, including you and me, out of the market, which will eventually cause the next recession.
Q: Time to rotate out of stocks?
A: Not yet; all we have to do is rotate out of one kind of stock into another, i.e. out of technology and into consumer staple and value stocks. We will still get that performance, but remember we are 9.5 years into what is probably a 10-year bull market.
So, keep the positions small, rotate when the sector changes, and you’ll still make money. But, let's face it the S&P 500 isn’t 600 anymore, it’s 2,800 and the pickings are going to get a lot slimmer from here on out. Watch the movie but stay close to the exit to escape the coming flash fire.
Q: What kind of time frame does Amazon (AMZN) double?
A: The only question is whether it happens now or on the other side of the next recession. We can assume five years for sure.
Q: More upside to Home Depot (HD)?
A: Absolutely, yes. The high home prices lead to increases in home remodeling, and now that Orchard Hardware has gone out of business, all that business has gone to Home Depot. Home Depot just went over $204 a couple days ago.
Q: Do you still like India (PIN)?
A: If you want to pick an emerging market to enter, that’s the one. It’s a Hedge Fund favorite and has the largest potential for growth.
Q: What about oil stocks (USO)?
A: You don’t want to touch them at all; they look terrible. Wait for Texas tea to fall to $60 at the very least.
Q: What would you do with Netflix (NFLX)?
A: I would probably start scaling into buy right here. If you held a gun to my head, the one trade I would do now would be a deep in the money call spread in Netflix, now that they’ve had their $100 drop. And I can’t wait to see how the final season of House of Cards ends!
Q: If yields are going up, why are utilities doing so well?
A: Yields are going down right now, for the short term. We’ve backed off from 3.05% all the way to 2.81%; that’s why you’re getting this rally in the yield plays, but I think it will be a very short-lived event.
Q: Do you see retail stocks remaining strong from now through Christmas?
A: I don’t see this as part of the Christmas move going on right now; I think it’s a rotation into laggard plays, and it’s also very stock specific. Stocks like Nordstrom (JWN) and Target (TGT) are doing well, for instance, while others are getting slaughtered. I would be careful with which stocks you get into.
Good luck and good trading
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
August 15, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHY BONDS CAN'T GO DOWN),
(TLT), (TBT), ($TNX), (TUR), (TSLA),
(HOW TO MAKE MORE MONEY THAN I DO),
(AMZN), (LRCX), (ABX), (AAPL), (TSLA), (NVDA)
Global Market Comments
August 10, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(AUGUST 8 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(SPY), (TBT), (PIN), (ISRG), (EDIT), (MU), (LRCX), (NVDA),
(FXE), (FXA), (FXY), (BOTZ), (VALE), (TSLA), (AMZN),
(THE DEATH OF THE CAR),
(GM), (F), (TSLA), (GOOG), (AAPL)
Below please find subscribers' Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader August 8 Global Strategy Webinar with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader.
As usual, every asset class long and short was covered. You are certainly an inquisitive lot, and keep those questions coming!
Q: What should I do about my (SPY) $290-295 put spread?
A: That is fairly close to the money, so it is a high-risk trade. If you feel like carrying a lot of risk, keep it. If you want to sleep better at night, I would get out on the next dip. The market has 100 reasons to go down and two to go up, the possible end of trade wars and continuing excess global liquidity, and the market is focusing on the two for now.
Q: What are your thoughts on the ProShares Ultra Short Treasury Bond Fund (TBT)?
A: Short term, it's a sell. Long term it's a buy. It's possible we could get a breakout in the bond market here, at the 3% yield level. If that happens, you could get another five points quickly in the TBT. J.P. Morgan's Jamie Diamond thinks we could hit a 5% yield in a year. I think that's high but we are definitely headed in that direction.
Q: What are your thoughts on the India ETF (PIN)?
A: It goes higher. It's been the best-performing emerging market, and a major hedge fund long for the last five years. The basic story is that India is the next China. Indicia is the next big infrastructure build-out. Once India gets regulatory issues out of the way, look for more continued performance.
Q: What are your thoughts on Intuitive Surgical (ISRG)?
A: Intuitive is a kind of microcosm in the market right now. It's trading well above a significant support level, which happens to be $508. I don't typically like Intuitive Surgical stock because the options are very inefficient, and therefore very pricey. I think, at this point, there is a bigger possibility of it breaking down than continuing to head higher. In other words, it's overbought. Buy long term, the sector has a giant tailwind behind it with 80 million retiring baby boomers.
Q: What are your thoughts on the entire chip sector, including Micron (MU), Lam Research (LRCX) and NVIDIA (NVDA)?
A: NVIDIA is the top of the value chain in the entire sector, and it looks like it wants to break to a new high. My target is $300 by the end of the year, from the current $240s. I think the same will happen with Lam Research (LRCX), which just had a massive rally. All three of these have major China businesses; China buys 80% of its chips from the U.S. You can do these in order in the value chain; the lowest value-added company is Micron, followed by Lam Research, followed by NVIDIA, and the performance reflects all of that. So, I think until we get out of the trade wars, Micron will be mired down here. Once it ends, look for it to get a very sharp upside move. Lam is already starting to make its move and so is NVIDIA. Long term, Lam and NVIDIA have doubles in them, so it's not a bad place to buy right here.
Q: You once recommended the Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Thematic ETF (BOTZ) which is now down 10%, one of your few misses. Keep or sell?
A: Keep. It's had the same correction as the rest of Technology. All corrections in Technology are short term in nature--the long-term bull story is still there. (BOTZ) is a huge play on artificial intelligence and automation, so that is going to be with us for a long time, it's just enduring a temporary short-term correction right now, and I would keep it.
Q: What do you have to say about the CRISPR stocks like Editas Medicine Inc. (EDIT)?
A: The whole sector got slammed by a single report that said CRISPR causes cancer, which is complete nonsense. So, I would use this sell-off to increase your current positions. I certainly wouldn't be selling down here.
Q: What could soften the strong dollar?
A: Only one thing: a recession in the U.S. and an end to the interest-raising cycle, which is at least a year off, maybe two. Keep buying the U.S. dollar and selling the currencies (FXE), (FXY), (FXA) until then.
Q: What are your thoughts on Baidu and Alibaba?
A: I thought China tech would get dragged down by the trade wars, but they behaved just as well as our tech companies, so I'd be buying them on dips here. Again, if we do win the trade wars, these Chinese tech companies could rocket. The fundamental stories for all of them is fantastic anyway, so it's a good long-term hold.
Q: Have you looked at Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (VALE)? (A major iron ore producer)
A: No, I've kind of ignored commodities all this year, because it's such a terrible place to be. If we had a red-hot economy, globally you would want to own commodities, but as long as the recovery now is limited to only the U.S., it's not enough to keep the commodity space going. So, I would take your profits up here.
Q: With Tesla (TSLA) up $100 in two weeks should I sell?
A: Absolute. If the $420 buyout goes through you have $40 of upside. If it doesn't, you have $140 of downside. It's a risk/reward that drives like a Ford Pinto.
Q: How long will it take global QE (quantitative easing) to unwind?
A: At least 10 years. While we ended our QE four years ago, Europe and Japan are still continuing theirs. That's why stocks keep going up and bonds won't go down. There is too much cash in the world to sell anything.
Q: Apple (AAPL)won the race to be the first $1 trillion company. Who will win the race to be the first $2 trillion company?
A: No doubt it is will be Amazon (AMZN). It has a half dozen major sectors that are growing gangbusters, like Amazon Web Services. Food and health care are big targets going forward. They could also buy one of the big ticket selling companies to get into that business, like Ticketmaster.
Good Luck and Good trading
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
June 8, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(LAST CHANCE TO ATTEND THE TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2018,
NEW ORLEANS, LA, GLOBAL STRATEGY LUNCHEON),
(JUNE 6 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(TLT), (TTT), (TBT), (AMLP), (IBB),
(SPY), (SDS), (SH), (GS), (BAC)
Below please find subscribers' Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader June 6 Global Strategy Webinar with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader.
As usual, every asset class long and short was covered. You are certainly an inquisitive lot, and keep those questions coming!
Q: What does the coming Kim Jong-un summit with North Korea mean for the market?
A: It means absolutely nothing for the market. The entire North Korean threat has been wildly exaggerated as a distraction from the chaos in Washington. So, you may get a one- or two-day rally if it's successful. If it's not expect a one- or two-day sell-off, but no more. Whatever North Korea agrees to, we will not see any follow through; they won't buy the Libyan model of denuclearizing North Korea for fear of their leader meeting the same end as Libya's Khadafy (i.e. being hunted and shot in a storm drain.) North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons.
Q: What do you do at market tops?
A: Well, hopefully if you're reading this letter you're long up the wazoo, so you sell everything you have. Then, wait for a double top in the market (which is clear as day) and falling volume. You start looking at things like the ProShares Ultra Short S&P 500 ETF (SDS). That's the -2X version (there's the (SH), which is the -1X short S&P 500) and you just start buying outright puts on a lot of different things, particularly the overbought sectors of the market, which are generally pretty obvious. It's also good to look for a stock that has made a new high and has negative money flow.
Q: Why are the banks doing so poorly?
A: I believe they fully discounted all of this year's interest rate hikes last year when the stocks nearly doubled. We just talked about a technical setup; Goldman Sachs (GS), Bank of America (BAC), and other stocks had those bear setups. At this point, I believe they're coming down to a place of support and probably getting a decent dead cat bounce. They've had their sell-off, they had their run, and it was triggered by one of the best technical short setup patterns you'll see.
Q: Would you buy financials here?
A: Absolutely not. It's unclear why they're doing so badly, but I would not buy it with anyone's money. Their earnings growth is nowhere what you see with technology stocks.
Q: Is crude oil poised for the next leg up?
A: No, it's not. The oil game may be over if they rush to overproduce once again. It's clearly been artificially boosted to get the Saudi Aramco IPO done. After the end of the quota system, you can get oil back down to the $50s easily. I don't want to touch it here; if anything, I'm more inclined to buy it if we get down to the $50s, which would essentially be the February low.
Q: Is the U.S. dollar overbought here?
A: Yes. The dollar has had a great run all year, which is evident from the rising interest rates. It's done a 10% move up in a fairly short time, which is a lot for the foreign exchange market. It's way overbought; you could easily get a round of profit taking in the dollar, either going into or right after the next Fed interest rate hike in two weeks. I'm staying away from the currencies. There are too many better fish to fry in the equities.
Q: Can you expect Tech to keep going up after this next run?
A: Yes, I expect us to break out to a new high and give back some ground in a retest of the old high. The old high will then hold and then I expect a sort of slow grind up. Tech could well go up for the rest of 2018.
Q: If the S&P 500 is in a trading range, would you sell any rally?
A: Yes, but I'm going to wait for the rally to come to me; I'm not going to reach for any marginal trades. When the (SPY) gets to $280, I'll be looking very closely at the $285-$290 vertical bear put spread one or two months out. So, that peak should hold for the summer and you can make a good 25%-30% on that kind of spread.
Q: Would you buy Biotech here?
A: Yes, the chart setup here is looking very positive, and it's natural for people to rotate out of Tech to Biotech because the earnings growth is so dramatic. That's why I sent out a Trade Alert to buy the NASDAQ Biotechnology ETF (IBB) yesterday. They have been unfairly held back by fears of drug pricing regulation, which has nothing to do with biotech, but it affects their share prices anyway. But so far, it has been all talk from Trump and no action. I think he's busy with North Korea and the trade wars anyway.
Q: My custodian won't let me sell short the United States Treasury Bond Fund (TLT) so I bought the ProShares Ultra Pro Short 20+ Treasury Fund (TTT). Is that alright?
A: You definitely want to be short the Treasury bonds market for the next several years going forward, so you have the right idea. If the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield jumps from 2.95% today to 4% in a year as I expect, that takes the (TLT) down from $119 to $97. If you can't make money shorting bonds in that environment you should consider another line of work.
The problem with these 3X leveraged funds is that the cost of carry is very high. In the case of the (TTT) it is three times the 3.0% 10-year bond coupon you are shorting plus a 1% management fee for a total of 10% a year. For that reason, the 3X funds are really only good for day trading. You run into a similar problem with the 2X (TBT). This is why I use non-leveraged put spreads or outright puts for this asset class.
Q: Why are we seeing strength in the Alerian master limited partnership (AMLP) when oil prices are falling, and interest rates are rising? Shouldn't it be going the other way?
A: How about more buyers than sellers? There are so many retirees out there desperate for yield they will take on inordinate amounts of risk to get it. With an 8.0% dividend yield you always have an underlying bid for this ETF. That's why we have been recommending this since April. An 8% dividend can cover up a lot of sins, even when interest rates are rising and oil prices are falling. Also, the U.S. is infrastructure constrained now that production is approaching 11 million barrels a day. That is great for the kind of energy projects (AMLP) finances.
Q: What's the next support price for NVIDIA (NVDA)?
A: With the stock going straight up there is little need for support. Our 2018 target is $300. If you recall, we have been recommending this cutting-edge GPU manufacturer since $68, and people have made fortunes. Those who bought long dated deep out-of-the-money leaps $100 out made 1,000% on this Trade Alert 18 months ago. That said, the 200-day moving average at $213 looks rock solid.
Good luck and good trading to all.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Those planning a European vacation this summer just received a big gift from the people of Italy.
Since April, the Euro (FXE) has fallen by 10%. That $1,000 Florence hotel suite now costs only $900. Mille grazie!
You can blame the political instability on the Home of Caesar, which has not had a functioning government since March. The big fear is that the extreme left would form a coalition government with the extreme right that could lead to its departure from the European Community and the Euro. Think of it as Bernie Sanders joining Donald Trump!
In fact, Italy has had 61 different governments since WWII. It changes administrations like I change luxury cars, about once a year. Welcome to European debt crisis part 27.
I can't remember the last time markets cared about what happened in Europe. It was probably the first Greek debt crisis in 2011. This month, 10-year Italian bond yields have rocketed from 1% to 3%. But they care today, big time.
Given the reaction of the global financial markets, you could have been forgiven for thinking that the world had just ended.
U.S. Treasury Bond yields (TLT) saw their biggest plunge in years, off 15 basis points to 2.75%. The Dow Average ($INDU) collapsed by $500 to $24,250, with interest sensitive banks such J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) and Bank of America (BAC) delivering the worst performance of the day.
Even oil prices collapsed for an entirely separate set of reasons - so far, the best performing commodity of 2018. The price of Texas Tea pared 10% in a week.
Saudi Arabia looks like it is about to abandon the wildly successful OPEC production quotas that have been boosting oil prices for the past year, and there are concerns that Iran will withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The geopolitical premium is back with a vengeance.
So, if the Italian developments are a canard why are we REALLY going down?
You're not going to like the answer.
It turns out that rising inflation, interest rates, oil and commodity prices, the U.S. dollar, U.S. national debt, budget deficits, and stagnant wage growth are a TERRIBLE backdrop for risk in general and stocks specifically. And this is all happening with the major indexes at the top end of recent ranges.
In other words, it was an accident waiting to happen.
Traders are extremely nervous, global uncertainty is high, the seasonals are awful, and Washington is s ticking time bomb. If you were wondering why I was issuing so few Trade Alerts in May these are the reasons.
This all confirms my expectation that markets will remain in increasingly narrow trading ranges for the next six months until the mid-term congressional elections.
Which is creating opportunities.
If you hated bonds at a 3.12% yield from two weeks ago, you absolutely have to despise them at 2.75% today. That's why I added outright bond put options today to my model trading portfolio.
Stocks are still wildly overvalued for the short term, so I'll keep my short position there. As for oil (USO), gold (GLD), and the currencies, I don't want to touch them here.
So watch for those coming Trade Alerts. I'm not dead yet, just resting.
Waiting for My Shot
Ignore the lessons of history, and the cost to your portfolio will be great. Especially if you are a bond trader!
Meet deflation, up-front and ugly.
If you looked at a chart for data from the United States, consumer prices are showing a feeble 2.5% YOY price gain. This is slightly above the Federal Reserve's own 2% annual inflation target, with most of the recent gains coming from rising oil prices.
And here's the rub. Wage growth, which accounts for 70% of the inflation calculation, has been practically nil. So, don't expect inflation to rise much from here, despite an unemployment rate at a 17-year low.
We are not just having a deflationary year or decade. We may be having a deflationary century.
If so, it will not be the first one.
The 19th century saw continuously falling prices as well. Read the financial history of the United States, and it is beset with continuous stock market crashes, economic crisis, and liquidity shortages.
The union movement sprung largely from the need to put a break on falling wages created by perennial labor oversupply and sub living wages.
Enjoy riding the New York subway? Workers paid 10 cents an hour built it 120 years ago. It couldn't be constructed today, as other more modern cities have discovered. The cost would be wildly prohibitive.
The causes of 19th century price collapses were easy to discern. A technology boom sparked an industrial revolution that reduced the labor content of end products by 10 to hundredfold.
Instead of employing 100 women for a day to make 100 spools of thread, a single man operating a machine could do the job in an hour.
The dramatic productivity gains swept through then developing economies like a hurricane. The jump from steam to electric power during the last quarter of the century took manufacturing gains a quantum leap forward.
If any of this sounds familiar, it is because we are now seeing a repeat of the exact same impact of accelerating technology. Machines and software are replacing human workers faster than their ability to retrain for new professions.
This is why there has been no net gain in middle class wages for the past 30 years. It is the cause of the structural high U-6 "discouraged workers" employment rate, as well as the millions of Millennials still living in parents' basements.
To the above add the huge advances now being made in healthcare, biotechnology, genetic engineering, DNA-based computing, and big data solutions to problems.
If all the major diseases in the world were wiped out - a probability within 10 years - how many health care jobs would that destroy?
Probably tens of millions.
So the deflation that we have been suffering in recent years isn't likely to end any time soon. If fact, it is just getting started.
Why am I interested in this issue? Of course, I always enjoy analyzing and predicting the far future, using the unfolding of the last half-century as my guide. Then I have to live long enough to see if I'm right.
I did nail the rise of eight-track tapes over six-track ones, the victory of VHS over Betamax, the ascendance of Microsoft operating systems over OS2, and then the conquest of Apple over Microsoft. So, I have a pretty good track record on this front.
For bond traders especially, there are far-reaching consequences of a deflationary century. It means that there will be no bond market crash, as many are predicting, just a slow grind up in long-term interest rates instead.
Amazingly, the top in rates in the coming cycle may only reach the bottom of past cycles, around 3% for 10-year Treasury bonds (TLT), (TBT).
The soonest that we could possibly see real wage rises will be when a generational demographic labor shortage kicks in during the 2020s. That could be a decade off.
I say this not as a casual observer, buy as a trader who is constantly active in an entire range of debt instruments.
So, the bottom line here is that there is additional room for bond prices to fall and yields to rise is pretty limited. But not by that much, given historical comparisons. Think of singles, and not home runs.
It really will just be a trade. Thought you'd like to know.
Yup, This Will Be a Real Job Killer
Global Market Comments
May 1, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2018, DENVER, CO, GLOBAL STRATEGY LUNCHEON)
(ANATOMY OF A GREAT TRADE)
(TLT), (TBT), (SPY), (GLD), (USO),
(CYBERSECURITY IS ONLY JUST GETTING STARTED),
(PANW), (HACK), (FEYE), (CSCO), (FTNT), (JNPR), (CIBR)
