Global Market Comments
March 18, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or THE BIG ROTATION IS ON),
(SNOW), (FCX), (XOM), (TLT), (ALB), (NVDA), (MSFT), (AAPL), (META), (GOOGL), (GOLD), (WPM), (UNP) (FDX), (UNG)
Tag Archive for: (UNG)
Here is the only statistic you need to know right now.
If NVIDIA (NVDA) continues growing at the same rate it has for the last year it will be larger than the entire global economy by 2030, about $100 trillion, up from the current $2 trillion.
Which suggests that it might not actually achieve that lofty goal. Others have reached the same conclusion as I and the stock held up remarkably well in the face of absolutely massive profit-taking last week.
I have been through past market cycles when other stocks seemed to want to go to infinity. There was Apple (AAPL) in the 1980s which went ballistic, then died, was reborn, and then went ballistic again. It is now capped out at a $2.7 trillion market valuation.
Then we all had a great time trading Tesla, which exploded from a split-adjusted $2.35 to $424 and now seems mired in one of its periodic 80% corrections. But mark my word, it is headed to $1,000 someday, taking it up to a $3.2 trillion valuation.
So if NVIDIA isn’t going to $100 trillion what else should be buying right now?
The answer has been apparent in the market for the past two weeks. Interest rate-sensitive commodities have been on a tear, rising 15%-20% across the board. Investors have been using expensive stocks like (NVDA), (MSFT), (AAPL), (META), and (GOOGL) as ATMs to fund purchases of cheap stocks which in some cases have not moved for years.
It really has been an across-the-board move with money pouring into the entire interest rate-sensitive sectors, including copper (FCX), gold (GOLD), silver (WPM), lithium (ALB), Aluminum (AA), and energy (XOM).
It has spread to other economically sensitive stocks like Union Pacific (UNP) and FedEx (FDX). There seems to be an American economic recovery underway, and the bull market is broadening out. The good news is that it’s not too late to get involved.
A lot of it is investor psychology. Investors fear looking stupid more than they fear losing money. If you buy NVIDIA here on top of a one-year tripling and it tanks you will look like an idiot. If you buy commodities here and they grind up for the rest of 2024 you will look like a genius.
While many of you got slaughtered by the collapse of natural gas this winter, with (UNG) cratering from $32 down to a lowly $15, there is in fact a silver lining to this cloud. Cheap energy costs are now permeating throughout the entire global economy and are filtering down to the bottom lines of companies, municipalities, and even governments.
This has been made possible by the growth of US natural gas production from 1 trillion MM BTUs to 7.5 trillion in just the past ten years. The US is now the largest gas and oil producer in the world by a large margin. Replacing Russia as Europe’s largest energy source in just a year was thought impossible and is now a fact and is also enabling the Continent to stand up to Russian Aggression.
There is hope after all.
One question I constantly received during last week’s Mad Hedge Traders & Investors Summit was “When will Tesla (TSLA) shares bottom? The answer is a very firm “Not yet!”
I have been trading the shares of Elon Musk’s creation for 15 years and can tell you that big surges in the stock always precede major generational changes at the company.
We had a nice run from my $2.35 split-adjusted cost when the first Model S came out (I got chassis number 125 off the assembly line), replacing the toy-like two-seat Tesla Roadster, which was built on a cute little Lotus Elise body from England.
The next big run came with the advent of the much cheaper Model 3 in 2017. The ballistic melt up to $424 began with the launch of the small SUV Model Y in 2020, now the biggest-selling car in the world. All we needed was for Elon Musk to sell $10 billion worth of his own stock by early 2022 to put the final top in.
Which raises the question of when the next major generational change at Tesla. That would be the introduction of the $25,000 Model 2 in 2025. Since everything at Tesla happens late (Elon uses deadlines to flog his staff), it better count on late 2025. That means you should start scaling in around the summer. I am already running the numbers on call spreads and LEAPS now.
Can it fall more in the meantime? Absolutely. $150 a share looks like a chip shot. But to only focus on the EV business, which will account for a mere 10% of Tesla’s final total profits, is to miss Elon’s long-term grand vision of a carbon-free world.
Tesla is in the process of becoming the largest electric power utility in the US, eventually providing charging for 150 million cars. It is taking over the car insurance business. My own premiums on my Model X have plunged by 90%.
It's on the way to becoming the world’s largest processor and recycler of lithium. Tesla has a massive large-scale power storage business that no one knows about.
I fully expect Tesla to become the world’s largest company in a decade. Tesla at $1,000 a share here we come. And while the car business may be slow to turn around, the ingredients that go into the cars, like copper (FCX), Aluminum (AA), and lithium (ALB) are starting to move now.
In February we closed up +7.42%. So far in March, we are up +1.34%. My 2024 year-to-date performance is at +4.48%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +6.92% so far in 2024. My trailing one-year return reached +48.70% versus +27.25% for the S&P 500.
That brings my 16-year total return to +681.11%. My average annualized return has recovered to +51.40%.
Some 63 of my 70 round trips were profitable in 2023. Some 11 of 19 trades have been profitable so far in 2024.
I stopped out of my position in Snowflake (SNOW) for a small loss figuring that the tech rally’s days may be number after the most heroic move in history. I then rotated the money into new longs in Freeport McMoRan (FCX) and ExxonMobile (XOM). I also took profits on my short in bonds (TLT) after a $3.50 point dive there. I am maintaining a long in (TLT). I am 70% in cash and am looking for new commodity plays to pile into.
CPI Comes in Hot at 0.4% in February. YOY inflation crawled up to 3.2% to 3.1% expected. Higher shelter and gasoline prices are to blame. Bonds tank as interest rate cuts get pushed back. So do stocks. The market was ripe for a correction anyway.
PPI Comes in Hotter than Hot, at 0.6%. That was higher than the 0.3% forecast from Dow Jones and comes after a 0.3% increase in January. Stocks dipped for two minutes and then rocketed back up. Bad news is good news. Go figure.
Weekly Jobless Claims Dip, to 209,000 to an expected 218,000, and down 1,000 from the previous week. It’s a go-nowhere number.
Next-Generation Boeing Delayed Until 2027, says Delta Airlines, a major customer. The 737-10, Boeing's biggest Max plane with a maximum seating capacity of 230 passengers, is pending certification by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Expect a hard look. Buy (BA) on the next meltdown.
BYD Launches its $12,500 Car, the Model e2 Hatchback, firing another shot across Tesla’s Bow. The EV will initially be available only in China, Tesla’s biggest market, and then in emerging countries without vehicle standards. Don’t expect to see them in the US.
Toyota Agrees to Biggest Wage Hike in 25 Years. Toyota, the world's biggest carmaker and traditionally a bellwether of the annual talks, said it agreed to the demands of monthly pay increases of as much as 28,440 yen ($193) and record bonus payments. Is the Bank of Japan about to raise interest rates? Is the Japanese yen about to rocket?
Inverted What? Economists are going up on the Inverted Yield Curve as a recession indicator. Short-term interest rates have been higher than long-term ones for two years now, but the recession never showed. Relying on obsolete data analysis can be fatal to your wealth.
My Ten -Year View
When we come out the other side of the recession, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age or the next Roaring Twenties. The economy decarbonizing and technology hyper accelerating, creating enormous investment opportunities. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The new America will be far more efficient and profitable than the old.
Dow 240,000 here we come!
On Monday, March 18, at 7:00 AM EST, the NAHB Housing Index is announced.
On Tuesday, March 19 at 8:30 AM, Housing Starts for February are released.
On Wednesday, March 20 at 11:00 AM, the Federal Reserve Interest rate decision is published
On Thursday, March 21 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced.
On Friday, March 15 At 2:00 PM, the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.
As for me, with all of the hoopla over the Oppenheimer movie winning six Academy Awards, including one for best picture, I thought I’d recall my own experience with the nuclear establishment buried in my long and distant past.
If you were good at math there were only two career choices during the early 1970s: teaching math or working for the Dept of Defense. Since I was sick of university after six years, I chose the latter.
That decision sent me down a long bumpy, dusty road in Mercury Nevada headed for the Nuclear Test Site. There was no sign. You could only find the turnoff from US Highway 95 marked by four trailers owned by the nearest hookers to the top-secret base.
Oppenheimer himself had died three years earlier, a victim of throat cancer induced by the chain-smoking of Luck Strikes that was common in those days. But everyone on the base knew him as they had all worked on the Manhattan Project when they were young men. They worshiped him like a god.
I did meet Edward Teller, who argued in the movie that the atomic bomb was a waste of time because his design of a hydrogen bomb was 100 times more powerful. The problem was that there was no target big enough to justify a bomb of that size (there still isn’t).
As I watched the film with my kids, now junior scientists in their own right, I kept pointing out “I knew him,” except they were gnarly old and white-haired by the time I met them. Of course, they are all gone now.
My memories of the Nuclear Test Site were never to ask questions, my visit to the Glass Desert where the sand had been turned into glass by above-ground tests in the fifties, and skinny dipping with the female staff in the small swimming pool at midnight.
The MPs were pissed.
With the signing of the SALT I Treaty in 1972, underground testing moved to computer models and I lost my job. So I was sent to Hiroshima to interview survivors and write a 30-year after-action report. These were some of the most cheerful people I ever met. If an atomic bomb can’t kill you, then nothing can.
When the Cold War ended in 1992, the United States judiciously stepped in and bought the collapsing Soviet Union’s entire uranium and plutonium supply.
For good measure, my hedge fund client George Soros provided a $50 million grant to hire every unemployed Soviet nuclear engineer. The fear then was that starving scientists would go to work for Libya, Iraq, North Korea, or Pakistan, which all had active nuclear programs. They ended up in the US instead.
That provided the fuel to run all US nuclear power plants and warships for 20 years. That fuel has now run out and chances of a resupply from Russia are zero. The Department of Defense attempted to reopen our last plutonium factory in Amarillo, Texas, a legacy of the Johnson administration.
But the facilities were deemed too old and out of date, and it is cheaper to build a new factory from scratch anyway. What better place to do so than Los Alamos, which has the greatest concentration of nuclear expertise in the world.
Los Alamos is a funny sort of place. It sits at 7,320 feet on a mesa on the edge of an ancient volcano so if things go wrong, they won’t blow up the rest of the state. The homes are mid-century modern built when defense budgets were essentially unlimited. As a prime target in a nuclear war, there are said to be miles of secret underground tunnels hacked out of solid rock.
You need to bring a Geiger counter to garage sales because sometimes interesting items are work castaways. A friend almost bought a cool coffee table which turned out to be part of an old cyclotron. And for a town designing the instruments to bring on the possible end of the world, it seems to have an abnormal number of churches. They’re everywhere.
I have hundreds of stories from the old nuclear days passed down from those who worked for J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves, who ran the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s. They were young mathematicians, physicists, and engineers at the time, in their 20’s and 30’s, who later became my university professors. The A-bomb was the most important event of their lives.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t relay this precious unwritten history to anyone without a security clearance. So, it stayed buried with me for a half century, until now.
Some 1,200 engineers will be hired for the first phase of the new plutonium plant, which I got a chance to see. That will create challenges for a town of 13,000 where existing housing shortages already force interns and graduate students to live in tents. It gets cold at night and dropped to 13 degrees F when I was there.
I was allowed to visit the Trinity site at the White Sands Missile Test Range, the first visitor to do so in many years. This is where the first atomic bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945. The 20-kiloton explosion set off burglar alarms for 200 miles and was double to ten times the expected yield.
Enormous targets hundreds of yards away were thrown about like toys (they are still there). Some scientists thought the bomb might ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world but they went ahead anyway because so much money had been spent, 3% of US GDP for four years. Of the original 100-foot tower, only a tiny stump of concrete is left (picture below).
With the other visitors, there was a carnival atmosphere as people worked so hard to get there. My Army escort never left me out of their sight. Some 79 years after the explosion, the background radiation was ten times normal, so I couldn’t stay more than an hour.
Needless to say, that makes uranium plays like Cameco (CCJ), NextGen Energy (NXE), Uranium Energy (UEC), and Energy Fuels (UUUU) great long-term plays, as prices will almost certainly rise all of which look cheap. US government demand for uranium and yellow cake, its commercial byproduct, is going to be huge. Uranium is also being touted as a carbon-free energy source needed to replace oil.
At Ground Zero in 1945
What’s Left of a Trinity Target 200 Yards Out
Playing With My Geiger Counter
Atomic Bomb No.3 Which was Never Used in Tokyo
What’s Left from the Original Test
Good Luck and Good Trading,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
February 26, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or WHO NEEDS RATE CUTS?
(NVDA), (TSLA), (BRK/B), (SPY), (AMZN), (UNG)
People will be sitting around campfires trading stories about last week’s NVIDIA move for decades.
Analysts have been struggling to outdo each other in describing their earnings report that came out on Thursday. Here’s my favorite: The gain in the company’s market capitalization on that day, at $278 billion the largest in history, exceeded its TOTAL market capitalization at the pandemic bottom.
And here I deserve some bragging rights. Mad Hedge followers went into last week’s melt-up, UP TO THEIR EYEBALLS in (NVDA). They owned the stock, call options, and call spreads. The LEAPS alone delivered a 12X return, and some readers who customize their own strike prices (the $295-$300s) received a 50X return. It was almost everyone’s largest position.
It was easy for me to do the NVIDIA trade. When the company launched its first high-end graphics card in 1993, every computer geek out there flocked to them. I used to tear apart my company’s PCs, throw out the graphics cards they came with, and install NVIDIA cards. The performance improvement was remarkable, especially for advanced mathematical calculations.
The company is blessed. It went public at $12 a share just before the Dotcom Bust and the IPO window closed for years. Adjusted for 12:1 splits over the years and that drops the original IPO price to $1. A dollar invested in 1999 would be worth $750 at last week’s high. NVIDIA’s CEO, Jensen Huang, is now one of the richest men in the world solely through the ownership of his NVIDIA shares.
God Bless America!
Also last week, my inbox was jammed with inquiries on what company will become the next NVIDIA. And here is the bad news. There aren’t any 750:1 returns anywhere on the horizon. There are not even any 175:1 opportunities that we earned from Tesla (TSLA) over the years either where we also had heavy exposure.
And the reason is very simple. You are not going to get the entry points today with the Dow Average at 39,000 that you got in 2009 when it was at only 6,000, or when it was at a mere 600 when I joined Morgan Stanley in 1982. The last decent entry point for (NVDA) was the $100 pandemic low in April 2020.
Want to own the next (NVDA)? Try buying (NVDA), where an analyst raised his target to $1,420, up 80% from the Friday close. It’s just a matter of time before its market cap jumps from $2 trillion to $3 trillion, making it the largest company in the world. That’s what an airtight monopoly in the world’s most valuable product gets you.
Technology earnings are now exploding at such a rapid pace that it is time to consider the unthinkable: What if stocks don’t need interest rate cuts for the bull market to continue? After all, the companies seem to be doing just fine without any such assistance.
Why try to fix what isn’t broken?
In fact, these large cash flow companies would take a hit on their income statements as they are already net creditors to the financial system. Apple (AAPL) alone would lose $8 billion in annual income if interest rates went back to zero.
While that may be true for the Magnificent Seven or the AI Five, it is not true for the Unimagnificent 493. They actually need cheaper money for their stock prices to get going or even just to survive. That is especially true for all the falling interest rate plays, like bonds, utilities, real estate, precious metals, energy, and foreign currencies.
And don’t even talk to me about small caps, which depend on low interest rates for the breath of life.
It says a lot that Warren Buffet believes there is nothing left to buy in his annual letter to shareholders, an early Mad Hedge subscriber. His spectacular annual compounded returns of 19.8% a year, more than double that of the S&P 500 (SPY), are now a thing of the past.
The few targets left out there are few and far between and heavily picked over. (BRK/B) has also lost the advice of its principal mentor, Charlie Munger at the ripe old age of 99. Last year Berkshire acquired Dairy Queen and Berkshire Energy. But at $905 billion in assets under management, those will hardly move the needle. The 93-year-old Buffet has outperformed the S&P 500 by 141:1 since 1964.
Who says age is an impediment?
So far in February, we are up +5.92%. My 2024 year-to-date performance is also at +1.64%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +6.50% so far in 2024. My trailing one-year return reached +57.73% versus +38.67% for the S&P 500.
That brings my 15-year total return to +678.27%. My average annualized return has recovered to +51.19%, another new high.
Some 63 of my 70 trades last year were profitable in 2023.
I used the ballistic move-in (NVDA) to take profits in my double long there. I am maintaining a single long (AMZN) and am 90% in cash given the elevated level of the markets.
NVIDIA Announces Blowout Earnings, with AI reaching the “tipping point” according to the CEO Jensen Huang. Revenues came in at a spectacular $22.1 billion versus an expected $20.6 billion off the backing of exploding data center demand, up 33%. Earnings were up 22% QOQ and 225% YOY. The shares exploded $100 in the aftermarket at one point, up 15.6%. Forward guidance was ramped up too. Buy NVDA on dips. At a PE multiple of 18X, it is the cheapest AI stock out there.
Mad Hedge Clocks Biggest One Day Gain in 16 Years, with a double weighting in NVIDIA (NVDA), up +6.072%. If you like that the Mad Hedge Technology Letter is doing even better, up +13% YTD. And we are still early days into the tech melt-up, which could go on for another decade. Our YOY gain is up +59.62%. The harder I work, the luckier I get.
Existing Home Sales Jumped 3% YOY, boosted by lower mortgage interest rates in November and December. Inventories of homes for sale in January increased to 1.01 million units, up 3.1% from January 2023, but still at a low 3-month supply. The median existing home price for all housing types in January was $379,100, up 5.1% from a year earlier and an all-time high for the month of January.
Weekly Jobless Claims Dropped to a one-month low, down 12,000 to 201,000. No recession here. California and Kentucky saw the largest declines.
China Bans Stock Selling, by institutional investors at market openings and closes when liquidity is the greatest. It’s part of the government’s most forceful attempt yet to prop up the nation’s $8.6 trillion stock market. It’s another sign of a weakening China. When restrictions are placed on markets, capital flees. Whoever thought of this one must have a hole in their head. Avoid (FXI).
California demolishes Solar Providers, cutting the price the utility PG&E has to pay for home power providers by 75%. Solar companies like SunPower (SPWR), are down 89% since last year. Avoid solar providers for now, which was always a low value-added business.
Amazon (AMZN) is getting added to the Dow Average, opening it up to massive index buying. Retailer Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) is getting bumped. Since 1896, the blue-chip index has made few changes to its 30-stock lineup, having altered its constituents about 60 times in its 128-year history. Buy (AMZN) on dips.
US Stocks now account for 70% of Global Stock Market Capitalization, thanks to the ballistic moves in big tech. This level represents the largest country weighting since I helped create this index way back in 1986. It also now has the lowest exposure to non-US stocks. Money is pouring into the US from all corners of the world, the planet's most successful economy.
Natural Gas Hits (UNG) Three Year Low, at $1.63MM BTU, and down an eye-popping 50% in a month. Warm weather, high inventories, and overproduction due to cheap capital are the price killers. An LNG train broke down, cutting export demand. If you didn’t get out on the double in December you’re toast. Avoid (UNG).
My Ten-Year View
When we come out the other side of the recession, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age or the next Roaring Twenties. The economy decarbonizing and technology hyper accelerating, creating enormous investment opportunities. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The new America will be far more efficient and profitable than the old.
Dow 240,000 here we come!
On Monday, February 26, the New Home Sales are announced.
On Tuesday, February 27 at 8:30 AM EST, the Durable Goods are released. The S&P Case Shiller for December is announced.
On Wednesday, February 28 at 2:00 PM, the Q2 GDP second read is published.
On Thursday, February 29 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced. We also get the Core Consumer Price Expectations.
On Friday, March 1 at 2:30 PM, the December ISM Manufacturing PMI is published. At 2:00 PM the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.
As for me, the telephone call went out amongst the family with lightning speed, and this was back in 1962 when long-distance cost a fortune. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was going to visit my grandfather’s cactus garden in Indio the next day, said to be the largest in the country, and family members were invited.
I spent much of my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s helping grandpa look for rare cactus in California’s lower Colorado Desert, where General Patton trained before invading Africa. That involved a lot of digging out a GM pickup truck from deep sand in the remorseless heat. SUVs hadn’t been invented yet, and a Willys Jeep (click here) was the only four-wheel drive then available in the US.
I have met nine of the last 13 presidents, but Eisenhower was my favorite. He certainly made an impression on me as a ten-year-old boy, who I remember as a kindly old man.
I walked with Eisenhower and my grandfather plant by plant, me giving him the Latin name for its genus and species and citing unique characteristics and uses by the Indians. The former president showed great interest and in two hours we covered the entire garden. I still make my kids learn the Latin names of plants.
Eisenhower lived on a remote farm at the famous Gettysburg, PA battlefield given to him by a grateful nation. But the winters there were harsh, so he often visited the Palm Springs mansion of TV Guide publisher Walter Annenberg, a major campaign donor.
Eisenhower was a one-of-a-kind brilliant man that America always came up with when it needed them the most. He learned the ropes serving as Douglas MacArthur’s Chief of Staff during the 1930’s. Franklin Roosevelt picked him out of 100 possible generals to head the Allied invasion of Europe, even though he had no combat experience.
After the war, both the Democratic and Republican parties recruited him as a candidate for the 1952 election. The latter prevailed, and “Ike” served two terms, defeating the governor of Illinois Adlai Stevenson twice. During his time, he ended the Korean War, started the battle over civil rights at Little Rock, began the Interstate Highway System, and admitted Hawaii as the 50th state.
As my dad was very senior in the Republican Party in Southern California during the 1950s, I got to meet many of the bigwigs of the day. New York prosecutor Thomas Dewy ran for president twice, against Roosevelt and Truman, and was a cold fish and aloof. Barry Goldwater was friends with everyone and a decorated bomber pilot during the war.
Richard Nixon would do anything to get ahead, and it was said that even his friends despised him. He let the Vietnam War drag out five years too long when it was clear we were leaving. Some 21 guys I went to high school with died in Vietnam during this time. I missed Kennedy and Johnson. Wrong party and they died too soon. Ford was a decent man and I even went to church with him once, but the Nixon pardon ended his political future.
Peanut farmer Carter was characterized as an idealistic wimp. But the last time I checked, the Navy didn’t hire wimps as nuclear submarine commanders. He did offer to appoint me Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, but I turned him down because I thought the $15,000 salary was too low. There were not a lot of Japanese-speaking experts on the Japanese steel industry around in those days. Biggest mistake I ever made.
Ronald Reagan’s economic policies drove me nuts and led to today’s giant deficits, which was a big deal if you worked for The Economist. But he always had a clever dirty joke at hand which he delivered to great effect….always off camera. The tough guy Reagan you saw on TV was all acting. His big accomplishment was not to drop the ball when it was handed to him to end the Cold War.
I saw quite a lot of George Bush, Sr. whom I met with my Medal of Honor Uncle Mitch Paige at WWII anniversaries, who was a gentleman and fellow pilot. Clinton was definitely a “good old boy” from Arkansas, a glad-hander, and an incredible campaigner, but he was also a Rhodes Scholar. His networking skills were incredible. George Bush, Jr. I missed as he never came to California. And 22 years later we are still fighting in the Middle East.
Obama was a very smart man and his wife Michelle even smarter. Stocks went up 400% on his watch and Mad Hedge Fund Trader prospered mightily. But I thought a black president of the United States was 50 years early. How wrong was I. Trump I already knew too much about from when I was a New York banker.
As for Biden, I have no opinion. I never met the man. He lives on the other side of the country. When I covered the Senate for The Economist, he was a junior member.
Still, it’s pretty amazing that I met 10 out of the last 14 presidents. That’s 20% of all the presidents since George Washington. I bet only a handful of people have done that, and the rest all live in Washington DC. And I’m a nobody, just an ordinary guy.
It just makes you think about the possibilities.
Really.
Good Luck and Good Trading,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
It’s Been a Long Road
Global Market Comments
February 9, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(FEBRUARY 7 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(LLY), (FXI), (TSM), (BABA), (PLTR), (MSBHF), (SMCI), (JPM), (INDY), (INDA), (TSLA), (BYDDF), (NFLX), (META), (UNG)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the February 7 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA.
Q: Have you ever flown an ME-262?
A: There's only nine of the original German jet fighters left from WWII in museums. One hangs from the ceiling in the Deutsches Museum in Munich (click here for the link), I have been there and seen it and it is truly a thing of beauty. You would have to be out of your mind to fly that plane, because the engines only had a 10 hour life. That's because during WWII, the Germans couldn't get titanium to make jet engine blades and used steel instead, and those fell apart almost as soon as they took off. So, of the 1,443 ME-262’s made there’s only nine left. The Allies were so terrified of this plane, which could outfly our own Mustangs by 100 miles per hour, that they burned every one they found. That’s also why there are no Japanese Zeros.
Q: Thoughts on Palantir (PLTR) long term?
A: I love it, it’s a great data and security play. Right now, markets are revaluing all data plays, whatever they are. But it is also overvalued having almost doubled in a week.
Q: What do you make of all these layoffs in Silicon Valley? What does this mean for tech stocks?
A: It means tech stocks go up. The tech stocks for a long time have practiced over-employment. They were growing so fast, they always kept a reserve of about 10% of extra staff so they could be put them to work immediately when the demand came. Now they are switching to a new business model: fire everybody unless you absolutely have to have them right now, and make everybody you have work twice as hard. That greatly increases the profitability of these companies, as we saw with META (META), which had its profits triple—and that seems to be the new Silicon Valley business model. If you're one of the few 100,000 that have been laid off in Silicon Valley, eventually the economy will grow back to where they can absorb you. That's how it's going to play out. In the meantime, go take a vacation somewhere, because you're not going to get any vacations once you get a new job.
Q: I have had shares of Alibaba (BABA) since 2020 and the stock has been in free fall since. Should I take the 80% loss or hold?
A: Well, number one, you need to learn about risk control. Number two, you need to learn about stop losses. I stop out when things go 10% against me; that's a good level. At 80%, you might as well keep the stock. You've already taken the loss and who knows, China may recover someday. It's not recovering now because no foreigners want to invest in China with all the political risk and invasion risk of Taiwan. After all, look at what happened to Russia when they invaded Ukraine—that didn't work out so well for them.
Q: On the Chinese economy (FXI), is the poorer performance due to the decision to move to a war economy? The move in the economic front was described in Xi's speech to the CCP in January of 2023.
A: The real reason, which no one is talking about except me, is the one child policy, which China practiced for 40 years. What it has meant is you now have 40 years of missing consumers that were never born. And there is no solution to that, at least no short-term solution. They're trying to get Chinese people to have more kids now, and you're seeing three and four child families for the first time in 40 years in China. But there is no short-term fix. When you mess with demographics, you mess with economic growth. We warned the Chinese this would happen at the time, and they ignored us. They said if they hadn't done the one child policy, the population of China today would be 1.8 billion instead of 1.2 billion. Well, they’re kind of damned no matter what they do so there was no good solution for them. Of course, threatening to invade your neighbors is never good for attracting foreign investment for sure. Nobody here wants to touch China with a 10-foot pole until there’s a new leader who is more pacifist.
Q: What do you think of Eli Lilly (LLY)?
A: I absolutely love it. If there's a never-ending bull market in fat Americans, which is will go on forever, they're one of two companies that have the cure at $1,000 a month. On the other hand, the stock has tripled in the last 18 months, so it’s kind of late in the game to get in.
Q: Are there any stocks that become an attractive short in the event of a Taiwan invasion, such as Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM)?
A: All stocks become attractive shorts in the event of another war in China. You don't want to be anywhere near stocks and the semis will have the greatest downside beta as they always do. You don't want to be anywhere near bonds either, because the Chinese still own about a trillion dollars’ worth of our bonds. Cash and T-bills suddenly looks great in the event of a third war on top of the two that we already have in Gaza and Ukraine.
Q: What do you think about the prospects of the Japanese stock market now?
A: I think the big move is done; it finally hit a new high after a 34-year wait. The next big move in Japan is when the Yen gets stronger, and that is bad for Japanese stocks, so I would be a little cautious here unless you have some great single name plays like Warren Buffett does with Mitsubishi Corp. (MSBHF). So that's my view on Japan—I'm not chasing it after being out for 34 years. Why return? The companies in the US are better anyway.
Q: What is the deal with Supermicro Computer (SMCI)? It went up 23 times in a year to $669 after not clear $30 for a decade.
A: The answer is artificial intelligence. It is basically creating immense demand for the entire chip ecosystem, including high end servers, which Supermicro makes. It also has the benefit of being a small company with a small float, hence the ballistic move. It was too small to show up on my radar. I’ll catch the next one. There are literally thousands of companies like (SMCI) in Silicon Valley.
Q: Will JP Morgan (JPM) bank shares keep rising, or will they fall when the Fed cuts rates?
A: (JPM) will keep rising because recovering economies create more loan demand, allow wider margins, and cause default rates to go down. It becomes a sort of best case scenario for banks, and JP Morgan is the best of the breed in the banking sector. It also benefits the most from the concentration of the US banking sector, which is on its way from 4,000 banks to 6 with help from the US government.
Q: Is India a good long-term play? Which of the two ETFs I recommend are the better ones?
A: Yes, India is a good long-term play. You buy both iShares India 50 (INDY) and the iShares MSCI India (INDA), which I helped create yonks ago. India is the new China, and the old China is going nowhere. So, yes, India definitely is a play, especially if the dollar starts to weaken.
Q: Do you expect to pull back in your market timing index?
A: Yes, probably this month. Have I ever seen it go sideways at the top for an extended period? No, I haven't. On the other hand, we’ve never had a new thing like artificial intelligence hit the market, nor have we seen five stocks dominate the entire market like we're seeing now. So, there are a lot of unprecedented factors in the market now which no one has ever seen before, therefore they don't know what to do. That is the difficulty.
Q: Does India have an in-country built EV, and what is their favorite EV in India?
A: No, but Tesla (TSLA) is talking about building a factory there. And I would have to say BYD Motors (BYDDF) because they have the world’s cheapest EV’s. There is essentially no car regulation in India except on imports. Car regulation and safety requirements is what keeps the BYDs out of the United States, and it's kept them out for the last 15 years. So that is the issue there.
Q: What do you think about META as a dividend play?
A: I think META will go higher, but like the rest of the AI 5, it is desperately in need of a pull back and a refresh to allow new traders to come in.
Q: Why does Netflix (NFLX) keep going up? I thought streaming was saturated—what gives?
A: Netflix won the streaming wars. They have the best content and the best business strategy; and they banned sharing of passwords, which hit my family big time since it seemed like the whole world was using my Netflix password. And no, I'm not going tell you what my password is. I’ve already paid for Griselda enough times. Seems there is a lot of demand for strong women in my family. Netflix they seem to be enjoying a near monopoly now on profits.
Q: Has the NASDAQ come too far too fast, and does it have more to run?
A: Well it does have more to run, but needs a pull back first. I'm thinking we'll get one this month, but I'm definitely not shorting it in the meantime.
Q: Have you ordered your Tesla (TSLA) Cybertruck?
A: I actually ordered it two years ago and it may be another two year wait; with my luck the order will come through when I'm in Europe and I'll miss it. Some of my friends have already gotten deliveries because they ordered on day one. They love it.
Q: What happened to United States Natural Gas (UNG)?
A: A super cold spell hit the Midwest, froze all the pipes, and nobody could deliver natural gas just when the power companies were screaming for more gas. That created the double in the price which you should have sold into! Usually, people don't need to be told to take a profit when something doubles in 2 weeks, but apparently there are some out there as I've been here getting emails from them. Further confusing matters further is that (UNG) did a 4:1 reverse split right at this time. They have to do this every few years or the 35% a year contango takes the price below $1.00 and shares can’t trade below $1.00 on the New York Stock Exchange.
To watch a replay of this webinar with all the charts, bells, whistles, and classic rock music, just log in to www.madhedgefundtrader.com , go to MY ACCOUNT, select your subscription (GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH, TECHNOLOGY LETTER, or Jacquie's Post), then WEBINARS, and all the webinars from the last 12 years are there in all their glory.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
January 26, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(JANUARY 24 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A)
(TLT), (IWM), (SPY), (ALK), (FXI), (UAL), (BA), (NVDA), (UUP), (UNG), (MSFT), (GOOGL), (AMZN), (NVDA), (META), (CCI)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the January 24 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA.
Q: Will you stop out of (TLT) if it breaches the $93 level?
A: Yes, and I'm actually hoping it will do that because that sets up some really great two-year LEAPS for the (TLT) going out long-term. It's trying to hold in here at the bottom. It's been in the $93 handle for several days now, so we'll just watch.
Q: There seems to be negativity all over the place, but markets continue upwards. What are the chances of a black swan this year, and what do you think it might be?
A: Well, there always is a possibility of a black swan. That's why we do risk control and risk management all the time because black swans are by definition unpredictable. The reason people are negative is that they don't own more stocks, and they keep going straight up, at least the tech ones do. Money managers always look dumber not owning a market that's going up than owning a market that's going down and losing money with everybody else. It's just the way investor psychology works.
Q: Do you expect small caps (IWM) to outperform the S&P 500 (SPY) this year?
A: Yes I do, but it'll be a second half of the year game. They really need the big drops in interest rates to get earnings moving.
Q: Would Boeing (BA) be good for a LEAPS?
A: Yes, it would, but I would go out to the maximum maturity, say two to two and a half years, and you may get a double on your money on that. Basically, there are only two airplane manufacturers in the world that have a monopoly (or a duopoly to be technically correct) and Boeing is one of them. So love them or hate them, you still have to buy their airplanes; look no further than Alaska Airlines (ALK) and United (UAL), which have had to cancel literally tens of thousands of flights because they don't have enough airplanes. They had to ground all their 737 maxes.
Q: With all the shooting going on in the Middle East, why isn't oil higher?
A: It's all about China (FXI). As long as China is in a recession which seems to be getting worse, oil demand falls. China is the world's largest importer of oil by a large margin. They're also taking all the natural gas that the US will produce, and that is a big drag on prices. That will end when China starts to recover, and we did get a major stimulus package out of the Chinese government this week.
Q: What about NVIDIA (NVDA)? It's gone up so much. I'm up 300% since my cost. Should I sell now and take profits or just run the long?
A: This whole group, which I now call the AI 5—Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), NVIDIA (NVDA), and Meta (META) could drop 20% at any time and then go on to new highs, and that's exactly what happened in the fall. We had a 20% drop in everything and then it just shot off to the races. So as long as you can handle a 20% decline in these stocks, and if you're a long-term investor, then you should keep them. Because the risk is you'll take profits, generate a big tax bill, and then won't be able to get back in at the next low, and you'll end up missing the next $1,000 point move. If you're the trader of the century like me, you can do that. But for your average garden variety trading at-home investor, I would say keep what's winning—keep the AI 5.
Q: Thanks John, I got a double on your (UNG) LEAPS that you put out over Christmas. It's since given back much of the gains. Do you see another big rally in (UNG) this year?
A: Yes, that was a 2-year LEAPS I put out. It doubled in 2 weeks, and I do see a bigger recovery in the second half of the year once the Chinese economy starts to recover. Their marginal first choice for new energy supplies is American natural gas; it's not oil from the Middle East. They're trying to clean up their atmosphere as much as we are, so look for another big demand spike for (UNG) later in the year.
Q: Why has the dollar (UUP) been so strong?
A: Rising interest rates. Currencies are all about interest rates and where the next interest rate move is going to be. Money always pours into the currency that has the next rise in interest rates. That's been the US dollar for all of this year so far.
Q: Will the election have an effect on the market?
A: Absolutely not. Nobody cares about the election. If you're an election junkie, you may stay glued to your TV. I'm not interested myself. I don't expect any changes in the economy to take place this year, and that's all investors and money managers really care about—is how they will do by the end of this year. So you're better off watching sports on ESPN is all I can tell you. Oh yes, and this is supposed to be a record year for disinformation about elections and candidates. Another reason to not bother with the election this year. Go watch the Jack Reacher series. At least there you can keep track of the body count.
Q: Is it a good time to buy a home right now?
A: Yes, if you have cash. It is still too expensive to borrow money to buy a home with 30-year mortgages at 6.5% and 5/1 ARMs at 6% or even 5.5%, but if you have cash, it is a great time to buy a house because what is the next move? Interest rates go down. Suddenly everybody in the world can afford houses and they now want to buy your house. So very rapid price rises are coming for the housing market once the rates start to fall, which could be March, could be June, depending on how Jerome Powell feels that morning.
Q: With EV sales up 50% last year (TSLA), why has copper been so weak?
A: The old high price of copper was based on continuing 50% per year increases in EV sales for the indefinite future. In fact, we got a 50% increase last year and forecasts for 10% growth only this year, so that's a big part of it. Also, backing out the Chinese construction demand gives copper a huge hit. New construction in China is essentially at zero and will be at zero for quite some time because of the real estate crisis there. Some people in China are looking at prices on their homes down 80%, which sounds like a repeat of our 2008 financial crisis. So that is another major drag on copper.
Q: Is it a good time to “buy wrights”?
A: Absolutely yes. If you read today's newsletter, it tells you how to do a buy write, and you do “buy rights” on the most expensive stocks. For example, NVIDIA (NVDA) at $600 today—you can get $8 for the February $650 calls, which you sell short against your stock ownership at $600, or you can go out to March 15th and you can get $19 for the March $650 calls. That will reduce your average cost for the shares by $19, so actually (NVDA) is, in fact, one of the best stocks to do this in, because it has the highest implied volatility of any options, second to Tesla (TSLA), it turns out.
Q: How did you predict the S&P 500 so accurately last year? You got within a point, pretty amazing.
A: All I can say is 55 years of practice helps! And I am a bit of a contrarian person; so when everybody said the market was going to go down, I said, “How about new all-time highs?” But also the answer to all questions really is people are wildly underestimating the impact of technology and AI, which continues to surprise the upside and will keep doing so for the next decade. That is the driver of all asset prices everywhere right now, and people will figure that out in probably about 5 years.
Q: Crown Castle Inc. (CCI), is that a good one to watch, with renewed interest in REITS?
A: Absolutely yes, and it's also a great interest-rate play. It had a horrible selloff going into October and has since made back all of those losses. We actually had a LEAPS in (CCI), which is now making money.
To watch a replay of this webinar with all the charts, bells, whistles, and classic rock music, just log in to www.madhedgefundtrader.com, go to MY ACCOUNT, click on GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH, then WEBINARS, and all the webinars from the last 12 years are there in all their glory.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
January 12, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(JANUARY 10 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A)
(SPY), (UNG), (NVDA), (UUP), (FXA), (GOOG), (GOOGL), (GLD), (GOLD), (WPM), (BYDDY), (F), (GM), (TSLA)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the January 10 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA.
Q: Would you sell Nvidia (NVDA) covered calls?
A: No, I would not. Nvidia could double at any time, or at least go up 50%. That is not a covered call writing situation, that is a long call situation, or at the very least a long call spread situation. Do not bet against Nvidia on pain of death—one of the seven-stop losses I had last year was a short in Nvidia.
Q: Do you recommend any brokers for executing my trades?
A: Yes, I recommend tastytrade (click here) because they have some of the lightest code in the entire industry. It’s written to go very fast. Plus they have very competitive margin rates and commissions. They only charge commissions on openings, not on closings for most stocks, etlfs, options and crypto.
Q: Why are you adding positions when the market timing index is so high? Aren't you supposed to be avoiding risk here?
A: The market timing index in the PowerPoint is for the S&P 500 only. If you look at the individual stocks that I've added in the last two days, they've all had 10-20% corrections. So you don't want to touch the main market up here. If anything it's a short, and I am looking at an S&P 500 (SPY) short, by the way, to hedge our other longs. Individual stocks have already corrected, and I've already started to add positions in the leaders for the year. Big tech is moving up; it’s leading the rally so that is what's happening there.
Q: Is it time to buy Tesla (TSLA)? It's a 200-day moving average.
A: I don't want to touch Tesla until the price war is over. Obviously, it's still continuing and Tesla itself is leading the charge on the price war, so I would hold off on that while the other tech stocks like Nvidia (NVDA) are so hot.
Q: I bought the UNG (United States Natural Gas Fund) LEAPS you put out over the Christmas vacation. They have since doubled in value in two weeks. Should I take profits?
A: Yes. Always take a profit in any option play when you get an immediate return because they have the tendency to give up those returns very quickly. They do call natural gas the “widow maker” in the commodities market because of the extreme volatility. So when you get a 50% move in natural gas or any commodity, take the money and run. Go to Las Vegas for a weekend, take your wife to Hawaii, pay off your kid's student loans, or buy yourself a new Rolex watch! Take the quick profit. You always get a chance to buy again on a dip, and there’s nothing like starting off 2024 with a double on a LEAP. For me, it's a matter of professional pride, not about the money. So way to go, John Thomas.
Q: Has crude oil reached the bottom?
A: $70 per barrel has been holding for a long time, but it's not acting like a bottom. I have to tell you, it's not getting any big dead cat bounces you see at real bottoms. So my guess is we have to move into the 60s, maybe all the way down to $62 before we get a turnaround. We need to see a turnaround in the global economy before we get a turnaround in the price of oil, and especially a turnaround in China, which is the world's largest importer of oil—and there is no sign of that happening anytime soon. So there is your answer; watch China.
Q: Will any Bitcoin ETFs be approved in the US?
A: Probably yes, but that also could mark a top of the market. Remember the insiders, the miners, have a huge trading advantage over us. Which is one reason why I'm avoiding this asset class this time around. I have a feeling we'll peak lower than the last high, and then we go back down into lows again. So avoid Bitcoin. There are too many other better things to buy now like Nvidia. During the last Bitcoin peak, all the techs were insanely expensive, and now they're not. We have better alternatives to crypto than we did two years ago.
Q: With China not improving, do you still like the US dollar to drop and the Australian dollar to increase?
A: I do expect the US dollar (UUP) to fall. I think it's peaked out and already dropped 10%, and I expect the Aussie (FXA) to rise. It's already risen by about 7%, but not because of China. It's happening because the US will cut interest rates anywhere from 3 to 6 times this year. And it could be either; it could be 3 quarter-point rate cuts, or it could be 6. I'm kind of leaning towards 6 myself. Which leads to the next question...
Q: Do you still like bonds?
A: Absolutely, yes. (TLT) is trading around $97 today. I'm looking for it to hit $110 to $120 by the end of the year, plus the interest payments. So the total return on (TLT) bonds will be between 18% and 28% on the year. Most people will take that.
Q: Do you still like uranium?
A: Yes. In fact, just last week, France announced it was building 14 new nuclear power plants. These are the big 1 to 4-megawatt old-style plants on top of their additional programs. So that creates more demand for yellow cake fuel and more demand for uranium, and it is getting a lot of push these days as a green fuel. Which it is—it is non-carbon producing. By the way, look at NuScale (SMR) if you're interested in uranium because they have the newest design that solves all the old nuclear problems. And the stock just had a big selloff because they lost a customer.
Q: Do you still like the banks?
A: Well, all four of the financial LEAPS that I recommended at the bottom of the banking crisis in March are all expiring this month at max profits anywhere over a hundred percent. So yes, I love the banks, but I don't especially like them right here, not on top of 30-35% gains. So wait for a pullback. These would be great candidates for any sell-off going into March; that's when we take another look at these. Oh, and if another bank goes bankrupt so much the better, that creates much better entry points.
Q: What's the best way to trade long-term dollar shorts (UUP)?
A: The answer is through futures contracts through banks, is the cheapest way to do it. You get a leverage of 10 to 100 times depending on the contract. You can do long or short. The dealing expenses are the cheapest, and that's how professionals trade for their own account, is through futures contracts through banks. It's not really an equity play. There are a number of short-dollar ETFs out there, but dealing with expenses wide, tracking errors is big so it is not an efficient way to do it. So, that would be my recommendation on long-term dollar shorts. The other way is to buy the Australian dollar, the (FXA).
Q: How are your stem cell knee injections working, John?
A: Fantastic. It completely cured my arthritis with my stem cell injections in my knees and lower back. And after I got shot in the hip in Ukraine, I had a Stem cell injection there too, and that worked. So the pain is completely gone from that bullet wound I got from the Russians in October. Yes, I'm one of the lucky people where everything stem cell-related seems to work, so I do all of them. Go ahead and try it, it’ll only cost you a thousand dollars or two per injection.
Q: When trading Google, do you use the (GOOGL) or just the (GOOG)?
A: One is the holding company, and one is the operating company for the search business. It's really six of one and half a dozen of the other. Both are liquid. The tracking between the two is almost nil, so I don't bother.
Q: Do you expect a recession or high unemployment this year?
A: No, you never get recessions or high unemployment in election years. And much of the spending that the administration obtained years ago has yet to be spent. You know, the lag time on government spending is in the years and it magically tends to happen the most in election years. Go figure. So after a slowdown in the first quarter, I'm expecting to speed up going into the rest of the year.
Q: How much can gold (GLD) go up this year?
A: At least 20 to 30%. Which means the Barrick Gold (GOLD) and Newmont Mining (NEM) could easily double this year. And what about silver? It should go up even more. Which means a Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM) leap at this level should go up 400%. Yes, you've heard it here first, 400% with fairly low risk. And if you want to know how to do that, just search for LEAPS on my website or become a concierge member and you can call me and I'll tell you how to do it. I'll guide your hand on how to do the trade.
Q: Is BYD in China a threat to Tesla (TSLA)?
A: No. BYD Motors (BYDDY) is taking over the low end of the market. Read the least profitable end of the market in China where they actually sell more cars than Tesla including hybrids, but Tesla still leads in EVs, and it's the question of would you rather own a Rolls Royce or a Volkswagen. That is the choice. In China, people buy EVs to show off their wealth, and a BYD car shows off your humility or at least your stinginess. So in some emerging markets where cost is the issue, BYD may take over the market, but they won't make very much money at it. And in other markets where quality is the issue like the US, like China, Tesla will dominate and you may end up with a situation like you have with Apple (APPL). Apple has only a 6% market share in the global cell phone business, but they account for 91% of global profits in the cell phone business, and Tesla could do the same. They could end up making all the money with a lesser market share ceding the bottom end or the money-losing end of the market to BYD, Ford (F), General Motors (GM), or anybody else down there.
Q: What do you think of a (TLT) February $90-$93 vertical bull call debit spread for February?
A: I like it. It’s a little close to the money—I usually try to go out $5 points on the TLT strikes when I'm setting these up. So that's a little aggressive, but you'll end up making more money. My bet is you could make 20% on this call spread right here. So many people are still trying to get into the bond market. They got left out, the move up was so fast since October. The institutional investors that dominate that market are not used to the idea of speed. So yes, I think we're looking at a sideways move before the next leg up.
To watch a replay of this webinar with all the charts, bells, whistles, and classic rock music, just log in to www.madhedgefundtrader.com, go to MY ACCOUNT, click on GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH, TECHNOLOGY LETTER, or JACQUIE'S POST, then WEBINARS, and all the webinars from the last 12 years are there in all their glory.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
