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)
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)
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
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 I know the owner of the company, and they have the lightest code in the entire industry. It’s written to go very fast; that gives you a price advantage over other platforms. Plus they have very competitive margin rates and commissions. They only charge commissions on openings, not on closings.
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
We’ve just seen our last interest rate rise in the economic cycle. Yes, I know that our central bank took no action at their last meeting in September. The market has just done its work for it.
And the markets are no shrinking violet when it comes to taking bold action. The 50 basis points it took bond yields up over the last two weeks is far more than even the most aggressive, economy-wrecking, stock market-destroying Fed was even considering.
And that doesn’t even include the rate hikes no one can see, the deflationary effects of quantitative tightening, or QT. That is the $1 trillion a year the Fed is sucking out of the economy with its massive bond sales.
It really is a miracle that the US economy is growing as fast as it is. After a warm 2.4% growth rate in Q2, Q3 looks to come in at a blistering 4%-5%. That is definitely NOT what recessions are made of.
Where is all this growth coming from?
Some of the credit goes to the pandemic spending, the free handouts we call got to avoid starvation while Covid ravaged the country. You probably don’t know this, but nothing happens fast in Washington. Government spending is an extremely slow and tedious affair.
By the time that contracts are announced, bids awarded, permits obtained, men hired, and the money spent, years have passed. That means money approved by Congress way back in 2020 is just hitting the economy now.
But that is not the only reason. There is also the long-term structural push that is a constant tailwind for investors:
Hyper-accelerating technology.
Yes, I know, there goes John Thomas spouting off about technology again. But it is a really big deal.
I have noticed that the farther away you get from Silicon Valley, the more clueless money managers are about technology. You can pick up more stock tips waiting in line at a Starbucks in Palo Alto than you can read a year’s worth of research on Wall Street.
What this means is that most large money managers, who are based on the east coast are constantly chasing the train that is leaving the station when it comes to tech.
On the west coast, managers not only know about the new tech, but the tech that comes after that and another tech that comes after that, if they are not already insiders in the current hot deal. This is how artificial intelligence stole a march on almost everyone, until a year ago, unless you were on the west coast already working in the industry. Mad Hedge has been using AI for 11 years.
You may be asking, “What does all of this mean for my pocketbook?” a perfectly valid question. It means that there isn’t going to be a recession, just a recession scare. That technology will bail us out again, even though our old BFF, the Fed, has abandoned us completely.
Which brings me to the current level of interest rates. I have also noticed that the farther away you get from New York and Washington, the less people know about bonds. On the west coast mention the word “bond” and they stare at you cluelessly. Indeed, I spent much of this year explaining the magic of the discount 90-day T-bill, which no one had ever heard of before (What! They pay interest daily?).
In fact, most big technology companies have positive cash balances. Look no further than Apple’s $140 billion cash hoard, which is invested in, you guessed it, 90-day T-bills when it isn’t buying its own stock, and is earning a staggering $7.7 billion a year in interest.
The great commonality in the recent stock market correction is easy to see. Any company that borrows a lot of money saw its stock get slaughtered. Technology stocks held up surprisingly well. That sets up your 2024 portfolio.
Put half your money in the Magnificent Seven stocks of Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Tesla (TSLA), (NVIDIA), and Salesforce (CRM).
Put your other half into heavy borrowers that benefit from FALLING interest rates, including bonds (TLT), junk bonds (JNK), (HYG), Utilities (XLU), precious metals (GOLD), (WPM), copper (FCX), foreign currencies (FXA), (FXE), (FXY), emerging markets (EEM).
As for me, I never do anything by halves. I’m putting all my money into Tesla. If I want to diversify, I’ll buy NVIDIA. Diversification is only for people who don’t know what is going to happen.
I just thought you’d like to know.
So far in October, we are up +2.96%. My 2023 year-to-date performance is still at an eye-popping +63.76%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +12.89% so far in 2023. My trailing one-year return reached +76.46% versus +22.57% for the S&P 500.
That brings my 15-year total return to +660.95%. My average annualized return has fallen back to +48.07%, another new high, some 2.64 times the S&P 500 over the same period.
Some 44 of my 49 trades this year have been profitable.
Chaos Reigns Supreme in Washington, with the firing of the first House speaker in history. Will the next budget agreement take place on November 17, or not until we get a new Congress in January 2025? Markets are discounting the worst-case scenario, with government debt in free fall. Definitely NOT good for stocks, which are reaching for a full 10% correction, half of 2023’s gains.
September Nonfarm Payroll Report Rockets, to 336,000, and August was bumped up another 50,000. The economy remains on fire. The headline Unemployment Rate remains steady at an unbelievable 3.8%. And that’s with the UAW strike sucking workers out of the system. This is supposed to by impossible with 5.5% interest rates. Throw out you economics books for this one!
JOLTS Comes in Hot at 9.61 million job openings in August, 700,000 more than the July report. The record labor shortage continues. Will the Friday Nonfarm Payroll Report deliver the same?
ADP Rises 89,000 in September, down sharply from previous months, showing that private job growth is growing slower than expected. August was revised down. It’s part of the trifecta of jobs data for the new month. The mild recession scenario is back on the table, at least stocks think so.
Weekly Jobless Claims Rise to 207,000, still unspeakably strong for this point in the economic cycle. Continuing claims were unchanged at 1.664%.
Traders Pile on to Strong Dollar, headed for new highs, propelled by rising interest rates. There is a heck of a short setting up for next year.
Yen Soars on suspected Bank of Japan intervention in the foreign exchange markets to defend the 150 line against the US dollar. The currency is down 35% in three years and could be the BUY of the century.
Kaiser Goes on Strike with 75,000 health care workers walking out on the west coast. The issue is money. The company has a long history of labor problems. This seems to be the year of the strike.
Oil (USO)Gets Slammed on Recession Fears, down 5% on the day to $85, in a clear demand destruction move and worsening macroeconomic picture. Europe and China are already in recession. It’s the biggest one-day drop in a year. Is the top in?
Tesla Delivers 435,059 Vehicles in September, down 5% from forecast, but the stock rose anyway. The Cybertruck launch is imminent, where the company has 2 million new orders. Keep buying (TSLA) on Dips. Technology is accelerating.
EVs have Captured an Amazing 8% of the New Car Market. They have been helped by a never-ending price war and generous government subsidies. EV sales are now up a miraculous 48% YOY and are projected to account for a stunning 23% of all California sales in Q3. Tesla is the overwhelming leader with a 52% share in a rapidly growing market, distantly followed by Ford (F) at 7% and Jeep at 5%. However, a slowdown may be at hand, with EV inventories running at 97 days, double that of conventional ICE cars. This could create a rare entry point for what will be the leading industry of this decade, if not the century. Buy more Tesla (TSLA) on bigger dips, if we get them.
Apple Upgrades New iPhone 15 to deal with overheating from third-party gaming. It will shut down some of its background activity, including some of the new AI functions, which were stressing the central processor. Third-party apps were adding to the problem, such as Uber and games from (META). This is really cutting-edge technology.
Moderna (MRNA) Bags a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman’s work helped pioneer the technology that enabled Moderna and the Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE partnership to swiftly develop shots. I got four and they saved my life when I caught Covid. I survived but lost 20 pounds in two weeks. It was worth it.
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, October 9, there is no data of note released.
On Tuesday, October 10 at 8:30 AM EST, the Consumer Inflation Expectations is released.
On Wednesday, October 11 at 2:30 PM, the Producer Price Index is published.
On Thursday, October 12 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced. The Consumer Price Index is also released.
On Friday, October 13 at 1:00 PM the September University of Michigan Consumer Expectations is published. At 2:00 PM, the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.
As for me, one of the many benefits of being married to a British Airways senior stewardess is that you get to visit some pretty obscure parts of the world. In the 1970s, that meant going first class for free with an open bar, and occasionally time in the cockpit jump seat.
To extend our 1977 honeymoon, Kyoko agreed to an extra round trip for BA from Hong Kong to Colombo in Sri Lanka. That left me on my own for a week in the former British crown colony of Ceylon.
I rented an antiquated left-hand drive stick shift Vauxhall and drove around the island nation counterclockwise. I only drove during the day in army convoys to avoid terrorist attacks from the Tamil Tigers. The scenery included endless verdant tea fields, pristine beaches, and wild elephants and monkeys.
My eventual destination was the 1,500-year-old Sigiriya Rock Fort in the middle of the island which stood 600 feet above the surrounding jungle. I was nearly at the top when I thought I found a shortcut. I jumped over a wall and suddenly found myself up to my armpits in fresh bat shit.
That cut my visit short, and I headed for a nearby river to wash off. But the smell stayed with me for weeks.
Before Kyoko took off for Hong Kong in her Vickers Viscount, she asked me if she should bring anything back. I heard that McDonald’s had just opened a stand there, so I asked her to bring back two Big Macs.
She dutifully showed up in the hotel restaurant the following week with the telltale paper bag in hand. I gave them to the waiter and asked him to heat them up for lunch. He returned shortly with the burgers on plates surrounded by some elaborate garnish and colorful vegetables. It was a real work of art.
Suddenly, every hand in the restaurant shot up. They all wanted to order the same thing, even though the nearest stand was 2,494 miles away.
We continued our round-the-world honeymoon to a beach vacation in the Seychelles where we just missed a coup d’état, a safari in Kenya, apartheid South Africa, London, San Francisco, and finally back to Tokyo. It was the honeymoon of a lifetime.
Kyoko passed away in 2002 from breast cancer at the age of 50, well before her time.
Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Sigiriya Rock Fort
Kyoko
Global Market Comments
September 1, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trades:
(AUGUST 30 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(AMZN), (NVDA), (AAPL), (GOOG), (TSLA), (TLT), (TSLA), (FXI), (GOLD), (WPM), (AMC), (MSFT), (CCJ)
CLICK HERE to download today's position sheet.
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the August 30 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar, broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA.
Q: I have a question about NVDA. While NVIDIA is a top-of-the-line chip company, there are many companies, i.e., Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and of course, China (FXI), that are looking to get into the arena and build their own chips-cutting into (NVDA) space. How soon do you think this will happen and how good will those chips be?
A: NVIDIA is ahead now because of decisions on software and platforms they made 20 years ago. As all the important employees are also shareholders with minimal cost there is no way you’re going to pry them away to another company. You can’t copy NVIDIA with a simple cut-and-paste operation as you can with most other companies and the market has figured this out. (NVDA) has a moat that will remain unassailable for years. Now they have the AI turbocharger. My short-term target is $1,000 and it probably goes much higher. I reiterate my strong “BUY” issued in 2015 at $15.
Q: Why do you think the demise of crypto is coming?
A: Not so much a demise as a long nuclear winter. The SEC has declared war on all the intermediaries, and if you don’t have intermediaries you can’t trade. That shrinks the market to hot wallets only, which only computer programmers can do. That is much smaller than the current market. The other reason is that crypto prospered when we had a cash surplus and an asset shortage. We had to invent new assets to soak up all that cash—that's what Bitcoin did, it soaked up about $2 trillion dollars. Now we have the opposite: a cash shortage thanks to high-interest rates and an asset oversupply—all of the busted stocks that emanated from crypto, all the SPACS, the ETFs, and so on, where people lost 90%-100% of their money. #3, there is still a massive fraud and theft problem with crypto running in the hundreds of billions of dollars. I’d rather just buy Apple (AAPL) or Google (GOOG) or Tesla (TSLA) with my money. Those are cheaper alternatives than existed 18 months ago.
Q: Will iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) visit the $92.25 low or have yields peaked?
A: I hope it visits the $92 low—I’m going to be buying my pants off if we get that low, plus issuing two-year LEAPs with 100% returns. So absolutely, yes. (TLT) is bottoming here and starting to discount interest rate cuts which will begin in March or June.
Q: What do you think of sells on Tesla (TSLA)?
A: I ignore all sells on Tesla, as I have done for the last 13 years. Keep in mind that Tesla has always had one of the largest short interests in the market, and will continue to do so as many people don’t buy the hype, or the vision.
Q: Why haven’t we gotten any trade alerts on gold and silver?
A: We sent out trade alerts for the concierge customers on gold (GOLD) and silver (WPM), and if we see another good entry point we’ll send those out also to the regular Global Trading Dispatch customers.
Q: When you say dip, how much of a dip do you mean?
A: We’ve really only had a 7% dip in the S&P 500 (SPY) this summer top to bottom. Usually, you get 10%, but with $5.6 trillion in cash on the sideline and with AI and multiple other technologies accelerating, people are just not willing to wait. When you throw cold water on the market, as we have been doing all summer, you buy the heck out of it.
Q: Will China’s (FXI) real estate collapse cause a black swan for US markets? Will China go the way of Japan?
A: No, the Chinese real estate market is almost completely isolated from the rest of the global economy. Additionally, most of the Chinese debt is owned by a dozen or so government-controlled banks. So, real estate prices there can implode and have virtually no effect on anywhere else. I’m not worried about that at all. You might get a down day of a few hundred points when one of the biggest companies goes under, but no more than that, and it doesn’t affect China’s trading economy at all. On a list of things to worry about, that’s probably number 100.
Q: It’s said a lot of the recent gains in the market are from short covering—how do you determine the number of shorts out there?
A: Well, most short interest in stocks is in the public domain; all you have to do is Google the term “how many Tesla shorts,” and you’ll get a number—it’ll be like 20-25% of the outstanding shares. For some companies, like AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC), the short interest can be 50% or more. So, it’s easy to find out; however, you want to buy the market before people start covering shorts, not after, because that buying power is then already in the market, and that would have been a couple of months ago. For any of the big hedge funds, almost none of them were shorting stocks. All of them were looking to buy on any declines; that’s what they’ve been doing all summer, and that's why the market was unable to appreciably fall.
Q: Outlook on Microsoft Corp (MSFT)?
A: Double in the next 3 years, as is the case with all of big tech.
Q; What about my iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) 2024 LEAPS?
A: I think we will get enough of a rally in TLT by January for all of those Jan 2024 LEAPS to expire at max profit. They’re only $4 points away from max profit for the $95/$100s and $9 points away for the $100/$105s, and that is entirely doable if the Fed stops raising interest rates or even cuts them. At one point these LEAPS were up 70% from cost so that might have been a great time to take profits.
Q: Is your AI product different from the one offered by Tradesmith?
A: Yes, we have completely different trade alerts than Tradesmith has; and they are using different algorithms than we are, so, totally they’re different services. If you have the Tradesmith product, just keep watching it and see if it performs. Usually, it takes six months to decide whether a new service is worth renewing, so I would keep watching it. Also, Tradesmith has a ton of analytical tools which we don’t offer. They made a massive seven-year investment in their own AI tools, which are completely different than ours. They disclose some of theirs, but we don’t. Why give away the keys to the kingdom? We’ll just send you our trade alerts, which by the way have been 100% profitable.
Q: Whatever happened to meme stocks like AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC)? Should I look at these?
A: Absolutely not—they’re pure gambling. You’re better off just buying a New York lottery ticket. No fundamentals; I’m amazed AMC is even still in business. I went to the movies a few weeks ago and I was the only person in the theater. I went to see the Oppenheimer movie, which I highly recommend by the way. I’m still radioactive from when I worked with his lot.
Q: Credit card debt has spiked to historic levels—will this eventually come back to haunt the US economy?
A: Not really, it really doesn’t translate to lower consumer spending or a weaker economy yet. My bet is these people get bailed out by falling interest rates again as they always are. Consumer Spending Rocketed in July, up a monster 0.8%, the second-best number of the year, in further evidence of improving economic growth. Never underestimate the ability of Americans to spend money
Q: Can we access recordings of these webinars?
A: Yes, we post them on the website in your members' section two hours after it’s recorded. Just log into madhedgefundtrader.com, go to your membership section, and it’ll list webinars as one of the services you have purchased and have access to.
Q: How will markets respond if Trump gets back in the White House?
A: Major market crash—that’s an easy one. The Trump who won in 2016 is not the same Trump as today.
Q: What will happen to the price of EVs when the world runs out of lithium?
A: The world will never run out of lithium, it’s one of the world's most abundant elements. The bottleneck is in lithium processing, and there are multiple lithium processing facilities using new technologies under construction around the country. That gets you around that bottleneck, and you also free yourself from Chinese sources of processed lithium. Elon Musk planned all this out 25 years ago when he first started Tesla. He planned for a 20 million unit/year scale-up and has locked up the lithium supplies to accommodate that level of construction, leaving the rest of the world in the dust.
Q: Would you comment on the potential of new EV car batteries to enhance travel distances?
A: Tesla has a new solid-state battery that increases battery ranges from 10 times to 20 times, but it hasn’t been able to economically produce them in large enough numbers to put them in new cars. That’s in the wings. If that happens, Tesla will be able to cut costs by $10,000 per car and shrink the battery size from 1,000 pounds to 50 pounds, which would be revolutionary and absolutely wipe out Detroit, China, and Japan. That would allow Tesla to take over the entire global car market. So, yes, when you consider all that, it makes my current forecast of $1,000 for Tesla look stupidly conservative.
Q: What’s your take on the state of the Russia/Ukraine war?
A: Ask me in three weeks, when I will be in Ukraine seeing the actual state of the war, visiting the front lines, delivering doctors and supplies to children’s hospitals, and doing assorted odd jobs that have been requested of me. You’ll get the full read on Ukraine then. For now, I can tell you that Ukraine is still winning, but 18 months in, the people are getting tired. The people in my team in Ukraine who are organizing this trip sometimes break down in tears from the sheer weight of the war on them. Of course, being bombed every day doesn’t help your sleep either. So be prepared for my report and video of the century on the Ukraine war.
Q: Stanley Druckenmiller has a big position in Cameco Corp (CCJ).
A: That’s absolutely true, and I’d be a LEAPS buyer there on any kind of pullback. Stanley is a billionaire for a reason.
Q: What happens to gold at the introduction of the US government's digital currency?
A: It probably goes up. Actually, it’ll probably have no impact, but if it’s going to do anything it’ll make gold go up because people who are frightened of digital currencies will buy gold as a safe haven. I happen to know a few of those who have millions of dollars worth of gold stashed away under their mattresses for this purpose.
To watch a replay of this webinar with all the charts, bells, whistles, and classic rock music, just log in to www.madhedgefundtrader.com, go to MY ACCOUNT, click on GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH, then WEBINARS, and all the webinars from the last 12 years are there in all their glory.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
2023 in the Naval & Military Club in London
Global Market Comments
August 21, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trades:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or LEARNING A NEW WORD),
(JPM), (WPM), (FCX), (OXY), (CCI)
(SPY), (TLT), (TSLA), (NVDA), ($WTIC)
CLICK HERE to download today's position sheet.
It’s not often that I learn a new word, at least in English anyway. Anyone who has read all 4,000 pages of John Steinbeck, where you are sent running for your Funk & Wagnalls on every page, shouldn’t be surprised too often. Steinbeck spent two winters house-sitting at Lake Tahoe where he memorized the dictionary cover to cover. But, last week I was.
The word in question is “disinversion.”
Disinversion happens in two ways. When bond yields fall and short yields fall much faster, you get good disinversion and stocks usually rise. This is what I expect to happen in 2024 and is why I am loading the boat with falling interest plays like banks (JPM), precious metals (WPM), commodities (FCX), energy (OXY), and REITS (CCI).
However, stock markets are insecure things, afraid of their own shadows, always shrinking from a fight, and constantly looking for new reasons to worry. Now they are also losing sleep over disinversion.
Disinversion also takes place when short rates are falling but bond yields are rising. When that happens the real estate market gets slaughtered but sky-high mortgage rates, the economy collapses and stocks fall. The good news is that bad disinversion only happens about 10% of the time.
However, a rising number of bond analysts are raising the alarm that we may be in for a dose of the bad kind of disinversion before the good kind kicks in. That could trigger a capitulation in the bond market that could take the ten-year US Treasury bond yield from the current 4.25% yield to 5.0% or even higher, and take the (TLT) down to a low of $90, or even $85. Stocks would drop 10%.
That would be a nightmare for 2024 LEAPS holder, no matter how brief it may be.
It doesn’t help that the government is borrowing now at a record pace, some $109 billion last week alone. That is why the (TLT) is probing one-year lows.
But whether bonds are inverting, disinverting, converting, or perverting, I’ll be buying two-year bond (LEAPS) if that happens. A 100% return in two years on a government bond risk sounds like a petty good deal to me, even if they are now rated only AA+, thanks to you know who. However you look at it, there is one heck of a bond trade setting up.
We may get our answer at 10:05 AM EST on Friday, August 25.
That’s when Jay Powell, the governor of the Federal Reserve, is due to be the keynote speaker at the meeting of global central bankers at Jackson Hole. Will this mark the bottom in bond prices and the top in yields?
Last year, Jay’s mumblings lasted only eight minutes and warned of “pain to come.” Pain we got, but for only two months. After that, it was nine months of pleasure in the form of straight-up stock prices.
Will Jay Powell Drop a Bomb Next Week?
Only Jay Powell knows for sure.
In the meantime, stocks will remain as dead as a doorknob and moribund, if not catatonic. Volatility ($VIX) will hug the $15 level, the “A” Team traders will remain at the Hamptons, and the number of new trades alerts emanating from me will remain precisely at zero.
There never is a profit trading when the Mad Hedge AI Market Timing Index vacillates around 50, as it is doing now. Sometimes you just get paid to wait, especially when 90-day T-bills are paying a healthy 5.25%.
So far in August, we are down -4.70%. My 2023 year-to-date performance is still at an eye-popping +60.80%. The S&P 500 (SPY) is up +17.10% so far in 2023. My trailing one-year return reached +92.45% versus +8.45% for the S&P 500.
That brings my 15-year total return to +657.99%. My average annualized return has fallen back to +48.15%, another new high, some 2.50 times the S&P 500 over the same period.
Some 41 of my 46 trades this year have been profitable.
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, August 21, BHP (BHP) and Zoom (ZM) announce earnings.
On Tuesday, August 22 at 7:00 AM EST, Existing Homes Sales for July are released.
On Wednesday, August 23 at 2:30 PM EST, the New Homes Sales are published.
On Thursday, August 24 at 8:30 AM EST, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced. So are US Durable Goods.
On Friday, August 25 at 7:00 AM, Fed Governor Jay Powell gives his keynote speech at the Jackson Hole Central Bankers Conference. At 2:00 PM, the Baker Hughes Rig Count is printed.
As for me, I am often told that I am the most interesting man people ever met, sometimes daily. I had the good fortune to know someone far more interesting than myself.
When I was 14, I decided to start earning merit badges if I was ever going to become an Eagle Scout. I decided to begin with an easy one, Reading Merit Badge, where you only had to read four books and write one review. I loved reading, so “Piece of cake,” I thought.
I was directed to Kent Cullers, a high school kid who had been blind since birth. During the late 1940s, the medical community thought it would be a great idea to give newborns pure oxygen. It was months before it was discovered that the procedure caused the clouding of corneas and total blindness in infants.
Kent was one of these kids.
It turned out that everyone in the troop already had Reading Merit Badge and that Kent had exhausted our supply of readers. Fresh meat was needed.
So, I rode my bicycle over to Kent’s house and started reading. It was all science fiction. America’s Space Program had ignited a science fiction boom and writers like Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clark, and H.G. Welles were in huge demand. Star Trek came out the following year, in 1966. That was the year I became an Eagle Scout.
It only took a week for me to blow through the first four books. In the end, I read hundreds to Kent. Kent didn’t just listen to me read. He explained the implications of what I was reading (got to watch out for those non-carbon-based life forms).
Having listened to thousands of books on the subject, Kent gave me a first-class education and I credit him with moving me towards a career in science. Kent is also the reason why I got an 800 SAT score in Math.
When we got tired of reading, we played around with Kent’s radio. His dad was a physicist and had bought him a state-of-the-art high-powered short-wave radio. I always found Kent’s house from the 50-foot-tall radio antenna.
That led to another merit badge, one for Radio, where I had to transmit in Morse Code at five words a minute. Kent could do 50. On the badge below, the Morse Code says “BSA.” In those days, when you made a new contact, you traded addresses and sent each other postcards.
Kent had postcards with colorful call signs from more than 100 countries plastered all over his wall. One of our regular correspondents was the president of the Palo Alto High School Radio Club, Steve Wozniak, who later went on to co-found Apple (AAPL) with Steve Jobs.
It was a sad day in 1999 when the US Navy retired Morse Code and replaced it with satellites and digital communication far faster than any human could send. However, it is still used as beacon identifiers at US airfields.
Kent’s great ambition was to become an astronomer. I asked how he would become an astronomer when he couldn’t see anything. He responded that Galileo, the inventor of the telescope, was blind in his later years.
I replied, “Good point.”
Kent went on to get a PhD in Physics from UC Berkeley, no mean accomplishment. He lobbied heavily for the creation of SETI, or the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, once an arm of NASA. He became its first director in 1985 and worked there for 20 years.
In the 1987 movie Contact, written by Carl Sagan and starring Jodie Foster, Kent’s character is played by Matthew McConaughey. The movie was filmed at the Very Large Array in western New Mexico. The algorithms Kent developed there are still in widespread use today.
Out here in the West, aliens are a big deal, ever since that weather balloon crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. In fact, it was a spy balloon meant to overfly and photograph Russia, but it blew back on the US, thus its top secret status.
When people learn I used to work at Area 51, I am constantly asked if I have seen any spaceships. The road there, Nevada State Route 375, is called the Extra Terrestrial Highway. Who says we don’t have a sense of humor in Nevada?
After devoting his entire life to searching, Kent gave me the inside story on searching for aliens. We will never meet them but we will talk to them. That’s because the acceleration needed to get to a high enough speed to reach outer space would tear apart a human body. On the other hand, radio waves travel effortlessly at the speed of light.
Sadly, Kent passed away in 2021 at the age of 72. Kent, ever the optimist, had his body cryogenically frozen in Hawaii where he will remain until the technology evolves to wake him up. Minor planet 35056 Cullers is named in his honor.
There are no movies being made about my life…. yet. But there are a couple of scripts out there under development.
Watch this space.
Good Luck and Good Trading,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Dr. Kent Cullers
New Mexico Very Large Array
Reading Merit Badge
Radio Merit Badge
Global Market Comments
August 18, 2023
Fiat Lux
Featured Trades:
(WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2023 SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA GLOBAL STRATEGY LUNCHEON)
(TESTIMONIAL)
(AUGUST 16 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(SNOW), (PANW), (AMZN), (FCX), (WPM), (CCI), (GOLD), (WEAT), (JNK), (TLT), (X), (XOM), (HD), (AA), (UNG), (TSLA)
CLICK HERE to download today's position sheet.
Legal Disclaimer
There is a very high degree of risk involved in trading. Past results are not indicative of future returns. MadHedgeFundTrader.com and all individuals affiliated with this site assume no responsibilities for your trading and investment results. The indicators, strategies, columns, articles and all other features are for educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. Information for futures trading observations are obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but we do not warrant its completeness or accuracy, or warrant any results from the use of the information. Your use of the trading observations is entirely at your own risk and it is your sole responsibility to evaluate the accuracy, completeness and usefulness of the information. You must assess the risk of any trade with your broker and make your own independent decisions regarding any securities mentioned herein. Affiliates of MadHedgeFundTrader.com may have a position or effect transactions in the securities described herein (or options thereon) and/or otherwise employ trading strategies that may be consistent or inconsistent with the provided strategies.
This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
OKLearn moreWe may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.
Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.
Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refuseing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.
We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.
We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.
These cookies collect information that is used either in aggregate form to help us understand how our website is being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are, or to help us customize our website and application for you in order to enhance your experience.
If you do not want that we track your visist to our site you can disable tracking in your browser here:
We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.
Google Webfont Settings:
Google Map Settings:
Vimeo and Youtube video embeds: