Value Traps and Economic Ignorance
A financial analyst is often, or at least should be, more of a psychologist than a financial expert. There are companies that I knew fifteen years ago that had inherent value a multiple of what their stocks were trading at. Today, there continues to be similar upside, except that upside targets and share prices are lower. What went wrong?
A problem reaches the far North faster than climate change can melt all the ice. [PT]
Dead Men Don’t Spend
The checks went forth yesterday.
And all the peoples rejoiced.
Stimulus blinders firmly attached! Let’s go! Mars is within reach! [PT]
The Stress of Losing Billions
Up until the WallStreetBets crowd short squeezed Melvin Capital for a $7 billion loss, Robinhood had it made. But losing billions is stressful. And when your product blows up your customer the clucking that follows comes hot and heavy.
A surprise revival of business at Game-Stop… [PT]
Silver Yo-Yo
The price of silver is going up and down like a yo-yo. On Sunday and into the first part of Monday, the price skyrocketed on news that Reddit was touting the metal. But as the data clearly showed, the price was not driven up by retail buying of physical metal.
Silver, March futures from Jan 27, 30 minute chart: a lot of volatility, but silver seems to have established a higher low after coming down from the initial spike. [PT]
Sticking it to the Man
A certain Reddit group has recently become very popular. For many people, the group has emerged as the savior of humanity. With their collective might, this group has brought a few hedge-funds close to bankruptcy.
GME daily, log and linear view – a brief surge, but quite a painful one for hedge funds that were short the stock in size. [PT]
The Investment Asset of the Century Makes yet another Comeback
Even the most ardent cryptocurrency bulls are probably slightly slack-jawed at this juncture and can hardly believe it. To be sure, many people were undeterred by the vicious bear market that saw BTC melt down from just below $20,000 in Dec. 2017 to less than $3,300 in Dec. 2018, but we doubt that even these steadfast believers in the grand-daddy of cryptocurrencies expected to see new all time highs in less than two years. Oh well…
Look who’s back from the dead…
BTC, weekly – who says a bubble cannot be resurrected in two years time?
The Lure of Easy Money
Right now happens to be an attractive time to do something stupid. What’s more, everyone is doing it. Maybe you are too. Stock valuations and corporate earnings growth no longer appear to matter. Why not buy an S&P 500 index fund and let it ride? Or, better yet, why not buy shares of Nvidia?
NVDA, weekly, over the past 6 years. The stock really started to take off after the 2016 election surprisingly brought an administration to power that was willing to cut taxes and roll back regulations. This vastly improved the competitive position of US-based companies in the world and boosted their profit margins. Other favorable narratives accompanied the rise of NVDA and other tech stocks specifically, such as the cryptocurrency mania and the increase in demand fostered by the pandemic. Add to that the biggest driver of them all – an unprecedented exercise in money printing by the Fed and other central banks – and a bubble for the ages emerged. And that is where we now are: in the greatest stock market mania of all time. [PT]
A Curious Development in Japan
For a long time Japanese stocks have been little more than a mirror image of the yen – they would rise when the yen lost ground and fall when it strengthened. This has changed rather noticeably of late as the chart below illustrates. Incidentally, the Nikkei has broken out over a resistance level that has held it back since early 2018. Whether this breakout will hold remains to be seen, but so far it certainly looks convincing (perhaps it will require a retest).
The Nikkei and the yen (weekly candles): in the middle of the chart the 60-period correlation between the two markets is shown (it ranges from “-1” for maximum negative to “+1” for maximum positive correlation). A strong negative correlation persisted for such a long time that it almost began to feel like a law of nature. Not anymore.
Autographing Funny Money
The United States Secretary of the Treasury bears a shameful job duty. They must place their autograph on the face of the Federal Reserve’s legal tender notes. Here, for the whole world to witness, the Treasury Secretary provides signature endorsement; their personal ratification of unconstitutional money.
Janet Yellen – first she got to print a lot of funny money, now she gets to autograph it. The Titanic meanwhile finds itself in uncharted waters and rumor has it that there may be icebergs lurking not too far from here. [PT]
Full Commitment
This week provided additional confirmation that America is fully committed to a program of currency destruction. Decades of terminal intelligence have gotten us to this special place. We will have more on this in a moment. But first some words on being fully committed.
Say hello to the provider of bacon… lots of bacon, in this case. [PT]
Prophet of Doom
In 1976, economist Herbert Stein, father of Ben Stein, the economics professor in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, observed that U.S. government debt was on an unsustainable trajectory. He, thus, established Stein’s Law:
“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Herbert Stein, looking worried about the budget deficit. [PT]
Consumption without Production
“Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer”, observed 19th century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. “He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), who inter alia opined on consumers and the need to not only consume, but also produce. The latter activity has recently become even more severely hampered than it already was. And yet, government is spending like a drunken sailor. [PT]
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