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Cruz is very effective. The Barbie movie has only made $300-$400MM so far..:).
And speaking of X, the ex-president will be very busy over the next year so if you're planning to visit Mar-a-Lago and meet the grifter-in-chief, you'll want to avoid the following trial dates:
October 2, 2023 - New York civil fraud case
January 15, 2024 - New York E. Jean Carroll defamation case.
- I know, he already lost the Carroll case but he couldn't shut up so now she's suing for defamation.
January 29, 2024 - New York pyramid scheme case.
March 25, 2024 - New York hush money case.
May 20, 2024 - Federal classified documents case.
Jan 6 Indictment and trial date, (both federal and Georgia) - upcoming.
X-Twitter seems about right to me. Along with X-useful and X-profitable.
Hum..1,440 attempts and right 2 times..:).
That's funny. Peter Schiff isn't a gold bull, he's a hard money gold bug. For good reason his nickname is Dr. Doom. He's another one living on his GFC call. Since all of us on this board we're calling for a real estate market crash about the same time, I'm not too impressed. Peter Schiff is almost as correct as a stopped clock.
Helps explain why the market is so happy but the economy in the US is driven by the consumer. When will the consumer begin to feel pain? We'll know if we dodged a bullet by next spring. American's personal savings rate averaged about 8% from 2015 through 2019. That jumped to almost 34% in April of 2020 during the government's initial giveaway programs. Over the next year the savings rate averaged 17.5% as Americans avoided almost everything recreational. Then in September of 2021 Americans began spending all that money they had been saving. By June last year, the savings rate had fallen to 2.7%. And while it's recovered somewhat since then it's still at a rather anemic 4.5%.
Uncle Joe is helping 2% of people with educational debt but the other 98% will begin making payments in September-October. Will that make consumers less likely to spend money and will consumers continue moving up to the more normal 8% savings rate? If so, spending will begin to fall. We'll see. As the article noted, it's uncharted territory.
Here's a link to the FRED chart.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT
Great post Elroy. This is the essence of Nick's board. We all have a different approach to the markets based on our investment requirements and our current situation but we're all focused on making money without gambling our hard won stake in this game. Don't lose money. It's some of the best advice anyone can learn.
See the article from the NYT I posted yesterday. If Trump wins in '24 they plan to consolidate all government power with the executive office so they can fire anyone who doesn't follow them to a completely autocratic government. DeSantis will fit right in.
Nuclear is a must use energy source.
Were Republicans to succeed, Wray told the Judiciary Committee, they would leave Americans more vulnerable to fentanyl cartels, violent criminals, gangs, sex predators, foreign and domestic terrorists, cyberattacks and Chinese spies. This is where a government of lies will take us.
Hawaii ran up against this issue over a decade ago. By 2013 they had dramatically slowed installation of solar. I think they were about where Texas is today by renewable production percentage. I don't watch this closely but Hawaii is building a smart grid to manage energy distribution. To say the least, it's a much bigger task for Texas and given the political climate there may not be the appetite for that level of spending to support renewables.
If you find climate science a pseudo science, we've nothing more to discuss. I find the idea idiotic. Not you, the idea.
Nick, when you engage a troll they exist. This basement dweller will go somewhere else as soon as everyone here ignores him. Trolls are nothing. Without recognition they don't exist. You can't challenge an empty void with reason. You challenge ignorance with ignore-ance. It's the core idea of the word. Ignore stupidity. If you engage it as if it were a rational, thinking being, you lose.
These articles are political in nature and have nothing to do with climate science.
While still a small piece of the global warming puzzle, methane traps heat roughly 25X as much as C02. Then when methane oxidizes after about 12 years, it turns into water and C02. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
The simple answer is nunya..:)
Déjà vu all over again..:). I remember when music streaming was destroying artists income stream, think Napster. Now streaming services like Spotify YouTube and TicTok support artists in ways they could not have imagined 20 years ago.
Entertainment streaming is still in its infancy. Other than Netflix who broke the old model, almost no one else makes money. Disney is flailing but Iger got a sweet new contract. It's not a good look. I suspect this could take the rest of the decade to sort out. We'll see if consumers are willing to pay previous cable level dollars to be entertained in an old school way or if gaming and other interactive media steal too much of the entertainment pie.
When Siegel, Gross and Dimon all agree, it's a good idea to pay attention.
Ol' dead Donnie. Either a traitor or one of the worst Sec. of Defense in US history. Maybe both. Henry Kissinger described Rumsfeld as "the most ruthless man" he knew. Possibly Kissinger should look in the mirror.
I wish you the best of luck. Ms. Southern San Andres is well overdue. Like Mike said:
Everyone's got a plan until I punch them in the mouth - Mike Tyson.
The messaging from the White House was problematic. It should have been, pay down your student loans while there is no interest accruing, not maybe you'll get some free money. The other thing that should have been done is to allow student loans to be discharged through bankruptcy. The bankruptcy process for student loans is currently somewhere between onerous and impossible. These goofy student loans have turned many colleges into five-star hotels.
This reminds me of what happened to earthquake insurers in CA during the mid-90s. They either left or went bankrupt and the state took over earthquake insurance. People and institutions holding mortgages will be in for a big surprise if there's a serious quake as only ~10% of home owners carry it even though the great majority of US quakes happen in CA.
June CPI will be released before the market opens tomorrow.
Allstate-H, Metlife-F, Public Storage-K, Southern Co, AT&T-A and C.
True and we should also point out that currently the first $22,000 of income is not taxable at the federal level so this married couple could actually make $61,250 in LTCG without paying any additional federal taxes. Social Security income is subject to tax on up to 85% of that income. Sounds like a good deal for anyone who's retiring. A good friend of ours who lived in California, sold his home and moved to a home on a lake in North Carolina that cost about a 1/3 of his previous home. They live quite nicely on SS and LTCG.
Be warned casual readers - I play an accountant on the internet but I always ask my real world accountant about all of my calculations.
As I've noted before this is a 2-4ish year trade for me. Half of the value in this trade is that all of my preferreds are discounted an average of ~20%. When rates fall again they'll move back up to par. When the Fed made it clear they were likely to bump another 50bp this year. My preferred holdings dropped 3% in a day. I bought more and I'll continue to buy more if rates continue up.
Trades should always be driven by a thesis. This one is simple - interest rates in the US will come back down. I'm not concerned about these stocks being called because they can only call at par. They can call all of them tomorrow and I'll take my 20% profit and move on.
Yes, that's the article I read. I think this is a good strategy for a married couple who is retired and living mostly on Social Security. At 5.5% it only requires a bit over $200,000 in an account to throw off $1,000 a month in tax free income, or 2X that amount for $2,000 a month. Long term capital gains are not taxed until a married couple makes over $89,250.
Most preferred stock dividends are categorized as long term capital gains. This according to Investopedia. I'm still sorting this out and Schwab hasn't been much help. This is the first time I've bought preferred shares outside a tax deferred account so some of the rules are new to me. I will be holding all of these shares for a minimum of 12 months so gains will also be taxed as capital gains and not regular income.
My average dividend across 12 preferred stocks is 5.5%.
Apparently they're cut from the same cloth.
Who knew? - Alan Greenspan
We didn’t see it coming. - Jerome Powell
Nick is thinking Q4 for the downturn and I'm thinking Q1 next year. We'll see. Until then, I'm clipping coupons.
Thanks Elroy.
Good stuff thanks. I found this interesting. Apparently if you discount any required product you can sell all of it you need to sell. We seem to have forgotten business 101.
It has become clear that Russia will be able to evade and bypass the massive oil sanctions levied upon them by Western powers for its invasion of Ukraine. Incredibly, Russia’s oil exports are now higher than they were before the invasion of Ukraine. We had expected the bite from sanctions, especially the EU’s oil import ban, to restrain Russia’s exports and thus constrain supply to the global oil market. That has not happened, however—and if it hasn’t happened yet, it might not happen at all.
I wonder if China would ever entertain a blockade given their serious vulnerability to a counter blockade. For anyone interested in the subject just Google US navel blockade of China.
Whenever serious climatologists talk about CO2 mitigation they warn about ocean uptake. The ocean currently sequesters about 25% of all our emissions but that uptake has been slowing over the last 200 years because the more CO2 added to oceans the more resistant they are to additional CO2. Warming oceans apparently don't churn as well as cooler oceans. It's quite a science experiment we're performing.
I didn't realize WBA is the most disliked component of the DOW. Down over 20% this year, PE of 7.3, excellent coverage of dividend, Earnings are down 20% over last year but revenues are up 4%.Per their last quarterly call 2024 doesn't look much better as they continue to clean up their Rite Aid purchase. Fundamentally this should be a good long term investment for the patient and income minded.
You may be correct as a PHEV is likely to remain more expensive and complex to produce and maintain than straight EV, especially as we move through iterations of more efficient and safe battery technology.
wow_happens post discusses the core environmental problem; population. As I've said many times, all of this ICE vs. EV vs. PHEV, etc., is more moving deck chairs on the Titanic than solving the climate problem. See the Mauna Loa CO2 record since the late 1950s. The arrow points to the only mild pause during the early 1990s recession. The rate of change has continued to increase as we grow human population, affluence and longevity.
Lazy bulls...no one was gored..:).
Your EV vs. ICE strawman misses the point the speaker was making which is more nuanced than your proposed black/white dichotomy. Reduction of his presentation to an EV bad, ICE good theme is more a religious interpretation than anything logical.
The board is debating the path, not the destination. I think that's a valuable debate.
Hi Nick. I'm not sure what charting software they're using but MO is one I track closely. Over the last two years there has been a "death cross" on two occasions and both represented a buying opportunity. As for today, the 50DMA is still above the 200. I even checked the exponential moving average to see if they were using that but same outcome.
I have concerns about MO as they've one overpriced product in the US that supports almost the entire company but BENZINGA's idea doesn't appear correct using my charting software.
I think so as well. Added 5% to all 12 sets of preferred shares this morning when the markets freaked out about the June jobs report; 497,000 new jobs. That's way more than double expectations. The Fed is meeting later this month and this may be the excuse they need for another 25bp bump up in overnight rates. I'll keep adding if/as rates move up.