CWS Market Review – April 16, 2024

(This is the free version of CWS Market Review. If you like what you see, then please sign up for the premium newsletter for $20 per month or $200 for the whole year. If you sign up today, you can see our two reports, “Your Handy Guide to Stock Orders” and “How Not to Get Screwed on Your Mortgage.”)

The stock market is finally showing some cracks. Yesterday, the Dow soared more than 400 points during the day only to close lower by 248 points. The S&P 500 slipped another 0.21% today. The index finished the day at its lowest level since February 21.

On Monday, the S&P 500 also closed below its 50-day moving average (the blue line). That snapped a streak of 110 days, which is one of the longest such streaks in the last 30 years. (In the mid-1990s, the S&P 500 was trading above its 50-DMA for more than a year.)

Dropping below the 50-DMA can be an omen for a poor or a sluggish market. Not only is Wall Street still rattled by last week’s inflation report but the escalating tensions in the Middle East are also weighing on investors.

To be frank, the recent stock market hasn’t been that volatile. The VIX, which is the volatility index, rose from less than 15 on Thursday to more than 19.5 during the day on Tuesday. It’s just that the previous five months have been unusually calm, so any change from that pattern seems unusually jarring.

We’ve gotten our first batch of Q1 earnings reports. Bank of America (BAC) said its earnings dropped 18%, and it missed estimates by one penny per share. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) beat by seven cents per share, but the stock hit a new 52-week low. Goldman Sachs (GS) had a strong quarter as its profits rose 28%. Trump Media (DJT) lost 39% in the last week.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned how defensive stocks had been particularly weak. Today was a good example of defensive stocks doing well. In particular, staples and healthcare stocks were up the most, or in many cases, down the least.

Retail Sales Jump 0.7%

The economic news continues to be favorable. Shoppers are in a buying mood. On Monday, the Commerce Department said that retail sales rose by 0.7% last month.

That was a pleasant surprise. Wall Street had been expecting a gain of only 0.3%. Also, the number for February was revised higher to a gain of 0.9%.

This tells us that despite stubborn inflation, higher prices haven’t kept shoppers from the malls. Over the last year, retail sales increased by 4% while inflation was up by 3.5%.

If we don’t count cars, then retail sales increased by 1.1% last month. That more than doubled Wall Street’s estimates for a gain of 0.5%. It’s true that higher gasoline prices helped drive higher retail sales, but the largest increase came from online sales, which were up by 2.7%. These numbers are important to watch because consumers make up about 70% of the economy.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDP model increased its estimate for Q1 GDP growth from 2.4% to 2.9%. The model now expects real personal consumption expenditures (PCE) to rise by 3.5%. That’s quite good. The government’s initial report on Q1 GDP growth will be out on April 25. The initial report will be updated two more times.

On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve said that industrial production increased by 0.4% last month. That’s good to see because this data series hasn’t done much over the past two years. Last month, manufacturing increased by 0.5%. If we don’t count autos, then factory output was up by 0.3%.

Thanks to the positive economic news, that’s altering the markets’ take on the Fed and the course for interest rates. According to the most recent trading in the futures market, there’s a 65% chance that the Fed’s first rate cut will come in September, and there’s a 51% chance that it will be the Fed’s only rate cut this year.

Earlier today, Fed Chair Jerome Powell conceded that there’s been “a lack of further progress” with regard to inflation. Powell indicated that rate cuts may not be coming so soon. This is a noticeable change from the Fed’s stance of only a few weeks ago.

One effect of higher interest rates is that the US dollar has been getting stronger in recent days. The dollar is also being helped by increased international tensions. When investors get nervous, they go to areas of stability. According to Bloomberg, the greenback is having its best run in over a year.

Until now, investors had assumed that most of the world’s major central banks would cut rates similarly, so therefore, the impact would be negligible. Now that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Tesla to Cut 10% of its Workforce

Something on Wall Street that still surprises me is how quickly a stock can go, in Wall Street’s eyes, from doing nothing wrong to doing nothing right.

I say this in the wake of Monday’s news that Tesla (TSLA) will be laying off more than 10% of its global workforce. The electric vehicle leader is facing the reality of slower sales growth. In Q1, Tesla delivered 387,000 vehicles. That’s down 8.5% from last year.

Companies like Tesla are always a challenge for value-oriented investors because embryonic industries are often long on potential but meager with results. How can an investor properly value a stock that’s trading at 100 times trailing earnings but that could be the next Microsoft (MSFT)? It’s a tough question, and I don’t know the answer. I will concede that non-traditional companies should be valued in non-traditional ways.

That’s certainly true for Tesla, but now we’re talking about a company that’s richly valued but may not be growing so quickly. Tesla’s profit margins have consistently eroded. Tesla has also experienced several senior executives leaving the company.

Elon Musk said, “About every 5 years, we need to reorganize and streamline the company for the next phase of growth.” The last time they cut 10% of the workforce was two years ago.

You can see how badly Tesla has lagged the overall market.

Musk is apparently pushing the company hard in the direction of fully-autonomous vehicles. The goal is to unveil a robotaxi sometime this summer. Meanwhile, other car companies are scaling back their EV plans, while hybrid sales are as strong as ever.

These kinds of stocks are often referred to as lottery investments meaning that investors know that 90% of these investments will go nowhere but that a big home run will more than make up for the losses.

Let’s say that forty years ago, you decided that computers were the future. You decided to invest in what most experts believed were the top contenders in the field. That probably would have led you to invest in IBM, Cray and DEC. Lancaster Colony (LANC) would have been a far better investment. They make croutons.

My point is that even if you’re right in your thesis, you can be wrong in your delivery.

Stock Focus: IES Holdings (IESC)

As long-time readers know, one of my favorite hobbies is to highlight high-quality companies that are practically unfollowed by Wall Street. I’m often asked how to find these stocks, but that’s hard to answer because they’re, by definition, not well known.

Recently, I came across IES Holdings (IESC), which I have to confess I was unfamiliar with. I’m glad I know it now. Twelve years ago, it was going for $1.75 per share. Now it’s at $120. Still, not a single analyst covers it.

IESC has done so well that the S&P 500 looks like a flat line in comparison.

According to Wikipedia, IESC “provides infrastructure services including electrical, communications, low-voltage, network, AV, and security alarm systems to the residential, industrial and commercial markets.”

IESC isn’t some microcap. The company has 8,300 employees and a market value of $2.4 billion. The company was founded in 1997 and it’s based in Houston.

For the most recent fiscal year (ending in September), IESC made $4.71 per share. IESC’s next earnings report will probably be out in early May, but I can’t say what Wall Street’s consensus is since there isn’t one.

That’s all for now. I’ll have more for you in the next issue of CWS Market Review.

– Eddy

P.S. If you want more info on our ETF, you can check out the ETF’s website.

CWS Market Review – April 9, 2024

(This is the free version of CWS Market Review. If you like what you see, then please sign up for the premium newsletter for $20 per month or $200 for the whole year. If you sign up today, you can see our two reports, “Your Handy Guide to Stock Orders” and “How Not to Get Screwed on Your Mortgage.”)

Maybe the Fed won’t be cutting rates!

It’s hard to say for certain, but on Wall Street, doubts have started to creep in about what the Fed will do with interest rates.

For months, Wall Street had assumed that the Federal Reserve would jump in and cut interest rates. The Fed admitted it as well. Lower interest rates, quite naturally, would help the stock and housing markets. The line of reasoning was simple: “Why not cut? Inflation’s fading away.”

Now it looks like the economy is stronger than expected, and inflationary indicators are running hot. The prices of gold and silver, for example, have rallied. The price for oil has also moved up. In fact, Mark Zandi, an influential economist with Moody’s, said that higher oil prices is the “most serious” threat to the economy. That’s not supposed to happen when inflation has been defeated.

What’s the market thinking? Check out the five-year “breakeven rate:”

This is the market’s bet for what inflation will do over the coming five years. Notice how the breakeven rate has gone up since the start of this year. This is getting hard to ignore.

Now some Fed officials are hinting that rate cuts may not be as generous as assumed. Neel Kashkari, the head of the Minneapolis Fed, said the Fed could delay in cutting rates. Lorie Logan, the President of the Dallas Fed, said it might be too soon to cut rates. Not to be outdone, Jamie Dimon, the top banana at JPMorgan, said interest rates could eventually rise to 8%.

The problem for Wall Street is that so much of the recent rally was predicated on the idea of lower rates. It’s as if the stock market was told it got a bonus, and it quickly ran out and spent all the money before the bonus appeared in its bank account. Now it’s being told that the bonus may be canceled.

Even subtly, the stock market appears to be getting nervous. I’ve noticed that a few times recently, the stock market has been unable to hold onto early-day gains. Until recently, the bears were easily scared away. Now they’re able to push back and reverse morning rallies.

It’s interesting to note that growth stocks (in red) strongly led the market (blue) from the start of this year until two months ago. Since then, growth stocks have largely performed in line with the overall market, perhaps slightly trailing.

The Fed admitted that it sees itself cutting rates three times this year. Now, many traders think we’ll only get one or two cuts this year. There’s a growing number of people who think we won’t get any cuts this year.

The futures market currently thinks there’s a 60% chance that the Fed will cut rates by 0.25% in June and a 75% chance that it will come by July. Traders see only two rate cuts over the next seven months. That recession that was promised to us seems to be taking its time.

The Economy Created 303,000 New Jobs in March

Last Friday, the government reported that the U.S. economy created 303,000 net new jobs last month. That was an impressive number. Economists on Wall Street had been expecting a gain of only 200,000. Also, the unemployment rate ticked down 0.1% to 3.8%, and the labor force participation rate increased by 0.2% to 62.7%.

But there were some concerning stats in the report. For example, the jobs gain for February was revised lower to 270,000. Also, the broader U-6 rate was unchanged at 7.3%. The revision for January was an increase of 27,000 to 256,000, but that’s still below the initial estimate of 353,000. I’m also suspicious when too many of the new jobs are in government.

Growth came from many of the usual sectors that have powered gains in recent months. Health care led with 72,000, followed by government (71,000), leisure and hospitality (49,000), and construction (39,000). Retail trade contributed 18,000 while the “other services” category added 16,000.

I was particularly interested to hear the number for wages. For March, average hourly earnings increased by 0.3% which matched expectations. Over the last year, average hourly earnings are up by 4.1%. That’s not bad, but it needs to be better.

Workers have seen that the rate of earnings growth has slowed down considerably (see above). To be clear, wages are increasing but at a slower rate.

However, the household survey, which is used to calculate the unemployment rate, posted an even more robust gain in March, up 498,000, more than absorbing the 469,000 increase in the civilian labor force level.

Gains tilted heavily to part-time workers in the household survey. Full-time workers fell by 6,000, while part-timers increased by 691,000. Multiple job holders rose by 217,000, to 5.2% of the total employment level.

The next inflation report is due out tomorrow. The last report showed that headline inflation increased by 0.4% in February, and the year-over-year rate is running at 3.2%. The core rate also rose by 0.4%, and it’s up by 3.8% over the past year. For tomorrow’s report, Wall Street expects to see both the core and headline rates increase by 0.3%.

Why Shorting Is a Very Tough Game

Two weeks ago, Trump Media (DJT) started publicly trading. The company merged with Digital World Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded shell company.

By any rational measure of value, Trump Media is wildly overpriced. The company currently has a market value of $5 billion even though it had total revenue last year of $4.1 million. That’s probably equivalent to a few 7-11 stores.

For the year, the company lost $58 million. On its first day of trading, DJT nearly hit $80 per share, but lately, it’s around $37 per share. I bring this to your attention not for any political reason but to show you how dramatic Wall Street can be.

Trump Media is currently the most expensive stock to short, meaning to bet against. In fact, it’s the most expensive to short by far. If you want to borrow shares of DJT to sell them short, you’d have to pay financing costs that run at an annualized rate of 750% to 900%. That compares with the average stock to finance at 0.71%.

This means that if you took a short position in DJT, you’d have to pay about $1 per day in financing costs. According to CNBC, “to break even on a new trade after one month, a short seller would have to see the share price of Trump Media drop by more than $30.”

I use this as a lesson that on Wall Street, even if you’re right, you can be wrong. The folks shorting DJT are betting on a sudden collapse. Even if the company turns out to be terrible, it could be a long, painful death. In fact, that’s what happens to many stocks.

I generally steer clear of shorting stocks. To be sure, it’s not hard to find stocks that are overpriced. But with a short, you’re making a few bets and only one is that the stock is too high. You also need to get your timing right. You need to see folks convinced that you were right all along. That’s not so easy.

Bear in mind that with a heavily shorted stock also runs the risk of a short squeeze. That happens when a widely-shorted stock starts to rise. Investors who are losing money then cover their short which pushes the shares even higher.

That can spark a cycle of ever higher prices, which essentially happened with Game Stop (GME) three years ago. Shares of GME rose from $5 to $87 in just 10 trading days. Now it’s at $11.

This is one of the many reasons why I prefer the long-only approach with no margin. Even if I’m wrong, time is on my side.

That’s all for now. I’ll have more for you in the next issue of CWS Market Review.

– Eddy

P.S. If you want more info on our ETF, you can check out the ETF’s website.