Stocks continue to print new highs. And many continue to doubt the rally (as they have for much of the post-crisis recovery).
They continue to say stocks are priced for perfection, implying that stocks are expensive, and/or that investors are assuming a perfect Presidency from Trump. But remember, we’ve talked about the massive fundamental and technical performance gap that has still yet to be closed, dating back to the 2007 pre-crisis peak. I did this analysis again just a few days after the election. You can see it here: “The Trump Effect Will Make Stocks Extraordinarily Cheap.”
Now, a few days ago, we talked about buying the stocks of the guests of Trump Tower. Goldman comes to mind, as the Wall Street powerhouse has been well represented in the Trump plan, including the new Treasury Secretary appointment. Goldman is the best performing Dow stock over the past month. And we talked about the meeting with Japanese investor, Masayoshi Son, at Trump Tower this week. Son’s gigantic (80%+) stake in Sprint is up 11% sinceTuesday.
With that said, the billionaire activist investor, Carl Icahn, has been out doing interviews the past two days. Let’s talk about Icahn, because there is perhaps no one investor that should benefit more from the Trump administration. Remember, Icahn was an early supporter for Trump. He’s been an advisor throughout and has helped shape policy plans for the President-elect.
What has been the sore spot for Icahn’s underperforming portfolio the past two years? Energy. It has been heavily weighted in his portfolio the past two years. And no surprise, he’s had steep declines in the value of his portfolio the past two years.
But Icahn doesn’t see his energy stakes as bad investments. Rather, he thinks his stocks have been unfairly harmed by reckless regulation. For that, he’s fought. He’s penned a letter to the EPA a few months ago saying its policies on renewable energy credits are bankrupting the oil refinery business and destroying small and midsized oil refiners. And now his activism looks like it will pay off. Yesterday we got an appointee to run the EPA that has been vetted by Icahn (as he said in an interview today) — it’s an incoming EPA chief that was suing the EPA in his role as Oklahoma attorney general. Safe to assume he’ll be friendly to energy, which will be friendly to Icahn’s portfolio.
Icahn’s publicly traded holdings company is already up 28% from election day (just one month ago). But it remains 56% off of the 2013 highs. This is the portfolio of an investor (Icahn) with the best track record in history (30% annualized for almost 50 years). IEP might be one of the best buys in the market.
We have three Icahn owned stocks in our Billionaire’s Portfolio. Follow me and look over my shoulder as I follow the world’s best investors into their best stocks. Our portfolio is up more than 27% this year. You can join me here and get positioned for a big 2017.
On Friday, we looked at five key charts that showed the technical breakout in stocks, interest rates, the dollar and crude oil.
All of these longer term charts argue for much higher levels to come. Remember, the big event remaining for the year is the December 14th Fed meeting. A rate hike won’t move the needle. It’s well expected at this stage. But the projections on the path of interest rates that they will release, following the meeting, will be important. As I said Friday, “as long as Yellen and company don’t panic, overestimate the inflation outlook and telegraph a more aggressive rate path next year, the year should end on a very positive note.”
On that note, today we had a number of Fed members out chattering about rates and where things are headed. Did they start building expectations for a more aggressive rate path in 2017, because of the Trump effect? Or, did they stick to the new strategy of promoting a view that underestimates the outlook for the economy and, therefore, the rate path (a strategy that was suggested by former Fed Chair Bernanke)?
The former is what Bernanke criticized the Fed as doing late last year, which he argued was an impediment to growth, as people took the cue and started positioning for a rate environment that would choke off the recovery. The latter is what he suggested they should move to (and have moved to), sending an ultra accommodative signal, and a willingness to be behind the curve on inflation — letting the economy run hot for a while (i.e. they won’t impede the progress of recovery by tightening money).
So how did the Fed speakers today weigh in, relative to this positioning?
First, it should be said that Bernanke also recently criticized the Fed for the cacophony of chatter from Fed members between meetings. He said it was confusing and disruptive to the overall Fed communications.
So we had three speakers today. New York Fed President William Dudley spoke in New York, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard spoke in Phoenix, and Chicago Fed President Charles Evans speaks in Chicago. Did they have a game plan today to promote a more consistent message, or was it a more of the disruptive noise we’ve heard in the past?
Fortunately, they were on message. Only Dudley and Bullard are voting members. Both had comments today that spanned from cautious to outright dovish. Dudley, the Vice Chair, wasn’t taking a proactive view on the impact of fiscal stimulus — he promoted a wait and see view, while keeping the tone cautionary. Bullard, a Fed member that is often swaying with the wind, said he envisioned ONE rate hike through 2019. That would mean, one in December, and done until 2019. That’s an amazing statement, and one that completely (and purposely) ignores any influence of what may come from the new pro-growth policies.
This is all good news for stocks and the momentum in markets. The Fed seems to be disciplined in its strategy to stay out of the way of the positive momentum that has developed. And that only helps their cause. With that, if today’s chatter is a guide, we should see a very modest view in the economic projections that will come on December 14th. That should keep the stock market on track for a strong close into the end of the year.
We may be entering an incredible era for investing. An opportunity for average investors to make up ground on the meager wealth creation and retirement savings opportunities of the past decade, or more. For help, follow me in my Billionaire’s Portfolio, where you look over my shoulder as I follow the world’s best investors into their best stocks. Our portfolio is up 24% year to date. That’s more than three times the performance of the broader stock market. Join me here.
Over the past year we’ve talked a lot about the oil price bust and the threat it represented to the global economy. And in past months, we’ve talked about the approaching OPEC meeting, where they had telegraphed a production cut – the first in eight years. Still, not many were buying it.
Remember, it was OPEC created the oil price crash that started in November of 2014 when the Saudis refused a production cut. Ultimately the price of oil fell to $26 a barrel (this past February).
Their strategy: Kill off the emerging threat of the U.S. shale industry by forcing prices well below where they could produce profitably. To an extent it worked. More than 100 small oil related companies in the U.S. filed for bankruptcy over the past two years.
But it soon became evident that cheap oil threatened, not just the U.S. shale industry (which also turned out to threaten the global financial system and global economy), but it threatened the solvency of OPEC member countries (the proverbial shot in the foot).
The big fish, the Saudis, have lost significant revenue from the self-induced oil price plunge, starting the clock on an economic time bomb. They derive about 80% of their revenue from oil. With that, they’ve run up their budget deficit to more than 15% of GDP in the oil bust environment. For context, Greece, the well known walking dead member of the euro zone was running a budget deficit of 15% at worst levels back in 2009.
So OPEC members need (have to have) higher oil prices. Time is working against them. With that, they followed through with a cut today. Remember, back in the 80s when OPEC merely hinted at a production cut, oil jumped 50% in 24 hours. Today it was up as much as 10% on the news. But this cut should put a floor under oil in the mid $40s, and lead to $60-$70 oil next year.
All of this said, given the increase in supply from bringing Iran production back online, and from increasing U.S. supply, no one should be cheering more for the pro-growth Trump economy to put a fire under demand than OPEC, especially Saudi Arabia.
Now, as we discussed this week, oil has been a huge drag on global inflation. With that, the catalyst of a first OPEC cut in eight years driving oil prices higher could put the Fed and other global central banks in a very different position next year.
Consider where the world was just months ago, with downside risks reverting back to the depths of the economic crisis. Now we have reason to believe oil could be significantly higher next year. That alone will run inflation significantly hotter (flipping the switch on the inflation outlook). Add to that, we have a pro-growth government with a trillion dollar fiscal package and tax cuts entering the mix.
As I said yesterday, we may find that the Fed will tell us in December that they are planning to move rates more like four times next year, instead of two.
The market is already telling us that the inflation switch has been flipped. Just four months ago, the 10 year yield was trading 1.32%, at new record lows. And as of today, we have a 10-year at 2.40% — and that’s on about a 60 basis point runup since November 8th.
With that said, there has been a shot in the arm for sentiment over the past few weeks. That’s led to the bottoming in rates, bottoming in commodities and potential cheapening of valuations in stocks (given a higher growth outlook). As a whole, that all becomes self-reinforcing for the better growth outlook story.
And that reduces a lot of threats. But it creates a new threat: The threat of a collapse in bond prices, runaway in market interest rates.
But what could be the Fed’s best friend, to quell that threat? Trump’s new Treasury Secretary said today that he thinks they will see companies repatriate as much as $1 trillion. Much of that money will find a parking place in the biggest, most liquid market in the world: The U.S. Treasury market. That should support bonds, and keep the climb in interest rates tame.
We may be entering an incredible era for investing. An opportunity for average investors to make up ground on the meager wealth creation and retirement savings opportunities of the past decade, or more. For help, follow me in my Billionaire’s Portfolio, where you look over my shoulder as I follow the world’s best investors into their best stocks. Our portfolio is up 24% year to date. That’s more than three times the performance of the broader stock market. Join me here.
Yesterday I talked about how an OPEC cut on oil production would/should accelerate the Fed’s plan for interest rate hikes next year.
Interestingly, the former Fed Chair himself, Ben Bernanke, wrote a post today on the internet talking about the Fed’s rate path and its quarterly projections (which we looked at yesterday).
Like his post in August, where he interpreted a shift in the Fed’s communications strategy for us, the media, which is always following the latest shiny object, didn’t pick up on it then, didn’t pick up on his message about the Bank of Japan’s actions in September, and has barely reported on his new post today (to this point).
When Bernanke speaks, for anyone that cares about the direction of markets, interest rates and the economy — we should all be listening.
Let’s talk about some of the nuggets Bernanke has offered in recent months, to those that are listening, through simple blog posts. And then we’ll look at what he said today.
Remember, this is the man with the most intimate knowledge of where the world has been over the past decade, what it’s vulnerable to, and what the probable outcomes look like for the global economy. He advises one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, the biggest bond fund in the world and one of the most important central banks in the world (the BOJ), and clearly still has a lot of influence at the Fed.
Back in August he wrote a piece criticizing the Fed for being too optimistic in its projections for the path of interest rates. He said that the Fed’s forward guidance of the past two years has led to a tightening in financial conditions, which has led to weaker growth, lower market interest rates and lower inflation. In plain English, consumers and businesses start playing defense if they think rates are on course to be dramatically higher, and that leads to lower inflation and lower growth. The opposite of the Fed’s desired outcome.
With that, Bernanke thought they should be taking the opposite approach, and suggested it may already be underway at the Fed (i.e. they should underestimate future growth and the rate path, and therefore possibly stimulate economic activity with that message).
It just so happens that Yellen has been speaking from this script ever since. They’ve ratcheted down expectations of the rate path, and in her more recent comments she’s said the Fed should let the economy run hot (to give it some momentum without bridling it with higher rates).
Then in September, after the BOJ surprised with some new wrinkles in their QE plan, Bernanke wrote a post emphasizing the importance of their new target of a zero yield on their 10 year government bond. The media and markets gave the BOJ’s move little attention. It was as if Bernanke was acting as the communications director for the BOJ.
He posted that day saying that the BOJ’s new policy moves were effectively a bigger QE program. Instead of telling us the size of purchase, they’re telling us the price on which they will either or buy or sell to maintain. He said, if the market decides to dump Japanese government bonds, the BOJ could end up buying more (maybe a lot more) than their current 80 trillion yen a year.
Bernanke also called the move to peg rates, a stealth monetary financing of government spending (which can be a stealth debt monetization). The market has indeed pushed bond prices lower since, which has pushed yields back above zero, and as Bernanke suggested, the BOJ is now in unlimited QE mode (buying unlimited amounts of bonds as long as the 10 year yield remains above a zero interest rate). That’s two for two for Bernanke interpreting for us, what looks like a complicated policy environment.
So what did he talk about today? Today he criticized Fed members for sending confusing messages about monetary policy through their frequent speeches and interviews that take place between Fed meetings. But most importantly, he seemed to be setting the table for another 180 from the Fed on their economic projections at their December meeting.
Remember, they went from forecasting four hikes for 2016, to dialing it back dramatically just three months into the year. Now, with the backdrop for a $1 trillion fiscal stimulus package finally coming down the pike, to relieve monetary policy, the outlook has changed for markets, and likely the Fed as well.
With that, Bernanke seems to be trying to give everyone a little heads up, to reduce the shock that may come from seeing a Fed path, in it’s coming December projections, that may/will likely show expectations of more aggressive rate hikes next year — perhaps projecting four hikes again for the year ahead (as they did into the close of last year).
We may be entering an incredible era for investing. An opportunity for average investors to make up ground on the meager wealth creation and retirement savings opportunities of the past decade, or more. For help, follow me in my Billionaire’s Portfolio, where you look over my shoulder as I follow the world’s best investors into their best stocks. Our portfolio is up 24% year to date. That’s more than three times the performance of the broader stock market. Join me here.
With Thanksgiving behind us, we a few key events ahead for markets before we can put a bow on things and call it a year.
As things stand, the S&P 500 is up around 8%, right in line with the long term average return (less dividends). Yields are around 2.3%. That’s right about where we left off at the end of 2015 (following the Fed’s first move higher on rates since the crisis).
We may find a round trip for oil as well before the year it over. On Wednesday, we’ll finally hear from OPEC on a production cut. Remember, it was late September when we were told that the Saudis were finally on board for a production cut, to get oil prices higher and to stop the bleeding in the oil revenue dependent OPEC economies.
As we’ve discussed, it was Saudi Arabia that blocked a cut on
Thanksgiving day evening two years ago. And that sent oil into a spiral from $70 to as low as $26. Importantly, cheap oil has not only represented a threat to global economic stability but it’s been deflationary. The threat to stability and the deflationary pressure is what has kept the Fed on the sidelines, reversing course on their rate hike projections for this year, and then, conversely, becoming progressively more and more dovish since March.
You can see in this graphic from the Fed last December (2015) after they decided to hike for the first time coming out of the crisis period.
Source: Fed
The majority view from Fed members was an expectation that the Fed funds rate would be about 1.375% at this point in th year (2016). As we know, it hasn’t happened. As of two months ago, the Fed was expecting rates to be at just 1.00% by the end next year.
This makes this week’s OPEC decision even more important, given the market’s and Fed’s expectations on the path of monetary policy at this point.
If OPEC does as they’ve indicated they will do this week, by announcing the first production cut in oil in eight years, it could send the price of oil back to levels of two years ago — when the oil price bust was started that Thanksgiving day. That’s $70.
And $70 oil would play a huge role in where rates go next year, in the U.S., and in Europe and Japan. The inflationary pressures of $70 oil could put the Fed back on a path to hike three to four times in the coming year (as they intended coming into 2016). And it could create the beginning of taper talk in Europe and Japan.
If we consider that possibility, it makes for a remarkably dramatic change in the global economic outlook in just five weeks (since the Nov 8 election). As Paul Tudor Jones, one of the great macro traders of all-time, has said: “the very best money is made at the market turns. Everyone says you get killed trying to pick tops and bottoms and you make all your money by playing the trend in the middle. Well for twelve years I have been missing the meat in the middle but I have made a lot of money at tops and bottoms.” An OPEC move should cement the top in bonds.
We may be entering an incredible era for investing. An opportunity for average investors to make up ground on the meager wealth creation and retirement savings opportunities of the past decade, or more. For help, follow me in my Billionaire’s Portfolio, where you look over my shoulder as I follow the world’s best investors into their best stocks. Our portfolio is up 24% year to date. That’s more than three times the performance of the broader stock market. Join me here.
Stocks continue to new highs today. But with the holiday approaching, the big focus is oil. It was two years ago on Thanksgiving day evening that the Saudis blocked a move by their fellow OPEC members to cut production, to put a floor under oil prices around $70. Oil plunged in a thin market and never looked back.
Of course, we traded as low as $26 earlier this year. That proved to be the bottom in that OPEC rigged oil price bust, which was intended to crush the competitive U.S. shale industry.
It worked. The emerging shale industry was brought to its knees and we’ve seen plenty of bankruptcies as a result. But OPEC countries have been hurt badly too, taking a huge hit to their oil revenues. That put some heavily oil dependent economies on default watch. So it finally became clear that cheap oil was a big net negative, not just for the U.S. economy, but for the global economy. The risk of continued fallout in the oil industry was a direct threat to the financial system and, therefore, a risk to another global economic crisis.
With that, we head into next week’s official OPEC meeting with expectations set for a first production cut in eight years. And we have the below chart, which would suggest that we could see oil back in the $70 area next year.
In 1986, the mere hint of an OPEC policy move sent oil up 50% in just 24 hours. They’ve more than hinted this time around, but the markets remain skeptical. That skepticism should serve to exacerbate the speed and magnitude of a move higher if they follow through.
Follow me in our Billionaire’s Portfolio, where you look over my shoulder as I follow the world’s best investors into their best stocks. Our portfolio is up 20% this year. That’s almost 3 times the performance of the broader stock market. Join me here.
As of the end of last week, 78% of the companies that have reported earnings for the most recent quarter have beaten estimates.
That’s on about a third of S&P 500 companies that have reported thus far. Remember, FactSet says on average (the five-year average), 67% of companies in the S&P 500 beat their analyst expectations. And they beat by an average of 4%. So the numbers in this earnings season are running a little hotter, albeit on a lowered bar.
We’ve talked quite a bit in the past week about the run up to Apple earnings, which came in yesterday after the market close. The earnings number beat expectations. But it was by a slim margin.
The stock was lower on the day. Still, on the second quarter report, this past July, Apple was a sub $100 stock (trading at just above $96). Today it will close above $115. That’s 20% higher in the span of one quarter, and it was on a report that was very much in line with the report we heard yesterday. And the report included only a few weeks of the new iPhone7 release. And it doesn’t reflect implosion of Apple’s competitor, Samsung.
As the media and analyst tend to do, especially when the macro news front is quiet and market volatility is quiet, they picked apart and speculated on the future of Apple today as a company that may have peaked.
Let’s just take a look at the stock, and not pretend to have better visibility on the future of the company than the people do inside — the same one’s that put a transformational supercomputer in our pockets.
The stock still trades at 13x earnings. The S&P 500 trades at 16x. Apple trades at 13x next year’s projected earnings. The S&P 500 trades at 16.5x. Clearly it’s undervalued compared to the broader market. What about Apple’s monster cash position? Apple has even more cash now — a record $237 billion. If we excluded the cash from the valuation, Apple trades at 8.6x earnings. Though not an apples to apples (pun), and just as a reference point, that valuation would group Apple with the likes of these S&P 500 components that trade 8 times earnings: Dow Chemical, Prudential Financial, Bed Bath & Beyond, a Norwegian chemical company (LBY), and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. It’s safe to say no one is debating whether or not Hewlett Packard is at the pinnacle of its business. Yet, if we strip out the cash in Apple, AAPL shares are trading at an HPE valuation.
Apple still looks like a cheap stock.
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The markets are sitting on Apple earnings, which will come after the close today (by the time you read this).
We’ve been talking about the quiet move in currencies, some commodities and some foreign stock markets.
Given that the dollar is looking like another (maybe big) run is in store, which means much lower euro and much lower yen (and higher German and Japanese stock markets, as we’ve discussed), what does a higher dollar mean for commodities?
Commodities have, of course, been crushed throughout this post financial crisis period. And earlier this year, oil was the most recent mass declining commodity. That was after an initial collapse in 2008, and a sharp recovery from 2009 through much of 2014. But then of course, it came crashing back to earth to revisit the deeply depressed levels of most other commodities, following OPEC refusal to cut production back in late 2014.
So, we’ve talked about the importance of oil. Cheap oil had all of the ingredients to be even more destructive to the global economy than the credit bubble burst (and housing bust). But it’s out of the danger zone now, at around $50, and the outlook is bullish, given the supply dynamics and given that OPEC is prepared to cut for the first time in eight years.
So this begs the question: If the dollar is strengthening, and may continue to strengthen, isn’t that bad for commodities? And therefore, isn’t that bad news for the oil price recovery?
The mainstream financial media usually is very quick to attribute moves in commodities to an inverse move in the dollar (and vice versa). On the surface, it’s a logical enough argument. After all, commodities like gold, oil, and grains are all priced in dollars.
Therefore, if the dollar weakens the value of the commodity shouldn’t be penalized. With that logic, it should strengthen to maintain its value on the global stage.
So all things remaining equal, the commodity should move in the directly proportional opposite direction of the dollar.
The only problem with this argument is that all things never remain equal …
So is there a legitimate price relationship between the dollar and commodities? Or is it just market fodder to attempt to explain and justify the market activity?
That depends on the time period you look at …
For example, from December 1998 to September 2000 the relationship of oil and the dollar was positive, as shown in the chart below. When one went up, the other went up.
On the other hand, from 2006 to 2009, the relationship was been negative. Take a look at the following chart: When oil was crashing, the dollar was rising sharply. And toward the far right of the chart, oil recovered and the dollar fell.
Of course, these are just two isolated periods of time that I’ve used here to demonstrate exact opposite relationships.
However, over longer periods the influence of the dollar on oil, or oil on the dollar, is found to have NO statistical significance. There’s not a significant positive or negative correlation. Consequently, statisticians would conclude that the dollar and oil have nothing to do with one another.
So there is no reason to believe oil can’t continue its strong recovery, and do so in an environment when the Fed is moving in the opposite directions of other major central banks, providing fuel for a much higher dollar.
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I talked last week about the move in oil, and the lag in natural gas.
But natural gas was knocking on the door of a technical breakout. As you can see, that breakout looks to be underway now.
Nat gas is now at $3.25. If history is any indication, it could be in the low $4s soon.
That’s helped by chatter today from OPEC members out vocally supporting the production cut that was agreed to two weeks ago. And the Secretary General of OPEC piled on today by saying the sharp contraction in investments (due to low prices) poses a threat to global oil supply. As we’ve discussed, for those that had the “oil price to zero” arguments earlier in the year, supply changes, so does demand.
With all of this, oil continues to climb higher, testing the June highs today. Here’s another look at the chart.
A break above the June highs of $51.67 would project a move to near $65 (technically speaking, it’s a C-wave). Another big technical level above is $68.60, which is the 61.8% retracement of the move down from almost $95 in late 2014, to the lows of earlier this year. That’s the breakdown in oil prices driven by OPEC’s 2014 refusal to cut production. And now were on the verge of getting the first cut in eight years. So oil is looking like higher levels are coming — it was up another 3% today.
What’s does it mean for stocks? As we’ve discussed, for much of the year, lower oil has meant lower stocks, and higher oil has meant higher stocks.
This emerging bullish technical and fundamental backdrop for energy should be very good for stocks. Remember, higher energy prices, in this environment, removes the risk of another oil price shock-to-sentiment (good for stocks, good for the economy). And it means producers can start producing again, downstream businesses can fill capacity, and we can start seeing some of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs replenished that have been lost over the past two years.
Since OPEC rigged lower oil prices back in late 2014, we’ve had over 100 North American energy company bankruptcies. Some of those have/are reorganizing and emerging with lean balance sheets into what could be a hot recovery in energy prices. I’ll talk about some tomorrow.
The Billionaire’s Portfolio is up 23% year-to-date — that’s nearly four times the return of the S&P 500 during the same period. We recently exited a big FDA approval stock for a quadruple, and we’ve just added a new pick to the portfolio — following Warren Buffett into one of his favorite stocks. If you haven’t joined yet, please do. Click here to get started and get your portfolio in line with our Billionaire’s Portfolio.
As you might recall, since I’ve written this daily note starting in January, I’ve focused on a few core themes.
First, central banks are in control. They’ve committed trillions of dollars to manufacture a recovery. They’ve fired arguably every bullet possible (“whatever it takes”). And for everyone’s sake, they can’t afford to see the recovery derail – nor will they. With that, they need stocks higher. They need the housing recovery to continue. They need to maintain the consumer and growing business confidence that they have manufactured through their policies.
A huge contributor to their effort is higher stocks. And higher stocks only come, in this environment, when people aren’t fearing another big shock/ big shoe to drop. The central banks have promised they won’t let it happen. To this point, they’ve made good on their promise through a number of unilateral and coordinated defensive maneuvers along the way (i.e. intervening to quell shock risks).
The second theme: As the central banks have been carefully manufacturing this recovery, the Fed has emerged with the bet that moving away from “emergency policies” could help promote and sustain the recovery. It’s been a tough road on that front. But it has introduced a clear and significant divergence between the Fed’s policy actions and that of Japan, Europe and much of the rest of the world. That creates a major influence on global capital flows. The dollar already benefits as a relative safe parking place for global capital, especially in an uncertain world. Add to that, the expectation of a growing gap between U.S. yields and the rest of the world, and more and more money flows into the dollar… into U.S. assets.
With that in mind, this all fuels a higher dollar and higher U.S. asset prices. And when a dollar-denominated asset begins to move, it’s more likely to attract global speculative capital (because of the dollar benefits).
With that in mind, let’s ignore all of the day to day news, which is mostly dominated by what could be the next big threat, and take an objective look at these charts.
U.S. Stocks
Clearly the trend in stocks since 2009 is higher (like a 45 degree angle). Since that 2009 bottom in stocks, we’ve had about 4 higher closes for every 1 lower close on a quarterly basis. That’s a very strong trend and we’ve just broken out to new highs last quarter (above the white line).
U.S. Dollar
This dollar chart shows the distinct effect of divergent global monetary policy and flows to the dollar. You can see the events annotated in the chart, and the parabolic move in the dollar. Any positive surprises in U.S. economic data as we head into the year end will only drive expectations of a wider policy gap — good for a higher dollar.
Oil
We looked at this breakout in oil last week after the OPEC news. Oil traded just shy of $50 today. That’s 17% higher since September 20th.
Oil trades primarily in dollars. And we have a catalyst for higher oil now that OPEC has said it will make the first production cut in eight years. That makes oil a prime spot for speculative capital (more “fuel” for oil). And as we’ve discussed in recent days, weeks and months… higher oil, given the oil price bust that culminated earlier this year, is good for stocks, and good for the economy.
What’s the anti-dollar trade? Gold. As we discussed yesterday, gold has broken down.
If we keep it simple and think about this major policy divergence, we have plenty of reasons to believe a higher dollar and higher stocks will continue to lead the way.
The Billionaire’s Portfolio is up 23% year-to-date — that’s nearly four times the return of the S&P 500 during the same period. We recently exited a big FDA approval stock for a quadruple, and we’ve just added a new pick to the portfolio — following Warren Buffett into one of his favorite stocks. If you haven’t joined yet, please do. Click here to get started and get your portfolio in line with our Billionaire’s Portfolio
