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Money Daily has been providing business and financial market news, views, and coverage on a nearly continuous basis since 2006. Complete archives are available at moneydaily.blogspot.com.
PRIOR COVERAGE:
10/10-10/16/2021
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Trump Launches Truth Social Via SPAC DWAC, Scares Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Biden, Brandon Friday, October 22, 2021, 8:33 am ET
Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive. The lies are beginning to catch up to the party of deceit. The NIH did, in fact, fund Gain of Function research, as opposed to the false statements Anthony Fauci and head of the NIH, Francis Collins, made to congress. (It's a crime, BTW) Joe Biden continues to beat the racism drum. On Thursday, he said that the January 6 disturbance at the US Capitol was motivated by white supremacy. And he didn't stop there, blaring, "according to the United States intelligence community, domestic terrorism from white supremacists is the most lethal terrorist threat in the homeland." Wow. Better keep those soccer moms away from school board meetings. And then, on Thursday, along came Donald Trump. The President who never conceded the 2020 election, who has been branded as everything from a Russian spy to a protagonist for insurrection, had a hit on Wall Street, as his Trump Media & Technology Group went public via the SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) DWAC (Digital World Acquisition Corp.). Shares of the fledgling combination, DWAC, were up more than 350% on its first day of trading on the NASDAQ and are soaring by more than 50% in premarket trading on Friday. As expressed on the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTGcorp.com) website, Trump's message is crystal clear. His hope for the planned network site, Truth Social, is A Uniting Force For Freedom of Expression, an unequivocal rebuke to the social media giants, Facebook, Twitter, and Google, who banned his tweets, videos, and posts at the height of the 2020 election campaign. Those bans continue to this day, so it's not surprising Trump would take such an action. He had mentioned starting such a group following the results of the 2020 election, and they now have sprung to life. It didn't take long for the purveyors of spin and lies to begin spreading the FUD, however. Check out the article and video from Yahoo Finance's Dan Hawley, calling the effort a "pseudo-social network" and referencing the short-lived "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" and throwing up the distracting argument that for Trump's venture to succeed, it would benefit from a law Trump tried to eviscerate when president, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Make no doubt about it, this is being considered an act of war by the current hoax administration and the social media sycophants and puppet string pullers. Is there any doubt that once Trump's Truth Social goes live in the first quarter of 2022, Biden's people will be all over it, citing violations of the first amendment and other crimes. In the meantime, shares of DWAC may climb to unforeseen heights. The simple math is that more then 80 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in the last election, many of them still raging over the obviously flawed results. How much will many of these people pay to own a share in a Trump venture? $100? $500? $5000? And how many will buy many multiple shares? If the company that eventually arises out of this combination plans to compete with the likes of Twitter, Google, or Facebook, they'll certainly need lots of capital, much more than the $2 or $3 billion indicated by the current share price. There are some 25 million shares outstanding and 35.9 million implied shares outstanding, A market cap the size of Twitter's, for instance, at $52 billion, indicates a share price close to $1,500. Could it get there? Certainly. Anything is possible. Whether it will or not depends on how hard both sides are willing to fight. The stock was halted numerous times on Thursday as it rose wildly, citing suspicious trading activity. Apparently, those opposed to any kind of success or renewal of good fortune by Donald Trump are already playing hard ball. There are larger issues related to the surprise IPO via SPAC by the President which will be played out over the coming months, and, likely, years. At the very least, it's heartwarming to see President Trump back in the game. Money Daily, an unabashed supporter of Mr. Trump, liberty, the constitution, and freedom of expression, wishes him the best of luck. More on this story and the rest of market-moving activity on Sunday's WEEKEND WRAP. Checking the levels of the various indices heading into Friday, the Dow Industrials failed in its initial attempt to extend beyond Wednesday's all-time closing high, though the S&P managed to pick up more than enough points to set a new closing record. The NASDAQ finished with the best gains of the session and is up a whopping 318 points this week (2.14%) The Dow is up 308 points so far this week; the S&P ahead by 78.41, and the NYSE Composite is up 211 points. The Dow Tranportation Average has booked gains of 426 points (2.81%) through Thursday's close. Looks like another solid eek for US equites.
At the Close, Thursday, October 21, 2021:
Thursday, October 21, 2021, 9:28 am ET On Wednesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at an all-time high. Money Daily was not surprised by this. In fact, it was predicted, though little credit should be given for this blog's prescience. Any trained animal could have done just as well. Since the GFC of 2008-09, stocks have been moving, rather routinely, higher and higher and higher. At the bottom of the subprime (GFC) crisis, March 9, 2009, the Dow closed at 6,547.05. From there, it began going higher, all the way to Wednesday's close of 35,609.34. That is an astounding return of 543.90% in 12 years, or, an annual average return of more than 45%. The NASDAQ and S&P 500 show similar returns. With the exception of the virus crisis in February and March, 2020, stocks have gone pretty much straight up without so much as a 10-15% pullback. Now, with that kind of monetary power, one would think the United States would be by far the richest nation on earth, with the best infrastructure, best-built housing, best-educated youth, and, in general, the best of everything. Sadly, that's not the case, because all of that wealth creation has been pocketed by the upper one percent of the population. It hasn't been re-invested in better manufacturing, land use, housing, schools, and roads. No, it's been invested in yachts, private residences, works of art, other excesses, and plowed back into hedge funds and other wealth management products. The middle class has been hollowed out, the poverty-stricken lowest amongst us getting better benefits - free housing, food, phones, health care - and the United States of America is left teetering on the brink of disaster. Instead of already having solved problems like immigration and infrastructure, congress is instead ignoring illegal immigration and arguing over how much - or how little - to spend on infrastructure. With the Dow making a new record and the S&P literally fractions away (September 2, 4,536.95) from a closing high on Wednesday, the question arises as to whether these new levels will be sustainable, and whether there will be "greater fools" to buy at the all-time highs. For the answer to that, we must go back a little further into market history, to May 17, 2007, when then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, stated, "The subprime mess is grave but largely contained..." and then skip ahead to July 19, 2007, when the Dow made an all-time high of 14,000.41. Everything was just fine. Everybody had faith in Bernanke. The market moved lower after that, however, closing at 12,845.78 on August 16. But, after a brief period of indecisiveness, the Dow ran all the way up to 14,164.53 on October 9. Many thought that October 9 record close was a false high, a manipulated number, because subprime wasn't actually contained at all. The housing market was slipping. Prices for new and existing homes were stagnant or falling. New permits were heading lower. The Dow began to slide, down to 12,743.44 on November 26. 11,740.15 on March 8, 2008. And then it drifted until September 8, closing at 11,510.74, all the way down to 7,552.29 on November 20. The venerable Dow Industrials never made it back to that "subprime is contained" price of 14,164.53 until March 5, 2013. It was nearly six years of incredible pain, suffering, millions of homes foreclosed upon, and massive financial losses. Wednesday's high close on the Dow may be just another head fake like the one from 2007. All the elements are in place for it to be so. The country is experiencing high inflation, shortages of goods in various places, a labor market that is purported to have more jobs available than people to fill them, ships moored off the California coast unable to unload their products from China, Korea, Japan and other Pacific Rim countries. Just to throw another spanner into the machine, China's "Evergrande" crisis is getting worse. Property sales have been off by nearly 20% in both August and September and more property development firms are having trouble making bond payments on time, or even just interest payments. And, like clockwork, because while history may not necessarily repeat itself, but often rhymes, "Evergrande is an 'individual' case, Liu Zhongrui, an official at the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said Thursday at a briefing in Beijing. He's lying. Let's not forget that two weeks from now, the Fed will already have conducted their penultimate FOMC meeting of the year, on November 2-3. The current consensus is that the Fed will announce that they will begin tapering asset purchases, starting either immidately or within a month's time, in the belief that the economic recovery from the virus crisis is strong enough that it does not need further stimulus. They'll be lying too, because they know the economy is crumbling before their eyes. Judge for yourself, but there are signs that stocks cannot go higher and instead could tumble precipitously. Just like in 2007, when stocks made new highs in July and again in October and failed to go higher, this season, the S&P and NASDAQ made new highs in September (for the Dow it was actually August 16), dipped and now appear to be backing away. Hedge accordingly.
At the Close, Wednesday, October 20, 2021:
Wednesday, October 20, 2021, 9:25 am ET With a massive number of companies reporting third quarter earnings this week and next, there will be ample opportunity for investors to step up and buy stocks of firms that beat their estimates and/or issue positive forward guidance. Last week, it was the big banks taking the lead in earnings reporting and they all showed earnings beats for the quarter though not much in the way of positive forecasting for the remainder of the year and 2022. There shouldn't be much reading into that, other than prospects for the recovery from the depths of the virus panic have been significantly diminished over the past 45 days and there are elements of the general economy that aren't exactly playing along. Chief among these disparate pieces of the economic pie are the continuing disruptions to the supply chain at the ports of Los Angeles and San Diego where nearly 60% of consumer goods arrive from China, Korea, Japan, and other far eastern countries; rampaging inflation affecting food prices in dramatic fashion; and, workplace disruptions caused by employees being dismissed for not adhering to vaccination mandates. You may or may not hear much about these disruptive factors because the primary goal of mainstream media in recent years has been to suppress information that is distressing or otherwise contrary to the official narrative, so, news about all of these issues - especially the non-vaxxing employees - is kept to a minimum, but it's out there. Police, firemen, and public employees of cities and counties large and small are being let go or placed on administrative leave for refusing to be vaccinated against the rebranded flu. Private companies, like Southwest Airlines, for instance, have been grappling with the issue because they have some contracts with the federal government and may lose those if all employees aren't properly jabbed. What's currently happening is small potatoes once these mandates become fully enforced. There will be vacancies across the landscape, and only vaccinated people will be allowed ot fill them. It's a kind of forced servitude (otherwise known as slavery) to have prerequisites for employment and damages for non-compliance. Lawsuits will be filed, but they may be few and far between as the judiciary is already bought and sold by the government and vaccine makers. While a cynical view, it is none the less a fact that many attorneys will not take cases against the government for fear that they will not ever receive fair rulings in any court thereafter. The ongoing supply chair disruptions also have yet to be fully experienced by the general population. That will come just in time for Christmas, when all of the trinkets and toys destined for store shelves remain boxed in cargo containers on ships moored off the California coast. Top-selling electronics may make it to market by air due to their relatively small sized and weights (think smartphones), but most products come across the Pacific in 40-foot-long containers and those are still stuck offshore. Typically, it takes two days to unload these ships, and then the items have to be unloaded from the containers, sorted and put on trucks headed across the country, so up to another week is required to get items to distribution centers and eventually to retail stores. Amazon and other online retailers will have a leg up on the bricks and mortar competition throughout, since they do not have to stock stores, only warehouses. It promises be a tough season for traditional retailers. Then, there's inflation. Food prices have been bounding higher since the middle of summer, and there doesn't seem to be any impediment to prices spiraling even higher. Adding to the cost of everything is the price of gas or diesel, now that the oil barons have decided that the price for crude oil has been too low for too long and, somehow, there's increased demand around the world. Chalk it up to pure ineptitude at the federal level, for failing to grasp issues related to the economy. Meanwhile, illegal immigrants cross the southern border without resistance, the Chinese property development market is imploding, and congress continues to wrangle over the size of their "human infrastructure" legislation, currently reduced from $3.5 trillion to $1-1.5 trillion. At the same time, congress recognizes the need to get busy on another continuing resolution to fund the government since the one passes a few weeks ago expires in early December; ditto for an extension or suspension of the debt ceiling. Overall, the third quarter looks good for companies that have already booked and reported, and most of the rest will likewise report positive stories. Solid corporate earnings would normally be enough to propel the indices to new all-time highs, especially since they're currently right below them. The Dow Industrials are less than 200 points from a new ATH, the NASDAQ is less than 250 points from its September 7 zenith of 15,374.33, and the S&P 500 is just 15 points shy of its record close of September 2nd, 4,536.95. Making new records on Wall Street should be a slam dunk in the current environment, but, just in case the major indices don't head toward the moon, some of the items mentioned above may contribute to Wall Street worries. In case you no longer want to play the stock game, or just like to diversify, Bitcoin is closing in on its all-time high, nearing $65,000. On the other end of the spectrum, gold and silver are still selling at bargain-basement prices.
At the Close, Tuesday, October 19, 2021:
Tuesday, October 19, 2021, 9:22 am ET Full retard bizarro clown world. That's what the world has become, and it didn't have to be this way, except that some small group of people with far too much money and far too many megalamanaical dreams got together and came up up with COVID (stands for covert ID), the Great Reset, lockdowns, jabs, masking, mandates, and Build Back Better, to do away with the charade of "democracy" or equal treatment under the law and impose a draconian system of control, surveillance, and subjugation of everybody on the planet. One can believe anything one wants, but there's no denying the World Economic Forum (WEF) that meets in Davos, Switzerland annually, discussed and promoted most of the insanity the world has endured since February, 2020, and they've amped up the cognitive dissonance and pressure on governments to impose more over-the-top restrictions, regulations, and rules designed to stamp out populism and individual liberty worldwide. +++ The remainder of this communication has been deemed offensive and untruthful +++ That's what you'll be seeing soon, everywhere you seek honest journalism. Six or seven years from now, you'll try to look back on this post and it will be gone. The good news is that there is resistance, as slight as it may be. Bitcoin popped to nearly $63,000 earlier this morning. Your stocks are going up, but so is the cost of everything else. How big a boat does one need to cross the Gulf of Mexico safely?
At the Close, Monday, October 18, 2021: Sunday, October 17, 2021, 10:50 am ET As good as it can be, technical analysis - in a closed market such as exists today - is only as good as the analyst(s) employing it and useful only so far as the control elements of the market in question will allow. Thus, when Money Daily saw the primary trend in the Dow Jones Transportation Average move from positive to negative (bull to bear), there was always the likelihood that the other major averages would follow only to some relatively small extent, and that's exactly what happened. Now that the grand game has been played out and all the perceived danger wrung out of the equity markets, it's back to business as usual in stocks, the primary trend summarily executed and reversed, led, not coincidentally, by the same Transportation Average that was bringing the angst. As can be seen below, for the week, the percentage gain in transports was nearly double that of the Dow Industrials and NASDAQ, and mroe than double that of the S&P 500. The rally on the transportation average has been nothing short of spectacular. Since September 30, it has moved from a low of 14,002.42 to Friday's close of 15,190.68, a gain of 8.5 percent, virtually wiping out the losses that began to accumulate in May. This was over a period of just ten trading sessions, or, an average gain each day of 118 points per session. The biggest movers during this period were railroads: CSX Corporation (CSX), Norfolk Southern (NSC), Union Pacific (UNP), and Kansas City Southern (KSS), which comprise 20% of the entire transportation average's 20 components. The largest holders of these stocks are The Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and State Street Corporation, which, incidentally, are major holders of just about every top company in the world. The sudden jerk forward of the transports, being led by railroads, leads to the inevitable conclusion that there are many billions available to the railroad companies for upgrading and capital improvements in the infrastructure bill currently held up in congress, but soon to pass. One other outlier stock in the transportation average is Avis Budget Group (CAR), which began moving higher in mid-July, when it was trading at 68.74 per share. On Friday, it closed at 150.97, a 119% gainer over the past three months. The major holder is one SRS Investment Management, LLC, a hedge fund with just 10 clients. Avis, was likely the main beneficiary of the demise of its main rival, Hertz, which filed for bankruptcy in 2020, during the virus panic, but has emerged from bankrupt status on June 30, 2021. Expected to post deep losses during the pandemic period, Avis managed to survive, thanks largely to government contracts. It posted huge earnings for the second quarter (5.90 per share vs. 1.21 expected) and is due to report third quarter earnings on November 1. Could be one to watch. Not to belabor the point, but US stock indices and individual stocks have not been conforming to traditional technical analysis since roughly 2000, and even more so since 2008. Insider trading is rampant; large hedge funds alongside Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street largely control the daily flow of share of these companies. While stocks were making headway out from under their respective 50-day moving averages (even the NASDAQ closed above its 50-day measuring stick), the treasury market was desperate to make sense of current economic conditions. The 10-year note and 30-year bond were both bought, as yields fell from 1.61% and 2.16%, to 1.52% and 2.02%, respectively, on Thursday following the release of September PPI data, before rebounding to 1.59% and 2.05% in the face of Friday's rally. Bonds are still saying that inflation is here to stay. They're not really buying into the Fed's "transitory" meme, now that prices everywhere seem to be rising. $5.99 a pond for pork chops, for instance, is one yardstick by which to measure price inflation. However, as Milton Freidman so eloquently expressed, "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output." Since one quarter of US money supply was created in just the past 18 months, there's little doubt that prices will rise to the level at which people can no longer afford them. Since the condition in the US is still one of underemployment and decreased productivity, such inflation has already produced shortages and these are planned to persist into 2022. Additionally, the USA has finally gotten aboard the energy price squeeze train that has been traversing through most of Asia and into Europe. WTI crude prices have skyrocketed to the highest in seven years, finishing up Friday in New York at $81.28 per barrel. The high oil price has prompted gas at the pump to move steadily higher, the US national averge now up to $3.305/gallon, per GasBuddy.com and threatening to go even higher. The average price in California is now $4.45 a gallon. While energy was leading most of the commodity space higher, silver and gold remained largely non-participants, mainly for their insistence on being actual money, as opposed to the fiat currencies in which they are priced on paper markets. They did both experience a huge headwards swing on Wednesday, after CPI data showed inflation persistent, but those gains were reversed on Friday for no apparent reason. Both finished with modest gains, with silver outpacing gold. Both reached their highest prices in nearly a month, though there remains no indication of any kind of sustainable rally. They remain the most undervalued assets on the planet.
Gold price 10/8: $1,757.10
Silver price 10/8: $22.66 Here are the latest prices for common one ounce gold and silver items sold on eBay (numismatics excluded, shipping - often free - included):
Item: Low / High / Average / Median The Single Ounce Silver Market Price Benchmark (SOSMPB) settled at $38.33, a slight decline of 24 cents from last week's price of $38.57. Finally, the star of the week was Bitcoin, which gained roughly 11 percent Sunday to Sunday. The world's original cryptocurrency was the beneficiary of good news from the SEC, the agency is set to allow the first US bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund to start trading in the coming week, Bloomberg reported late Thursday. Bitcoin gained from $55,300 to as high as $61,910, within shouting distance of the all-time high of $64,899 (April 13, 2021). As of Sunday morning, it was trending around $61,000 By green-lighting an ETF of Bitcoin, the SEC has given the crypto universe more credibility. Conventional wisdom says that the government won't regulate Bitcoin or other crypto-products out of existence if they're already mainstream, and there are more than enough mainstream elements aligned with crypto to proffer upon it lasting relevance and an enduring place within the investment community. After Coinbase went public earlier this year, there seemed to be a grudged ground giving by regulatory agencies, particularly the SEC, which oversees pretty much all asset classes. The sticking point remains however, that the US government considers Bitcoin an asset rather than a currency, and the IRS taxes it as such, along with gold or silver. If ever the veneer of being an asset is removed from bitcoin and/or other cryptocurrencies, and allowed to be spent freely on the internet and in physical transactions without taxation, then financial freedom might be available to the masses. One should not be hopeful of such a development, especially in the favored nations of the EU, Asia and in the US and Canada. Look for Bitcoin to become currency in less-developed places, as El Salvador is currently proving as a solid example for hard money over fiat. Adoption in the Central American nation has been gradual, but gaining consistently as Bitcoin exists as legal tender alongside the US dollar. gradually, citizens and merchants are adopting crypto, a trend that is likely to spread. For more on the future of Bitcoin, in this episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss El Salvador, the failure of technical analysis in a market lacking structure and price discovery, China's "Evergrande" situation, and later, with Craig Hemke, the outlook for precious metals and Bitcoin in a world rapidly approaching a stagflationary environment and totalitarianism, and much more:
At the Close, Friday, October 15, 2021:
For the Week:
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