Surfing the web during the New York Snowpocalypse yesterday I stumbled across a Business Insider video on how to tackle your debts. I am what’s known as a “deadbeat” in the credit card business because I pay my bill in full every month, but the video had some great points to make about how to tackle this difficult issue so I am going to shamelessly steal some of its ideas because I think they can help us in the world of trading. What’s the biggest problem for traders today? If you were to ask that question 10 or 20 years ago, I would have said scarcity. Scarcity of data, scarcity of products, scarcity of technology. Nowadays we have t...
The Bloomberg Commodity Index, which tracks returns on 22 raw materials, posted an unprecedented 14 days of gains to Wednesday, closing at the highest since February. In fact, the global commodity index has not had a down day since The Fed hikes rates in December… (So, commodities are soaring and the USD plunges as The Fed is “tightening”) As the ongoing surge in upside economic surprises around the world forced what looks like a major short-squeeze in commodities… Some remain unconvinced, warning that economic growth could slow down as the year progresses, turning into a headwind for the commodities sector. “We ...
Bitcoin Stops Rallying But Altcoins Pick Up The Slack Bitcoin hasn’t made a new high since the peak at $19,600 3 weeks ago. The latest price is $15,000. However, the altcoins have been exploding in the past few days. This has led the total market cap of all the cryptocurrencies to reach $763 billion. Bitcoin’s dominance has fallen to a record low in the past few days. At last check, the dominance is 33.4%. This bubble is becoming relevant to the global economy. It’s about to pass Apple’s size. Comparing a stock’s market cap with cryptocurrencies, isn’t apples to apples (no pun intended), but I’m not using it as a valuation metri...
The Wall Street Journal has a piece out about wage rates in the tightest urban markets like Minneapolis. And what they found is that wages rates in these markets is beginning to rise. That doesn’t mean inflation will rise. However, it does put more pressure on the Fed. We’re talking about regions with unemployment levels well below the national average 4.1%. Minneapolis, for example, has 2.3% unemployment and private-sector weekly wage rates there are increasing at a 4% clip, according to the Wall Street Journal. The analysis from Moodys Analytics is what I suspect Fed officials will be thinking: City-level data “show the relationship...
Cement Companies to Face the Heat from Rising Raw Material Prices Power & fuel cost which comprise of around 17-19% of the overall net revenues of cement companies are on the rise. This could possibly dent the operating margins of cement companies. Fuel costs would increase mainly on the back of rise in import duties on pet-coke. Import duties on pet-coke have increased to 10% from 2.5%. Cement companies usually import pet-coke as it is cheaper as compared to procuring the same from domestic market. Not only this, coal prices have risen by 44% in the first half of the current fiscal. Rise in crude prices could also lead to a spurt in the...
We’ve used data based on the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which publishes price data weekly on home heating oil in 38 states by dollar-per-gallon before taxes. Unlike natural gas and electricity, home heating oil is provided by independent retailers. The latest price of home heating oil nationwide is $3.08, up sixteen cents from last week and up forty-one cents since the beginning of the season. EIA’s heating oil data is seasonal – from October through March. Here’s a look at the series since its inception in 1990. The next chart shows a regional breakdown. As you can see, it’s extremely volatile. A...
Written by Don Steinbrugge Each year, Agecroft Partners predicts the top hedge fund industry trends stemming from our contact with more than two thousand institutional investors and hundreds of hedge fund organizations. The hedge fund industry is dynamic, and participants are best served by anticipating, rather than reacting to, change. Below are Agecroft’s 9th annual predictions for the biggest trends in the hedge fund industry for 2018. Hedge fund industry assets to reach an all-time high in 2018 for the 10th year in a row Despite the plethora of negative articles about the hedge fund industry, hedge fund assets have reached an all-ti...
The last two weeks have been far from kind to Apple Inc. (AAPL – Free Report). The discovery that it was deliberately slowing down older iPhones in order to compensate for ageing batteries came as an unwelcome surprise to devotees of the brand. Further, reports and projections emerged indicating that iPhone X and overall iPhone sales may be lower than earlier expectations. These events caused the stock to stutter toward the end of 2017 even though it has subsequently chalked up gains at the start of the New Year. This is not the first time that some degree of skepticism has built around the prospects of the world’s most profitable c...
Dividend investing is a challenging sport. Trying to find the market’s best income stocks is a complicated process not least because those stocks with the highest yields, tend to produce the worst long-term returns. The best research on this can be found in the research paper High Yield, Low Payout, compiled by Credit Suisse analysts Pankaj N. Patel, Souheang Yao and Heath Barefoot. To try and figure out which income stocks investors should be spending their most time on, these analysts simulated a dividend strategy from January 1980 to June 2006, limiting their universe to stocks within the S&P 500. They separated the stocks under c...
Monsanto Company (MON – Free Report) reported mixed results for first-quarter fiscal 2018 (ended November 2017). Earnings Quarterly adjusted earnings from ongoing business came in at 41 cents per share, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 38 cents. The bottom line also came in higher than the year-ago tally of 21 cents per share. Revenues During the reported quarter, Monsanto generated revenues of $2,658 million, marginally up 0.3% year over year. However, the top line missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2,723 million. On a segmental basis, revenues from Seeds and Genomics dipped 4.2% year over year to $1,770 million. However...