Forced to figure out how to get any kind of return on any kind of money you might have…
There was a speech by some leader of the supposed “Free World” last night?
Ah, yes. The Republican/Democrat Regime’s current puppet leader came out with a $500 billion corporate welfare program to further boost the biggest companies’ earnings last night. Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP were already at historically record levels. I expect that more corporate welfare will further boost corporate profits in coming quarters.
To be clear then — I am sick and appalled by both parties’ ability to continuously and blatantly expand corporate profits as a percentage of GDP (rather than say trying to grow GDP and to simply level the playing field and apply all laws and taxes equally to everybody and every company…exactly as was called for in our constitution with that whole “justice is blind” concept), but just because we are appalled at it, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to profit on it.
And that’s just it. The government’s forcing you to figure out how to get any kind of return on any kind of money you might have (how’s that 0.5% interest rate that the Fed enables the banks to borrow money so that you have to lend the banks your money at that same rate going to help you build your nest egg?).
And if that much time and energy from our corporate leaders is spent coming up with these new ways to artificially boost corporate profits while pretending to do so in the name of “labor”….
Well, I expect that all this will indeed help propel this stock market and many of what would otherwise be smaller/less-profitable companies into a big ol’ bubble. Just like these policies have done throughout my lifetime….how many bubbles have you seen in the last ten years alone?
Nothing has changed the overall political and macroeconomic set up and our playbook remains the same after last night’s “Jobs speech”.
As for our portfolio and trading today, Sandisk and Marvell are both popping again, despite Texas Instruments’ and Corning both having warned about the present quarter. The commentary isn’t “we can’t stay up with demand”, but as I’ve said repeatedly, even in this current economic/consumer soft patch we are experiencing, corporate profits remain in growth mode. And profit growth is probably what will drive these stocks just as it usually does.
Indeed, Texas Instruments is actually up fractionally after that guide-down. And Corning is down only in magnitude with the broader markets’ action itself.
I’m not expecting to do a whole lot of trading again today. We’ve had a big bounce of the recent lows in the portfolio and I’m continuing to let our hard-earned positioning play itself out according to the playbook.