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  • November 9th, 2024 | Dow Jones (DOW), Election, Retirement, Taxable Social Security, First Solar, Inc. (FSLR), Five Below, Inc. (FIVE) & Sherwin-Williams Company (SHW)

    November 9th, 2024 | Dow Jones (DOW), Election, Retirement, Taxable Social Security, First Solar, Inc. (FSLR), Five Below, Inc. (FIVE) & Sherwin-Williams Company (SHW)
    2024/11/09
    Major changes to the Dow Jones you should know about! The Dow Jones has changed again as Nvidia (NVDA) replaced Intel (INTC) and Sherwin-Williams (SHW) replaced Dow Inc. (DOW). The most recent change in the Dow Jones came on February 26th when Amazon (AMZN) replaced Walgreens (WBA). With the addition of Nvidia, much of the Mag Seven will now be present in the Dow Jones. As I mentioned Amazon was recently added, but Apple and Microsoft have been components for many years. It seems the Dow has really lost relevance as it has trailed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq in popularity and performance. I worry adding NVDA at this point in time could be buying high and at times the committee has had poorly timed decisions. Back in August 2020 the committee ended up doing a three-company swap as they eliminated Exxon, Pfizer, and Raytheon and added Amgen, Honeywell, and Salesforce. The interesting swap was Exxon (XOM) for Salesforce (CRM) considering XOM is up close to 200% not including dividends during that time period while CRM is up just around 10% during the same timeframe. Another poor decision came back in June 2018 when the committee swapped General Electric (GE) for Walgreens (WBA). Since the switch GE is up over 180% and I don’t believe that return even includes the benefit of the spinoffs GE Vernova and GE Healthcare, which would make the return even more attractive. During the same timeframe, Walgreens has had a rough time and the stock has actually fallen over 80%. While some maybe excited about the move, I wouldn’t be surprised if Intel actually outperformed Nvidia over the next 5 years. The election is over, what investors should do now! My belief is that your plan should not have a drastic change after the Trump win, but there may be small changes to keep an eye on. The first thing I would tell people is to be careful chasing proposed winners or selling potential losers this early in the game. Ultimately, we don’t know exactly what policy changes he will be able to implement and we don’t even know at this point who will fill his cabinet. I was bullish on financials before the Trump win, but now that he will be entering office the group will likely benefit from a more relaxed regulatory environment compared to the current administration. Regional banks in particular look like they could be big beneficiaries, but be careful as many already had a big first day move after the election results. I was somewhat surprised to see big tech as a big winner as well, but it seems in today’s world everything is good for big tech. If you have been following us, you know we are skeptical of many of these big tech companies due to excessive valuations and frankly I just don’t see how a Trump presidency would be overly positive for the group. Especially considering both Trump and VP elect JD Vance have been critical of the group in the past. I would not be surprised to see continued regulatory pressure for some of these companies even after the change in the White House. Health care is also an interesting sector with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being a large part of the Trump campaign considering his criticisms of vaccines and the food system. While this is something to keep your eye on, I don’t believe the group is completely doomed and in fact you could find some opportunities if stock prices continue to be pressured. Green energy is also in the cross hairs and many of these companies saw large declines after the results. While this may be an area of concern if the Inflation Reduction Act is repealed, I believe investors may be able to find some good opportunities if these businesses can maintain profits especially considering our need for more energy. At this point in time, I would wait for more clarity on that space as changes to tax credits could totally disrupt the current earnings picture for many of these businesses. Overall, you may be excited or disappointed with the results, but ultimately the strategy of investing in good quality companies at fair prices over the long term should not change! Do you think you will be able to retire when the time comes? At Wilsey Asset Management we continue to work very hard to encourage people to invest for retirement and also to invest wisely so they can retire at a reasonable age. What is a reasonable age? Most would say 65 but in recent surveys the average age is 62, that's a surprise to me. What is also a surprise is that in 2002 the average age of retirement was 59, and in 1991 it was 57. Could it be because people are living longer and are getting bored in retirement for 20 years or longer? I’m not sure of the reason why but it seems like we have to work a little bit harder based on a survey from New York Life that says 22% of retirees think they may never be able to retire. I have often said getting old is not that great but getting old and not having a good investment portfolio, well that can be devastating. Be sure you are taking advantage of workplace ...
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    56 分
  • November 2nd, 2024 | Presidential Elections, Job Openings, Job Report, The GDP, Retirement Plan Allocations, Chewy, Inc. (CHWY), Genuine Parts Company (CPG) & ASML Holding (ASML)

    November 2nd, 2024 | Presidential Elections, Job Openings, Job Report, The GDP, Retirement Plan Allocations, Chewy, Inc. (CHWY), Genuine Parts Company (CPG) & ASML Holding (ASML)
    2024/11/01
    Don’t let the presidential election be your investment indicator Presidential elections, especially this one, make people become very emotional, but don’t let that sway you away from investing. Looking back to 1950, the S&P 500 index gained 12.1% per year under Democrats and 7.1% under Republicans. So based on that tad bit of information, you would think that Democrats are better for the stock market than Republicans. If we dig deeper, we will see that Nixon had a major negative impact as he left office in August 1974. This was at the end of the 73-74 market crash when the S&P 500 was down 48%. The other Republican who had bad timing was George W. Bush, who was in office from 2001 to 2009. The S&P 500 dropped 38% in 2008 during the Great Recession and wiped out all the previous gains in the stock market while George W. Bush was in office. Looking more recently, there were investors who hated Trump as President and when he got into office, they sold their stocks missing an average annual return of 13.8% per year while he was President. The same thing happened in 2020 when Joe Biden became president, many Republicans thought the world was coming to an end and sold their stocks. The gain in the stock market under Joe Biden so far has been an 11.9% average annual return. The best advice I can give you is do not look at the President for any type of analysis on stocks, there are so many other factors at play rather than just who is in the White House. Instead, I recommend you look at the equities you are investing in and ask yourself how will they do going forward. Ultimately, businesses will find ways to succeed regardless who the President of the United States is. Job openings continue to decline, is that a problem? In the September Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTs), job openings declined to 7.44 million. This was below both the expectation of 8.0 million and the prior month’s reading of 7.9 million, which was revised lower by 179,000. This also marked the lowest level of job openings since January 2021. While this all sounds negative, there are still around 1.1 job openings per available worker. Also, this should be positive for inflationary concerns as the labor market is now more balanced when looking at the relationship between employers and employees. When employees have way more power like we saw over the last few years, it can have a big impact on wage inflation, which generally feeds through to overall inflation. While this isn’t an overly exciting report, I believe it still shows the labor market is in a good place. I think we could see job openings even fall a little further before it would become a concern. Based on Friday’s job report, it looks like the economy is in trouble, but it’s not! We have not seen numbers like these in the jobs report since 2020 with nonfarm payrolls only increasing by 12,000 for the month. The expectation was job creation of 100,000 jobs. Why the big miss? Right off the bat the strike of Boeing was a loss of an estimated 44,000 jobs and who can forget the two hurricanes we had in the south. It’s currently unclear how many jobs were lost during that timeframe due to those natural disasters. On the positive side, average hourly earnings did increase 0.4% for the month, which was above the estimate and the 12 month gain of 4% held steady. Revisions to August and September took out 112,000 jobs bringing the August number to only 78,000 and September’s gain declined down to 223,000 jobs. Temporary jobs are sometimes seen as underlying strength of a job market, but they have declined by 577,000 jobs since March 2022. We don’t feel this is the indicator that it used to be and we expect to see some reversal of temporary jobs for the holiday hiring season. This should start being reflected in the next month or two. The hurricanes in the south were a hit to leisure and hospitality as I’m sure many bars and restaurants were closed and the category saw drop of 4000 jobs in the month. Only two sectors in the job market saw increases which was healthcare as it added 52,000 jobs and government experienced an increase of 40,000 jobs. On the surface, the job report looks frightening, but we are out of hurricane season and heading into the holiday season. I think you’ll see a reversal in the job market in the next 2 to 3 jobs reports, which should be rather positive. Not as positive as it was during the expansion when we were recovering from Covid, but definitely better than a 12,000 job increase! There are two meetings left for the Federal Reserve and I think this job’s report would allow them to cut rates by a quarter point at the next meeting. For the last meeting of the year, we will wait for more economic data before predicting another rate. Is the US economy still growing? The GDP shows it is. While Q3 GDP, which stands for Gross Domestic Product, growth of 2.8% came in below the expectation of 3.1% and Q2’s reading of 3.0%, it ...
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    56 分
  • October 26th, 2024 | T-Bills, Tesla, Luxury Brands, Inheritance Issues with Annuities, Capri Holdings Limited (CPRI), Expedia Group, Inc. (EXPE) & Highwood Properties, Inc. (HIW)

    October 26th, 2024 | T-Bills, Tesla, Luxury Brands, Inheritance Issues with Annuities, Capri Holdings Limited (CPRI), Expedia Group, Inc. (EXPE) & Highwood Properties, Inc. (HIW)
    2024/10/28
    T-bills could be your worst investment Right off the bat you’re thinking what how could they say such a thing? Warren Buffett has hundreds of billions of dollars in T-bills! Why do we think it’s the worst investment? First off, Warren Buffett spends all day long reading, researching, analyzing and when he sees a good value investment, he will likely sell what he needs from T-bills to buy those good long-term investments. If you are someone that needs the money in 2 to 3 years, then this belief does not apply to you as T-bills are a great place to have your short-term money. But if you’re a longer-term investor, and you want your money to grow for you, I worry that T-bills are not a great place for you. What will likely happen is that you will feel safe for a while, especially when the correction comes. You’ll be glad you have money in T-bills, but you probably won’t pull the trigger when lower equity prices arrive because you will feel comfortable with the safety and no volatility of your T-bills. Unfortunately, what will then happen down the road is you will eventually get tired of getting a lower return as interest rates drop and your T-bill is only earning you 2 to 3%. You will then likely want to move to something else and maybe do something silly like look at the past performance of equities and buy after stocks go back up after the correction. When it comes to investing, be sure to use the right tool for the right job. A T-bill is not the right tool for long term investors unless you really are a skilled investor and know how to navigate the volatility in equities. One forgotten component of Tesla’s business has a huge impact on profits! Tesla reported numbers that were ahead of analyst expectations, but I wouldn’t say I was overly impressed. Sales increased 8% compared to last year and earnings per share of 72 cents did top expectations of 58 cents. This was a growth of 9.1% for EPS when compared to Q3 2023 EPS of 66 cents. The interesting component that people forget about is revenue from automotive regulatory tax credits. To comply with emissions regulations that are set by authorities including the United States and European Union, other automakers purchase credits from Tesla. In the most recent quarter, this added $739 million worth of revenue. While this is just under 3% of total revenue, this is essentially pure profit for the company, which means it likely accounted for close to 34% of the company’s $2.17 B worth of net income. As other companies continue to ramp up their own EV and hybrid plans, a big question I would have is will they need as many credits from Tesla? Also, if there is a change in leadership after this election, will there be a reduction in regulatory requirements that could decrease the need for other automakers to purchase these credits? This could cause problems for Tesla as it would lose a very high margin component of its business. It is hard to bet against Elon considering his successes, but I have a hard time recommending this stock since it still trades at around 70x 2025 expected earnings. With that type of multiple we need to see much higher growth for sales and earnings than what we saw this quarter. Elon did mention his “best guess” for vehicle growth next year is 20% to 30%, which is one reason the stock shot higher. This seems quite ambitious and I’d be curious where that growth is expected to come from. I would say Tesla bulls continue to point towards autonomy as a potential reason to buy the stock, but at this point I would say that is a huge gamble given the elevated level of uncertainty in that space. Elon did say on the earnings call that Tesla has developed a ride-hailing app that some employees in California have been able to use this year and he expects the service to roll out for public use next year in California and Texas. The company intends to use it for a robotaxi network in the future. With that said, according to a list of permits issued on the California Public Utilities Commission’s website, Tesla isn’t currently licensed to operate a commercial, transportation network company or ride-hailing service in California. From a regulatory standpoint, I would say Tesla is behind both Waymo and Cruise. Luxury brands lose excitement as thriftiness takes over in this slowing economy Luxury brands like Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Chanel have seen a big decline in their sales growth. These luxury brands have increased their prices so much to try and keep their products exclusive. The push back towards exclusivity came after the Covid giveaway years where many consumers became short term purchasers. Unfortunately, this has turned off their normal elite customers who saw how ridiculous it was to see prices climb from 2019 to 2024 by 50 to 100 percent. They may be rich, but they are not stupid. As things have slowed, on social media and YouTube frugality has become cool once again. This includes talking about the deals ...
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    56 分
  • October 18th, 2024 | Private Equity, Gas Prices, Money Spending, Income Tax vs Property Tax on Inherited Property, Sirius XM Holdings, Inc. (SIRI), Vistra Corp. (VST) & Etsy, Inc. (ETSY)

    October 18th, 2024 | Private Equity, Gas Prices, Money Spending, Income Tax vs Property Tax on Inherited Property, Sirius XM Holdings, Inc. (SIRI), Vistra Corp. (VST) & Etsy, Inc. (ETSY)
    2024/10/19
    Where does private equity invest the money, you give them? Private equity invests money in many different areas, but the problem that they are having is that both them and venture-capital are sitting on $2.6 trillion, which is a record high. Ultimately, they are having a hard time finding where to invest. A private equity firm generally has to earn between 12 and 14% on their investments to cover their management fee and pay investors a worthwhile return. One area they have been attracted to is HVAC, also known as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Other areas of interest have included plumbing and electrical companies. Over the last two years, private equity has purchased nearly 800 big HVAC, plumbing and electrical companies. It is also estimated there are plenty of smaller deals that just don’t show on the radar. I do believe somewhere down the road someone whether it’s the consumer, the employee, the business owner or the investors is going to lose. Basically, private equity is trying to streamline these smaller businesses into bigger businesses to cut costs. Many times, this changes the way they do business and it could place a larger emphasis on making more new sales rather than doing repairs, which leads to bigger profits. I do worry about the business owners who are told they can still run their business the way they want and keep a 20 to 25% stake. If things get difficult, the private equity firm with a 75% ownership will override the small business owners’ decisions. Are gas prices going up or down in the future? A big factor in the price of gas is the price of oil. If you live in a state like California, then you can add other factors like taxes and regulations. Oil has remained somewhat reasonable falling under $70 a barrel in the last few weeks, it then recently crossed $80 a barrel on concerns in the Middle East. We know there is potential for a major disruption with tensions between Israel and Iran showing signs of escalation. The war in Ukraine continues to linger on, but so far it has not deterred Russia from selling their oil to countries like China and India. We also have a change in our president quickly approaching and everyone has to ask themselves, who would be more likely to tame the violence in the Middle East? If the next president cannot reduce or stop the fighting, we could see Israel start sending missiles towards Iran’s energy infrastructure. This could then lead Iran to try and restrict or block oil tankers flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. These actions would likely cause oil to skyrocket to over $100 per barrel, which could mean a 20 to 25% increase in the price of gas at the pump. What has kept oil and gasoline prices low so far has been slowing demand from a weak economy in China and talks of OPEC exporting more oil come December. It’s also important to know that there is less oil in storage than the historical average, which could mean there is pent up demand to refill that storage. If you’re an investor, I think it makes sense to have at least 5% of your portfolio in oil and natural gas companies because I believe the upside in the price of oil unfortunately is much greater than the downside. Are you still spending money in this economy? Retail sales have continued to prove resilient as in the month of September we saw growth of 1.7% when compared to last year. With the decline in the price of gasoline, gas stations saw a decline of 10.7% compared to last year and if this component was excluded from the headline number, retail sales would have grown at a stronger rate of 2.8% in the month. Areas of weakness included furniture and home furnishing stores (-2.3%) and electronics and appliance stores (-4.6%). One area that showed positive growth for the first time in a while was building material & garden equipment & supplies dealers. It was a very small annual gain of 0.5%, but could this finally be the turning point for a group that has struggled tremendously over the last couple years? Areas of strength in the report included nonstore retailers (+7.1%), health and personal care stores (+4.6%), and food services and drinking places (+3.7%). While the growth in retail sales isn’t setting the world on fire, I believe this report provides further evidence that this economy is in alright shape. Income Tax vs Property Tax on Inherited Property There are many factors to consider when inheriting real estate, especially in California, and the tax impact is one of the largest. When receiving an inheritance of property there is an income tax consideration and a property tax consideration. When capital assets, such as real estate, are sold for more than they were purchased for, the increase in value is considered a capital gain which is a type of income. When property is inherited, it generally receives a step-up in basis which means the original purchase price is no longer relevant and the new income tax basis is the value of the ...
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    56 分
  • October 12th, 2024 | Inflation, PPI (Producer Price Index), Gold (GLD), US Chicken Consumers, Retirement Goals, Roblox Corporation (RBLX), Tesla Inc. (TSLA) & Pinterest, Inc. (PINS)

    October 12th, 2024 | Inflation, PPI (Producer Price Index), Gold (GLD), US Chicken Consumers, Retirement Goals, Roblox Corporation (RBLX), Tesla Inc. (TSLA) & Pinterest, Inc. (PINS)
    2024/10/11
    Inflation comes in hotter than expected, is that a problem? The Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed September headline inflation was up 2.4% compared to last year, which was a little higher than the estimate of 2.3%. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy was up 3.3% compared to last year and it also came in a little higher than the expectation of 3.2%. While the numbers were a little hotter than expected, headline CPI was down from last month’s reading of 2.5% and it registered the smallest increase since February 2021. It’s come a long way from the high that was reached in June 2022 when headline inflation grew 9%. The major discrepancy between the headline and core number was energy. The energy index was down 6.8% compared to last year and gasoline prices had a major impact as they were down 15.3% over the same time frame. Shelter costs continued to have an outsized impact on the report as the index was up 4.9% over last year and accounted for over 65% of the 12-month increase in core CPI. The decline in inflation has continued to moderate, but overall, it has continued to trend in the right direction. While this report was somewhat disappointing, I don’t think there is anything of major concern in this report. With the Fed’s next meeting coming in November, it will be interesting to see how they interpret all the data as there are several factors that will have hopefully just a short-term impact on inflation and the labor market. These factors include both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton as well as a Boeing strike that has had roughly 33,000 union workers on strike since September 13th. Given all this my estimate at this point in time would be that the Fed will do a quarter point cut at that November meeting. What is PPI and how it can affect you as a consumer PPI stands for Producer price index. It’s important to understand these monthly numbers because it will eventually have an effect on consumers. If the cost of producing something increases, that cost will generally be passed to the retail level where consumers purchase. While September headline PPI of 1.8% was higher than the expectation of a 1.6% increase, it is still a low level that shows no major concern on the inflation front. When excluding food and energy, PPI increased 2.8%. This was higher than the estimate of 2.7% and last month’s reading of 2.6%. It was somewhat disappointing to see a small increase over last month’s reading, but overall, it has continued to head in the right direction and at 2.8% I believe inflation at that rate is still manageable. It is worth keeping an eye on this data as the months progress, but it seems to have less impact on the markets now that inflation has become more manageable. Gold is up about 28% year to date, here are a few important points to help you decide to buy, sell, or hold. I hear the thoughts out there that as interest rates decline, gold should rise and so far, that has held true. But if you go back in history, in the early 80s as interest rates fell so did gold. Let’s say that correlation does hold true though, I’m not overly optimistic that we will see a large decline in the 10-year treasury as historically it yields about one and a half percent more than inflation. I believe inflation should be around 2-3% going forward. My other major concern for why I don’t see long term rates falling much further is the United States continues to struggle with a huge debt load. Looking at gold purchasing, central banks from around the world including countries like China, India, and Poland bought more than 1,000 metric tons of gold in both 2022 and 2023, but in 2024 we have seen those purchases slow down. The countries have become a little bit more concerned given the large gain this year. Some of these countries could even consider locking in some profits and sell some of the gold they own. If you still insist on buying gold, you can buy the gold bars at Costco, which has been a huge hit for them, but if you notice they don’t have a program to buy back gold. So when you want to sell those one ounce bars from Costco, you will have to go to a dealer who will charge a markup somewhere between five and 10%, which can eat into your gain more than you think. If you paid $2000 for gold and sold at $2700 you have a paper profit of 35%, but if you pay a 10% commission on that $2700, your gain drops to $430 which gives you an after commission gain of only 21.5%. Another option if you are looking to benefit from the price of gold is mutual funds and gold mining stocks, but because of the trading the returns don’t track the performance of gold very well. If you really insist on adding gold to your portfolio, then I would suggest the best way to do it is an ETF like GLD, which has low fees and tracks closely the price of gold. Full disclosure, we do not hold any gold in our portfolio now nor do we plan on buying it in the near future! US consumers love their chicken! In 2023...
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    56 分
  • October 5th, 2024 | Jobs data, Employment report, ILA Dockworkers strike, Money Market Funds, Spousal Social Security, Costco Wholesale Corp (COST), Humana Inc. (HUM) & LyondellBasell Industries (LYB)

    October 5th, 2024 | Jobs data, Employment report, ILA Dockworkers strike, Money Market Funds, Spousal Social Security, Costco Wholesale Corp (COST), Humana Inc. (HUM) & LyondellBasell Industries (LYB)
    2024/10/04
    More jobs data points to a healthy economy The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTs) showed a surprise increase in the month of August. Openings totaled 8.04 million, which topped the estimate of 7.64 million and July’s reading of 7.71 million. While this is still well off the highs from just a couple of years ago, there are still 1.1 available jobs for every person looking for one. On the inflation front, I believe it was positive to see the quits rate decline to 1.9%, its lowest level since June 2020. This indicates that the labor market has softened as employees are seeing less opportunity to quit their job in favor of another one. This should help put less pressure on wage inflation. The Fed will have to continue to walk the fine line of keeping the economy moving in a positive direction without stoking a rise in inflation. It’s a tough task, but the labor market has continued to hold up much stronger than many believed was possible. Employment report surprises to the upside I was surprised to see the continued strength in the labor market as the growth of headline nonfarm payrolls of 254k in the month of September easily topped the estimate of 150k. Strength came from leisure and hospitality, which saw payrolls grow 78k thanks to a nice spike of 69k jobs from food services and drinking places. Other positive sectors included health care and social assistance (+71.7k), government (+31k), and construction (+25k). Only two sectors saw declines in the month with manufacturing losing 7k jobs and transportation and warehousing down 8.6k jobs. Both July and August saw upward revisions to their reports for a combined total increase of 72k. Wage inflation was also stronger in the month as average hourly earnings grew 4% compared to last year. This is up from last month’s reading of 3.8%, but still remains substantially below last year’s high of 5.92%. Precovid, wage growth was in the low to mid 3% range. Overall, this report didn’t have many problems. The only concern is, did the Fed move to soon and could inflation still be the larger concern rather than a weakening labor market? This report did increase expectations for a November rate cut to be 0.25% rather than 0.5%. I would have been shocked if the Fed would have opted for another 0.5% cut even if the jobs report wasn’t this strong. ILA Dockworkers strike Good news for those that were concerned about the International Longshoremen’s Association’s (ILA) strike as the union and the United States Maritime Alliance reached a tentative agreement on wages and agreed to extend the Master Contract until January 15th, 2025. Wages will increase 61.5% over six years under the tentative deal, but the major point of conflict that still needs to be negotiated is port automation. With the increase in wages, it will be interesting to see how much the Maritime Alliance is willing to budge on automation as they will likely need to look for ways to improve efficiency to offset the higher wages. Efficiency is already a concern for US ports as a study from just a couple of years ago ranked the LA and Long Beach ports as the least efficient trade hubs for handling containers in the world. Other US ports including Savannah, Georgia, New York, and New Jersey also ranked in the bottom half of the list. Of the 370-member Container Port Performance Index, we did not have a single port in the top 10. While this resolution is positive, the problems could be delayed until early next year if the two sides still cannot come to an agreement. During my research on this strike, I learned some surprising things about the union leader, Harold Daggett. You may be shocked to learn that his combined income as president of two unions is around $900,000 per year with $728,000 coming from the ILA. He currently drives a Bentley, which is a high-end luxury vehicle with a price of $210,000 for a new one. He also recently sold his 76-foot yacht and based on the US boat group market index, the average price of a yacht in that range is $1.5 million and costs around 10 to 15% of the value to operate yearly. I was also surprised to see this is a “family business” as his son is employed by the same two unions as his dad and was paid a total of more than $700,000 last year. As for the workers, on the East Coast the union workers have an average pay around $81,000 per year. However, the waterfront commission of New York estimates 1/3 of the longshoreman made $200,000 or more last year with overtime. Investors are still adding money to money market funds Even with the recent rate cut by the Federal Reserve, investors still put nearly $130 billion into money market funds. This brought total assets in money markets to $6.8 trillion. I don’t believe this money will stay there very long as probably within 3 to 6 months investors will start seeing the interest rates decline and once, they fall below 4%, we could see a large drop in the assets held in money ...
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    56 分
  • September 28th, 2024 | Housing Problem, iPhone 16, ETF’s, Tax Code, Third Type of Retirement Account, Uber Technologies (UBER), Lennar Corporation (LEN) & Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA)

    September 28th, 2024 | Housing Problem, iPhone 16, ETF’s, Tax Code, Third Type of Retirement Account, Uber Technologies (UBER), Lennar Corporation (LEN) & Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA)
    2024/09/28
    We do have a housing problem in this country, but it may not be the one you’re thinking. The price of homes has continued to rise and it has left some people out of the housing market, but that may not be a bad thing. I say that because people are doing anything they can to buy a home at these high prices. This includes risky endeavors like cashing in their retirement savings or borrowing from friends and family. The Atlanta Fed’s affordability index was recently at 68.5, which would mark its lowest levels since 2006. I worry people are getting in over their heads as ownership costs, which include mortgage, taxes, and insurance are now occupying nearly 44% of median household income. Generally the 30% level is considered a threshold for affordability and that was last seen in 2021. I worry when the economy slows down, you could see people selling their houses because they can’t afford them. I think it’s rather silly that some campaign promises have talked about giving $25,000 for down payments or expanded tax credits for developers to build affordable rental housing. These sound good as soundbites, but I think they’re terrible ideas because all they will do is pushup demand and that will continue to put more pressure on prices. People don’t realize that builders say roughly 25% of the cost of new homes is from regulatory costs like building codes and zoning issues. If we could get the local government to back off, you could see a nice reduction in prices. The problem is we have the federal government trying to give you money to buy a higher priced home and local governments are raking in the dough collecting fees on those higher priced homes. Throughout history, it has never been great to invest or buy into any type of asset when there is a buying frenzy going on. Look at the history books if you don’t believe me and then think ahead what will happen in the next 5 to 10 years. I know my opinion goes against many experts, but in our over 40 years in asset management, we have seen how things can change unexpectedly. Is the new iPhone 16 going to move the stock price up? Last weekend an article in Barron’s written by Alex Eule tried to convince people that Apple stock will increase based on looking back to the original iPhone and every iPhone release after that. Based on the research, Apple stock has returned an average of 11.7% six months after iPhone releases. But before you run out and buy the stock, one thing I noticed was there was no discussion around price/earnings ratios during those launces. I believe it is very important to not over pay for any company and I am curious what the PE ratios were during those last 24 iPhone launches. Holding Apple several years ago I know the multiple was not where it is now in many of those cases. Don’t get me wrong, I think Apple is a great company and has great products, but I worry with the stock trading at 31 times next year ‘s earnings it is more than fully valued. I also believe some of that data was skewed considering the first iPhone launch led to 63.7% return six months after the release and there are several instances where the stock did nothing or actually fell like the iPhone 12 (-3.4%), the iPhone 13 (-1.3%), or the iPhone 15 (-1.0%). I was surprised to see that analysts are more negative than I expected on the stock as currently nearly 1/3 of them have either a hold or a sell rating. Mr. Eule does correctly point out that if Apple beats expectations, the price earnings ratio will come down. However, that assumption would also mean that the stock price did not climb to offset the earnings beat. We have avoided investing in Apple for quite some time now, but I will still not break my discipline and I will not overpay for any company because history has proven eventually everything comes back to the norm. ETFs have proven not to be as effective as mutual funds When Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, was CEO back in the 90s, he refused to add indexed ETFs (exchange traded funds) to their lineup. His concern was it was too easy for people to jump in out of the products and not be long-term investors. There are now long-term studies proving that he was right. A report from Morningstar shows there is a 0.9% per year gap over the study’s 10-year period favoring investors who used indexed mutual funds over investors who used indexed ETFs. While it might not sound like a lot, the compounding takes hold in the long-term and I believe it further illustrates why people should not trade. Unfortunately, even financial advisors who control about 2/3 of the ETF assets appear to be just as jumpy and emotional as their clients. Maybe they’re just trying to prove their worth due to the management fees that they charge on top of the ETF fees. Is our tax code too complicated? I know many people hate paying taxes, but have you ever thought about how much time you spend compiling all those documents? According to the Tax Foundation, it ...
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  • September 20th, 2024 | Retail Sales, Fed’s Rate Cut, S&P 500, Dividends, Rate Reductions for Refinancing, Nike Inc. (NKE), Snap Inc. (SNAP) & Lululemon Athletica Inc (LULU)

    September 20th, 2024 | Retail Sales, Fed’s Rate Cut, S&P 500, Dividends, Rate Reductions for Refinancing, Nike Inc. (NKE), Snap Inc. (SNAP) & Lululemon Athletica Inc (LULU)
    2024/09/20
    Retail sales shows the consumer is still spending August retail sales were expected to decline 0.2% in the month, but the consumer was more resilient than anticipated as they actually grew 0.1% compared to the month of July. Compared to last August, retail sales were up 2.1%. Gas stations were the biggest negative in the report as lower prices for oil and gasoline lead to a 6.8% decline compared to the prior year. If this volatile category was excluded from the headline number, retail sales would have climbed by a more impressive 2.9%. Areas of strength included nonstore retailers (+7.8%), healthcare & personal care stores (+3.5%), food services & drinking places (+2.7%), and electronics & appliance stores (+1.9%). Two areas that continued to bring down retail sales were furniture & home furnishing stores (-0.7%) and building material & garden equipment & supplies dealers (-0.1%). While this report doesn’t point to a booming consumer, it definitely doesn’t show an economy that is in recession. What should investors do after the Fed’s rate cut? What should investors expect going forward when interest rates decline? Going back 50 years, when the Fed begins its interest rate cuts, 16 out of 23 times 6 months after the first cut the stock market was higher. Could this be like one of those seven times it is not higher six months from now? Investors have to realize that valuations for the market are very high and this could lead investors holding those high valuation equities to sell the news. I do believe if you were a strong investor and have watched what you have paid for the earnings and cash flow of what you have invested in, you should be OK. But if you do hold in your portfolio equities trading at 25 to 35 times forward earnings, this could be a buy the rumor, sell the news situation. At our firm, Wilsey Asset Management, I know our portfolio has an average forward P/E ratio of around 12. I believe this is a very comfortable place to be in this crazy time. I would advise you to analyze your portfolio to be sure it is not overvalued. Why you should be careful investing in the S&P 500! People continue to shift towards index investing and have a desire to invest in the S&P 500 index fund because they believe it is a good diversified investment. I continue to worry that people do not realize how risky this index has become with the overconcentration in just a few expensive stocks. The S&P 500 currently has a forward P/E of around 22-23x, which is well above the historical average of around 16-17x. The reason for this elevated figure is the outsized weight of the expensive growth stocks. If you look at the 10 largest stocks, which are Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), Berkshire Hathaway, Eli Lilly, Broadcom, and Tesla they now occupy over 35% of the entire index and their average forward P/E is lofty at nearly 40x. People believe they are getting a diversified portfolio, but Apple (6.86%), Microsoft (6.72%), and Nvidia (6.24%) all have larger weights than the entire sectors of real estate (2%), materials (2%), utilities (2%), energy (4%), and consumer staples (6%). Communication services has a weighting of 9%, but Meta and Alphabet make up a combined 43% of the Communication Services SPDR ETF. Consumer discretionary has a weighting of 10%, but Amazon and Tesla make up over 38% of the Consumer Discretionary SPDR ETF. While the performance of the S&P 500 has been great over the last decade, if the performance of these mega cap stocks turn so will the index. With these expensive valuations, I just don’t see exciting returns over the next decade. I definitely don’t believe they will even be close to what we saw over the last 10 years. Just for reference, the remaining sectors of the S&P 500 are industrials (8%), healthcare (12%), financials (13%), and technology (31%). How will dividends impact the stock market’s return? People may not realize that stock dividends historically have accounted for around 40% of the total return in the stock market. However, because of the unbalanced market over the last 10 years, dividends have accounted for just 16% of the total return. I believe over the next decade as markets adjust to more normalcy, dividends should once again play a larger role in the total return and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it return to a similar rate of around 40%. Places you can look for dividends would include real estate investment trusts, utilities, energy, along with financial stocks and healthcare. But as always, when investing, be sure to make sure the investment is not overpriced and is fundamentally strong based on the financial statements. How Much of a Rate Reduction is Needed to Refinance? With interest rates coming down, more people are starting to wonder if refinancing makes sense, but how much of an interest rate reduction do you need to be worth it? Half a percent, one percent, more? A lot of people get hung up on ...
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