MARKETS/ECONOMY – Page 2

Editor's Choice, FUNDAMENTALS, INVESTING, MARKETS/ECONOMY, Specials, STOCKS

Gimme Shelter. Stocks For This Storm.

AUGUST 17, 2019. Civil safety messaging is mostly about releasing dire information “appropriately. Never panic people.” That includes bridge collapses and raging epidemics. Never mind the yawning gap or the bodies. And GE may be another Enron fraud, but it’s “inappropriate” to say so. Panic’s destructive in it’s own right, but the clear truth helps, if you can get any in time.
Here’s some. The storm’s upon us, parked and churning. Our economic globe’s spinning more slowly now, and the trade bomb’s going off slow-motion style. Gimme shelter. It exists, if you look.
Meanwhile even keen people confuse trade friction with overarching reality; a mud fight for global influence and economic predominance.
This cultural slipknot around our prosperity isn’t about to loosen.
Years of exasperating trade talks with the multiplicity of Japanese “faces” ended only in fruitless exhaustion. They never truly opened their markets. Japan yet lives in an endless recession.
Global slowing, fed fumbling, and the tariff tilt are boring a hole in confidence. That trade face-off that once seemed so sensible now spins with much darker import. Many are now playing not to lose, and offering stock picks accordingly. We look inside those picks. It’s not that complicated, when you actually do the looking. “Gimme Shelter. Stocks For This Storm.”

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Dividend Glory. Ford 6.33%. If You Can Find A Cheaper Dividend, Buy It.

AUGUST 8, 2019. Investing insight has a short shelf-life. We just covered Ford. Now we’re stockjawing again. Why? Ford’s a miracle. Now is the time to recognize that–right now. Again–why? Others are beginning to catch on. Ask Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley.
Why is Ford all the rage again, so soon? Again, it’s a miracle, even more so since Monday’s market face-plant. Ford’s Fa King dirt cheap, almost free. The dividend is sky-high, at 6.33%. And? And increasingly many believe it’s payable. And? And it’s holding up like a heavy weight champ, amid some of the fugliest conditions we’ve ever seen. Again, think Monday. Think “Dividend Glory. Ford 6.33%. If You Can Find A Cheaper Dividend, Buy It.”

CULTURE, FUNDAMENTALS, INVESTING, MARKETS/ECONOMY, STOCKS

Ford. Fabulous Still? If It Runs On Gas, It’s Time Is Running Out.

AUGUST 2, 2019. Summer’s end always seems near when the calendar opens on August. Who doesn’t feel it? The pool splashes on, but not the same. Seasons’ change fills the air, and it fills the air for Ford.
It’s been 116 years since the T and 57 more since the Mustang. Every Ford from then to now has been pushed by gas. Gas is now sad. As the planet chokes the auto industry shambles for form–compact, sedan, gas, big, small, diesel, shared, hailed, hybrid, or EV. It’s the menu at McDonald’s.
Some say the Germans are in the lead, again, soon to be offering real choice. The Chevy Volt’s a joke, and the Toyota Prius isn’t. The Tesla galaxy’s in trouble. Musk’s on a leash, as is our Great Electric Hope.
America’s need is grand and we hate limits. Besides, where you gonna plug-in?
Ford’s trucked between the battery technology rock, and the environmental hard case. Meanwhile the company lives on big produces that rely on cheap gas. Now they’re livin’ on a big dividend promise as well. The vice is closing, socially, despite the price of gas and the shale revolution. If it runs on gas its’ time is running out. Ford. Fabulous Still? (Lead photo; Sunset over Detroit.)

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Looking Larger. Arcing Farther. Find Harris There.

JUNE 19, 2019. It’s been seven months since James Mattis occupied the role of Secretary of Defense. Now we have nominee and long-acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan sinking in a boiling scandal of domestic chaos and violence, a cover-up, and suspect harboring regarding his son and an assault with a baseball bat. Shanahan has playing a high-level decider role in Pentagon procurement actions.
Many contractors troll the beltway and the Crystal Palace clocking very big D.C. business. But who’s shares skated up 2.24% yesterday? And who’s technology now feeds the date-ravenous brain of the F-35 joint strike fighter? And who’s share price has cranked 45.8% year-to-date, but yet remains affordable on a growth adjusted basis? That would be the high-flying yet quiet Harris Corporation.
We’d never heard of Harris. Now we know and we’re sharing what we learned with you.
We only paid up moderately for the chance to participate in a sprawling multiyear global defense modernization program. The program rolls fast on a systematically growing budget, already authorized, yet still in the early stages. Harris is there, on multiple fronts. You can be too.

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Stock Summer. Moving Through.

MAY 30, 2019. Summer comes. The heat boils up your neck and beads down your back, and then it’s over. Once again days shorten. Again we miss the blazing light and glance quickly back wondering where it all went. A perspective falls naturally into place.
Summers don’t come off a rack. They are not stock. Each is unique, in its’ own way. Patterns shift. Yet each year we stare past a sunglass and feel a solidarity with others–people we don’t know, yet sense a unity with in this thing we know as life, and heat, and prolonged unfolding. Amen to that, because together we’re at our strongest. That’s one thing that brings us to this page.
Stocks are only part of our days. But we love it–honestly we do, or we wouldn’t bother. You’ve heard it before “Sell in May and go away.” Summer action is a slower, even sleepy time, traditionally. Many money managers actually go on vacation. Funds go on auto-pilot. The French abandon their desks. They flee a heated Paris for a month and live. God knows the Italians do. They understand. Perhaps there’s a clue here, for us, concerning stocks, and a sweaty stressed stupid market, in need of a flighty butterfly heart. It’s summertime.

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Galaxy of Guesses. Stone Fact.

MAY 5, 2019. Fighting stone theft has brought down the acid rain of trade warring. Correcting the outrage of “Forced Technology Transfer” is turning out to be outrageously expensive. Follow the bouncing tariffs, as the process takes now bumbling share prices down the basement stairs into chaos. No predictable end exists to a war that looks likely to produce a prolonged market decline.
If you’re not defensively positioned now, it’s too late. The remainder of the market seems set for lower prices. We see China-free secular momentum stocks as a refuge, even in a slower economy. Yet even those are targeted now. A descending market takes everyone down. Stay and ride it out? Or return when prices are lower?
Should you be invested in this trade war market?

EDITORIAL, INVESTING, MARKETS/ECONOMY

How Far Can This Market Fall? How Deep is the Ocean?

APRIL 16, 2019. No shortage exists. Glance behind. The line begins at your back and everyone there wants to “help you,” for a price. Sign-up for yet another ass-wipe newsletter. They have a “seminar, just for you”–you and your credit card.
We want nothing from you. We’re sharing our journey with you because we love it, and we were once callously side-swiped by the filthy retail investing hucksters and don’t want that to happen to other people. Here are the facts as we best see them. Our market is expensive. That means danger. No one ever got paid a Fa King dime for playing on the highway. This market’s now a highway.
No definitive warnings are ever issued prior to fugly market resets. They happen like earthquakes. They also leave behind destruction. No shortage of doomsday hucksters exists either, and they have “newsletters” too. We’re not calling for doomsday. We’re saying prices are high, and high prices always come down. Often they do so in a sudden sickening gut-wrenching manner. That’s history, not opinion. Buy high, fall far, and this market is tall. Tick tick.