Gold Stocks Will Benefit From Cyclical Change

As we have noted over the many years of the gold sector’s bear market, the gold miners will not rally for real until the real sector and macro fundamentals come into place. Those fundamentals do not include commonly promoted inflation, China/India “love” trades, a US dollar collapse or especially, war, pestilence or any other human misery than economic. The more astute gold bugs do not fall for that.

The gold miners are counter-cyclical as they leverage gold’s performance (whether positive or negative) relative to cyclical assets and markets. Hence the handy picture showing the key fundamental items with the 4 largest planets orbiting the golden sun being the most important.

macro fundamentals

So the 3 Amigos (of the macro) were saddled up last year in order to guide us to the point of macro change. Linked here is the most recent update from October 19. In this post let’s look at just one macro fundamental indicator among several important macro and sector fundamentals; the ratio of gold to developed stock markets.

As a side note, the macro fundamentals indicate whether the larger economic cycle and investor sentiment backdrops are right for the gold sector and the sector fundamentals that we track indicate whether gold mining companies are likely to improve, operationally. The gold stock sector is a real value now, assuming the turns in stock markets are for real, unlike the February spike down. Continue reading "Gold Stocks Will Benefit From Cyclical Change"

Weekly Futures Recap With Mike Seery

We've asked Michael Seery of SEERYFUTURES.COM to give our INO readers a weekly recap of the Futures market. He has been Senior Analyst for close to 15 years and has extensive knowledge of all of the commodity and option markets.

Michael frequently appears on multiple business networks including Bloomberg news, Fox Business, CNBC Worldwide, CNN Business, and Bloomberg TV. He is also a guest on First Business, which is a national and internationally syndicated business show.

Gold Futures

Gold futures in the December contract is currently trading at 1,238 after settling last Friday in New York at 1,228 up about $10 for the trading week hitting a three month high while still experiencing extremely low volatility. I have a bullish bias towards gold as I am also recommending a bullish position in silver as the U.S. stock market has fallen out of bed in recent weeks and is down nearly 500 more points in today's trading session as money flows are coming out of equities and into the precious metals. If you are long a futures contract, I would place the stop loss at the two week low as an exit strategy which stands at 1,221 as I do believe higher prices are ahead. I don't think the washout in the stock market is finished at this time. Gold prices are trading above their 20 and 100-day moving average as the trend is to the upside with the next major level of resistance at 1,250, and if that is broken, I think we can head up to 1,270. I do believe volatility will start to increase substantially to the upside as gold is used as a flight to quality and that could happen in next week's trade so if you are long stay long in my opinion.
TREND: HIGHER
CHART STRUCTURE: EXCELLENT
VOLATILITY: LOW

Continue reading "Weekly Futures Recap With Mike Seery"

Facebook - Compelling Buy Heading Into Q3 Earnings

Facebook’s (FB) disastrous second quarter conference call erased $119 billion in market capitalization in a single session marking the worst one day drop for any large-cap company in history while the stock shed a fifth of its value. Since then, ancillary fallout emanating from its core data misuse scandal involving Cambridge Analytica continue to surface.

Security issues affecting 50 million accounts, a lawsuit alleging concealing video ad measurements and increasing EU scrutiny have continued to plague the stock since its second-quarter implosion. The original mishandling user data resulted in the stock tumbling from $195 to $152 or 22% at the time. Facebook appreciated off those data misuse lows and broke out to $220, however, this scenario ended abruptly on the heels of its Q2 earnings. Facebook issued a major guide down in growth for the next few quarters tampering growth expectations in the near term. Facebook is facing a challenging confluence of slowing revenue growth, margin compression and stagnant daily active users in the near to intermediate term.

There’s been a recent initiative that has the backing of four large institutional investors to remove Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook’s chairman in the wake of all of these security issues. Despite these headwinds, Facebook is still posting accelerating revenue growth across all geographies, expanding market penetration with Instagram’s IGTV, Facebook’s Stories and monetization efforts in Messenger and WhatsApp. Facebook is still poised to grow at a double-digit clip with the most recent growth rate coming in at 42% in Q2.

The long-term picture looks bright for Facebook, and the recent sell-off in the stock and tech cohort is a good opportunity to initiate a long position as the company contends with and addresses all the issues across its platforms (Figure 1). Facebook remains a premier large-cap growth stock and inexpensive relative to other large-cap growth stocks in its cohort heading into Q3 earnings.

Facebook
Figure 1 – FANG cohort performance throughout the tech sell-off with Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google all shedding ~10% of their market capitalization

Scandals and High-Level Departures

There’s been a slew of negative press regarding additional issues negatively impacting the company’s platform and inflicting further damage on its reputation. Facebook disclosed a security issue that affected 50 million accounts. Continue reading "Facebook - Compelling Buy Heading Into Q3 Earnings"

Tech Losses Continue To Weigh On Market

Hello traders everywhere. For most of the year, the tech sector was the belle of the ball and the one sector that was driving the stock market to record highs. But this dance may be coming to an end as we enter the fall earnings season. The S&P 500 is poised to enter into correction territory joining the NASDAQ after earnings reports from Alphabet and Amazon fell short of expectations.

Amazon (AMZN) tumbled over 8% after it missed quarterly sales estimates and gave a below-par holiday-season sales forecast, that sparked a 3% plunge in the S&P consumer discretionary sector. Alphabet (GOOG) sank 4% after its revenue missed estimates, refreshing concerns that regulatory scrutiny and competition could slow down its scorching pace of growth.

weekly losses

It's been quite a week for the major indexes with wild swings higher and lower, but at the end of the week, all three indexes are going to post deep losses and resuming the current downturn after a brief respite last week. The S&P 500 will post a weekly loss of -3.5%, the DOW -2.5% and not to be forgotten the NASDAQ will post a weekly loss of -3.2%. Continue reading "Tech Losses Continue To Weigh On Market"

Are We Better Off Today Than Two Years Ago?

Two weeks from now Americans will head to the polls to vote in what has been billed as “the most important election of our lifetime.” That may be a bit of hyperbole, but it will no doubt be one of the most important – maybe not as important as the previous one in 2016, but certainly a close second.

Since then, there have been some huge changes in the financial markets and the economy, nearly all of them wildly – and demonstrably – positive. CNBC was nice enough to quantify them the other day in this chart, and the numbers are startling.

I’ll just mention a few:

  • S&P 500: Up 32% since the 2016 election.
  • Average hourly earnings: Up 5%, to $27.24 from $25.88.
  • Nonfarm payrolls: up 4.4 million, to 149.5 million from 145.1 million.
  • Unemployment rate: 3.7%, down from 4.9%.
  • Consumer confidence: up 37 points, to 138 from 101.
  • Corporate tax rate: 21%, down from 35%.
  • Assets held by the Federal Reserve: down 6%, to $4.22 trillion from $4.52 trillion.

Needless to say, there have been some negatives: Continue reading "Are We Better Off Today Than Two Years Ago?"