Wall Street banks are warning investors to brace for a new wave of declines in global markets after stocks rushed back towards a bull market from the ugly falls driven by coronavirus in March.
I have taken profit from a few of my stocks and will continue. I will wait until earnings because I have a feeling it will come back down. Obviously if you are a long term investor, it doesn’t matter. For me, I am looking to get a better deal and some security. Right now, recovery is looking unlikely.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg estimate the Labor Department will report Thursday that 5.5 million Americans filed initial applications for unemployment insurance last week, below the record 6.6 million who sought benefits the previous week. Jobless claims provide the best measure of layoffs across the country.
But the figures are so outsized that forecasting them has become something of a crapshoot. Michelle Meyer, chief U.S. economist of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, is predicting the latest initial claims total Thursday will be 6.5 million, while JPMorgan Chase is estimating a new all-time-high of 7 million.
“These numbers are off the charts,” Meyer says. “It tells you about the strain in corporate America as a result of COVID.” Meyer arrived at her estimate by extrapolating from the 16 states that already have reported 2.3 million claims last week, matching those states’ total for the prior week.
The nation is grappling with the unprecedented shutdown of much of the economy to contain the spread of the virus. Forty-three states accounting for about 95% of the U.S. population are under stay-at-home orders, with nonessential businesses such as restaurants, stores, movie theaters and other outlets closed or sharply scaled back.
Mark Cuban said he hadn’t bought anything in two weeks.
I only bought groceries during the same period and will keep topping up since the prices are very attractive at current levels. If I see a bargain - I buy it.
This was not an investment a survival advice.
Anyway, the futures are down. Back to reality.
“I’m surprised. I think this is kind of buy the rumor and potentially we sell the news when reality sets in,” Cuban said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” “I think people are naturally optimistic right now in terms of the market. I just don’t think they are really factoring in what we are going to see on the other side.”
Cuban, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, revealed that he hasn’t bought any stocks in two weeks and is “trying to get more cash.”
…
Cuban added he’s sticking with his core holdings of Netflix and Amazon.
“If I’m wrong and the market keeps on going up, my core holdings, Netflix and Amazon, are going to continue to do well,” Cuban said. “I just kept where I was. I haven’t added or subtracted.”
Netflix and Amazon have significantly outperformed the broad market this year, benefiting from the stay-at-home trend amid the widespread government-mandated shutdowns. Shares of Netflix and Amazon have gained 10% and 14% in 2020, respectively, while the S&P 500 has lost 15%.
“I’ll keep on paying and I’m doing it for not just for the Mavs, but other companies as well,” Cuban told KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh, his hometown. “It’s just the right thing to do.”
Bill says this is a long journey that may not end until autumn next year.
He warned us about it back in 2015:
Options (or whatever he used to place black swan bets) can be neat when they are so cheap, they’re worth the cost.
His approach paid off when the market tumbled in 2008. As Vanity Fair points out, his fund jumped more than 115%.
“They will never be able to ‘normalize’ rates,” he said. “In our lifetime, recessions and stock market crashes really have been instigated or started by central banks sort of pulling away the punch bowl. They raise rates and that has led to a slowdown and ultimately has led to these crashes that we see.”
He said they’re not stupid, just reckless.
“They realize that global economies are in a situation now where central banks can’t pull away,” he said. “And they’re bluffing if they say they can.”
Spitznagel doesn’t predict when an inevitable downturn will hit, but when interest rates start rising on their own, “it won’t be pretty,” he said.
“I don’t need the markets to ever crash again,” Spitznagel said. “I’d be pretty hunky-dory if there’s never a crash again and that, from now on, every year looks like last year or the last 5 years or the last 10 years. I’d be just fine with that.”
No crash happening yet…
“If the pandemic doesn’t pop this bubble then, of course, it will be something else that eventually accomplishes this,” he said, reiterating his long-held belief that easy-money central banks and the bubble they continue to pump will eventually lead to a major global reversal.
How bad could it get when it really goes sideways? “I expect a true crash to take back a decade [worth of stock-market gains],” he told The Wall Street Journal last month.
Latest Howard Marks memo published 6th April:
https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/howard-marks-memos
Great, thoughtful stuff as always.
In all fairness, that only applies though if you count your time and energy spent cooking as well.
Right now, I could make a veggie pasta dish with plenty of goodness in it and enough for 4 portions at least for around 3 to 4 Euros, and that basically ensures my longevity, my right intake of vitamins and essential nutrients.
At most, I’d say you would break even, but after eating junk food for months or years, you’ll have a lot of extra costs from your body and the need to visit healthcare.
But you are right in the following arguments, it takes a lot of maintenance too. If you cook 3 to 4 dishes per week, you’d need to freeze at least one half of your cooking and have each dish twice per week, but I would argue it is actually cheaper in the end if you’re disciplined and say no to meat (which you should anyways, at least on a daily basis to keep it special, considering the health detriments and the pressure put on the world)
Just my 2cts 
Bloomburg’s model now has odds of US recession at 100%.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/us-economic-recession-tracker/
For another veteran investor, calls on whether equities have reached a bottom are nothing short of futile.
“I think it’s a mug’s game,” said Hugh Young, head of Asia Pacific at the $644.5 billion manager Aberdeen Standard Investments. “Nobody has the answer.”
Young said his cynicism about confident market calls is born out of more than 30 years’ investment experience. Even if someone correctly times the market once, they’re unlikely to repeat the feat, he said. And bottoms, he said, are only easy to identify after the fact.
“Our best guess is that this year’s a write-off and then things will normalize at the beginning of next year,” Young said.
At current depressed price levels, people should be investing, he said. But there’s a big caveat: only if they have “secure cash flows,” which are much more elusive in the current crisis.
Another veteran money manager echoed Young’s view about attempting to call the low, while saying statistically there could be more pain ahead.
“No one can know if we are at the bottom in index terms,” said Mark Mobius, who set up Mobius Capital Partners last year after three decades at Franklin Templeton Investments. “We do know that historically for all markets the average bear market decline has been about 50% with a range of 23% to 70%. So if history is our guide, then we could have more to go.”
Figures just in!!
6.6 million jobless claims vs the 5 million estimate.
If the market rallies off this I’m selling my portfolio (not really) and giving up 
Its rallying… I just dont get it 
They were close.
The Fed is in 
It is still happening.
At first getting the jobless claims numbers was almost unreal at the start of the virus, now as the situation has progressed and more data is available and the contours of the virus are pretty much known, jobless claims are pretty much very predictable like before. The market aint got feelings
And the Dow Jones and NASDAQ indices are not the economy.
Is anyone else watching Novacyt? They got WHO approval for worldwide distribution of their Covid testing kit earlier this week which lead to obvious increases. Today it had a surge from approx 370p all the way up to approx 520p and back down again all over the last hour. What would that have been about?
