Down goes the Dow

Earnings Scorecard: For Q4 2021 (with 72% of S&P 500 companies reporting actual results), 77% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive EPS surprise and 77% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive revenue surprise.

FB/Meta is down hard. I realize they're having some issues now and there is some uncertainty about Europe, but their PE is about 16 right now. That's the lowest PE I can remember seeing for a FAANG in just about forever. Seems like it could be a deal if you're willing to hold it for a year or two or more.

Lots of volatility still... Kind of thinking the market will continue to slide as a whole over the next several months. I know several people in my personal life who are already complaining about money and not knowing what they're going to do since everything is so much more expensive yet their income has remained the same. I gotta think that is characteristic of a lot of Americans right now.

I've been buying FB, MSFT and GOOGL lately. Hope to get AMZN cheap next week. MAGAF are forever holds.

I don't mind the downward trend, but this volatility is driving me up the wall. Managing margin right now is a headache. I started in March and after we set a 52-week high I am unloading margin and not bothering with it again. Whether that will be before March 15 or soon after is doubtful. Seems this market has not priced in the rate hikes already, so every piece of bad [but obvious] news throws the market into a windfall

the argument against buybacks is that it can be viewed as financial engineering. A company's earnings can remain stable but if 10% of the shares are retired, you suddenly have '10% earnings growth.' It's really '10% EPS growth' but it sounds like earnings growth. 

Also, one would hope that a company could find ways to build out the business with extra cash rather than just buying back shares. 

I don't think many on the thread sell entire portfolios. Maybe one or two. 

As for owning individual stocks in a taxable portfolio...that is just a nightmare. You end up frozen, unable to sell because you don't want to pay cap gains taxes, and the tax tail wages the dog. Start buying them in an IRA if you can, is my advice. 

Hold your breath troll clones, HSGFX up 10.82% YTD….

you're probably right, but it's not over yet. Keep an eye on the NYT death count, or wait a month to see FL deaths fill out the worldometers count. FL is a major outlier in reporting and has a many-week lag in reporting. The Times tries to work around that somehow, and the times count doesn't have the death count falling yet much. 

Yes sir! Now down only 33.5% since inception. Can I cook, or what?

woot, woot!!

well yeah sorta yes

but always remember the algos move the market on a daily basis. They aren't doing any fundamental analysis when they move millions of shares and the markets. It's just momentum and probabilities. So these days we have to be doubly sure that we look at the forest, not the trees. In the end, a fed funds rate in the 2% range is not a big deal at all. 

And that goes triply because everyone owns the index. Today the Sp500 was down 1.97% but if you equally weight the components, the market was down just 1.3%. The big stocks can move markets both ways, and big money is being used to do just that. It's partly a game the algos play, not reflecting the fundamentals. 

Wow HSGFX back to where it was in July 2017. Fantastic!

“A market collapse is simply risk-aversion meeting a low risk-premium. Faced with a combination of record speculative extremes and deteriorating speculative conditions, investors may want to remember that the best time to panic is before everyone else does.”

John Hussman, February 2022 Market Commentary

…and Bitcoin back under $42k……

“When investors consider the recent distortion from temporary pandemic-related subsidies, coupled with upward pressure on labor costs in an economy that is now within 0.5% of estimated potential GDP, they may want to think twice about pricing stocks on the assumption that current profit margins will be sustained indefinitely. That, of course, is exactly what investors do when they take P/E multiples at face value.”

John Hussman, February 2022 Market Commentary

Who assumes current profit margins will be sustained indefinitely? Seriously.

Hey Troll Dude you left off “pricing stocks” ….

Shipping appears to be improving. You could draw a pretty clear picture that inflation has peaked. 

-huge 4q inventory build

-ports starting to improve

-omicron fading

-sticker shock on cars prevents purchases

-lapping the big inflationary months of 2021. 

WSJ:The lengthy backup of container ships waiting to unload in Southern California is shrinking, the first sign in three months of an easing of U.S. supply-chain congestion at the nation’s busiest container port complex.The number of container ships queuing to enter the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach declined to 78 vessels on Tuesday, down from the peak of 109 ships reached a month earlier, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California.Port officials say it is unclear whether the decline, which has accelerated over the past week following a surge shortly before and after the December holidays, is the beginning of a trend or a temporary respite because of factory slowdowns in Asia for the Lunar New Year holiday that began Feb. 1.“No one is taking a victory lap,” said Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles.Although the ship backup is the smallest it has been since Nov. 11, congestion remains severe by historical standards. Container ships are waiting an average of 18 days to unload at the Port of Los Angeles, the busiest of the neighboring gateways. Before the pandemic, it was unusual for ships to have to wait for a berth.

I recollect that when the shipping issues were emerging in the fall/winter, it was just a short while later that the trucking and ground situation starting quickly improving, so I read at the time. Glad to hear that the port situation is similarly improving.

As for interest rates, I would presume that the likelihood of a half-percent hike in March is factored in at this point. I just would hate to see another sell-off if that would trigger one. 

Maybe besides some bad development in Ukraine, which while ominous by any account, is something less than imminent, I would have to think that the bad news is already on the table, and perhaps positive signs of re-opening, which are looking likely, would fuel some strong buying into a rebound.

It may very well be too early to make that call at this time, but as each day goes by without another shoe dropping, confidence might resume in the markets.

Irrelevant to the question.