The suborbital journey kicks off a landmark month for the future of space tourism, with Branson demonstrating Virgin Galactic’s capabilities nine days before Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos plans to fly on a rocket made by Blue Origin, his space venture. Both companies envision businesses catering to wealthy tourists willing to pay top dollar for a short period of weightlessness and an unforgettable view of the Earth and heavens.

Virgin Galactic’s test flight demonstrated that such trips -- once the stuff of science fiction -- are becoming increasingly realistic.

While mostly accessible only to a tiny number of super- wealthy customers, they would add a new dimension to a burgeoning industry of private-sector space companies with plans for voyages to the International Space Station and new human outposts.

Branson and his fellow crew members experienced a few minutes of weightlessness as the Unity reached its peak altitude.

“So I looked out the window and the view is just stunning,” operations engineer Colin Bennett said afterward. “It’s very Zen; it’s very kind of peaceful up there as well.” Branson, who founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, said the memories of seeing the Earth from space will stay with him. “I’m never going to be able to do it justice,” he said. “It’s indescribably beautiful.”
 

Yuri Gargarin was shot into space in 1961, so it has taken sixty years to commercialise the technology to the point where commercial jaunts are possible. Reusable rockets are a big part of that. Virgin Galactic is not going as high as rockets. That implies if weightlessness is the end point of consumer demand, then rockets are not required. The variety of solutions, based on just how high a vehicle aims to go is also a reflection of how much technology has progressed over the last sixty years.

On November 24th I began a series of reviews of longer-term themes which will be updated on the first Friday of every month going forward. The last was on May 7th. These reviews can be found via the search bar using the term “secular themes review”.

News today that Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is effective against the delta variant should help to allay fears that the world is about to experience a round of upheaval similar to early 2020.

There is no question that the pandemic has acted as an accelerant. It forced migration and adaption to new conditions in a manner that might otherwise never have happened. Some of those changes will stick, others will fade away.

Everyone seems to think that the pandemic has to mean something and that we will never again get back to normal life. I don’t believe it. The surges back into social activity whenever restrictions are lifted is confirmation that humans are social beings. We crave physical contact and fellow feeling. That’s not going to change, even if we have a better appreciation for it today than since the demise of organised religion.  

As with every other crisis, the liquidity created to deal with the shock will remain in the system for much longer than it is strictly required. Central banks cannot afford to jeopardise the recovery they worked so hard to create. Meanwhile, populations everywhere are impatient for better conditions.

On November 24th I began a series of reviews of longer-term themes which will be updated on the first Friday of every month going forward. The last was on May 7th. These reviews can be found via the search bar using the term “Secular Themes Review”.

The pandemic panic is now one year in the rear-view mirror. It seems to have lost its ability to scare us so that begs the question what happens next? That’s the big conundrum

Some still believe that technology will solve all our problems and that the largest companies in the world will continue get even larger. Others believe that the inflation genie has been releases so it is inevitable that bonds will collapse in value. Others believe that we are in for a long grind of subpar growth because the debt is so large, it will sap the will to live out of every speculative asset. Others believe we are in a stock, commodity and property market bubble that could pop at any moment. Still other believe that cryptocurrencies are the solution, though no one is exactly sure what the problem is. So how do we make sense of these divergent views?

Personally, I have a strong feeling of déjà vu. In late 1999 and early 2000 I was selling Optus cable connections door to door in Melbourne. When I tired of backpacking, I went to London and within three weeks had started at Bloomberg. I was amazed at the speed of the Royal Mail. I saw an ad in The Times on a Wednesday for European sales people. I posted my CV that afternoon and had a reply back from Bloomberg delivered the next day. I had an interview on Monday and started on Tuesday. To say they were desperate for sales people is a gross understatement. I was in Belgium, visiting private banks, 10 days later. That was the top of the market and it was evidence of a true mania in the TMT (Telecoms, Media and Technology) sectors.

By the end of the Nasdaq bear market in 2003 the number of Bloomberg terminals being sold to mortgage bankers was surging. I was even offered a job by one. The Dollar was pulling back, there were fears about financial repression, China’s demand for commodities was only beginning, emerging markets were breaking out and gold was completing its base formation. A year later oil broke out.

A link to the full report is posted in the Subscriber's Area. 

Biodegradable plastic is a major growth theme if costs can be brought in line with existing manufacturing techniques. The modern world is built on hydrocarbons because the chemical sector has been so versatile in developing products from them. The challenge is these types of products last for seemingly interminable lengths of time and find their way into every facet of the global ecosystem. As awareness of the dangers of microplastics increases, demand for degradable alternatives will increase.

McDonald’s Corp. announced Thursday it will raise hourly wages by about 10%, bringing the average wage at its restaurants to more than $13 an hour. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. said earlier this week it will set hourly starting wages at $11 to $18. Target Corp. and Costco Wholesale Corp. have increased theirs to $15 and $16, respectively.

McDonald’s is hiring 10,000 new employees at its company-owned stores over the next three months alone, and Walmart Inc. brought half a million people on board last year. Chipotle is hiring 20,000 workers across the U.S., and Target needs workers for the 30 to 40 stores it will open this year.

Amazon.com Inc. also upped the labor market ante Thursday by announcing plans to hire 75,000 people in the U.S. and Canada at starting pay that will average more than $17 an hour. New employees will get hiring bonuses of $1,000 and those fully vaccinated for Covid-19 will get additional $100.

The year over year change in average hourly wage growth has been massively distorted by the pandemic. It surged in 2020 because fewer people were working, and those that were got pay rises. It then plummeted to historic lows because the current growth is on par with what was witnessed a year ago.

On November 24th I began a series of reviews of longer-term themes which will be updated on the first Friday of every month going forward. The last was on March 5th. These reviews can be found via the search bar using the term “Secular Themes Review”.

After a crash everyone is wary. We all seek to learn lessons from our most recent experience because it is the only way to help us emotionally move past the trauma. Coming out of the pandemic most investors wished they had sold everything at the first sight of virus news in early 2020 and bought everything back again following the crash. Today they are worried that there is another big shock waiting around the corner that will cause a repeat of pandemic panic.

The challenge for investors is less to learn from the most recent mistake but rather to know when to deploy the lessons learned. The best time to be wary about a massive decline is when no one is worried about it. The time to take precautionary action is when it seems like a waste of time and when you are most afraid of giving up on the potential for even better gains. That’s the best time to remember the experience of the crash but the interval of time and the positive reinforcement of experience in an uptrend make it difficult.

Kellogg shares rose as much as 3.9% to $65.50 premarket, which would be the highest intraday level since November, after the packaged food company surprised analysts with positive organic sales growth in the first quarter, vs expectations for a decline.

“K impressed this morning, as another large-cap food name tops revenue and profit expectations, partially driven by positive shipment timing and emerging market strength,” Jefferies analyst Rob Dickerson writes

Commodities prices are running higher and that raises the question of how you can pass on higher costs to consumers. It’s the same old corn flakes or shredded wheat so you need to do something. Organics are a great way to do that. Fair trade is another rationale to charge more. Reusable packaging, different shaped packaging and substitution with additional ingredients all allow food producers to protect margins. During this bull market I fully except to see carbon footprint credentials printed on each individual box of food and that will be used as the rationale for price increases.

“It may be that interest rates will have to rise somewhat to make sure our economy doesn’t overheat,” Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chair, said in an interview with the Atlantic recorded Monday that was broadcast on the web on Tuesday. “It could cause some very modest increases in interest rates.”

Investors relying on momentum want to hear that the money will keep flowing and there is no risk the punchbowl will be taken away. Whenever that desire is fulfilled, we see the stock market climb to new highs. However, when it is even modestly questioned it is cause for profit taking.

Global liners are stepping up de-carbonization efforts and experimenting with alternative fuels
To achieve the industry target, many global liners such as A.P. Moller Maersk (viewed an industry bellwether) are stepping up de-carbonization efforts, recently unveiled plans to fast-track its de-carbonization efforts, with a target to put the world’s first vessel powered by carbon-neutral fuel into operation in 2023, seven years ahead of its original schedule. Specifically, Maersk will install its smaller feeder vessels (capacity of around 2,000 TEUs) with dual fuel technology, power them using alternative fuels including methanol (produced from plant waste) while retaining the option to use VLSFO if necessary. Maersk is also currently experimenting with other alternative fuels including ammonia. Looking ahead, Maersk targets to operate more methanol-fueled vessels in the future and expects methanol and ammonia to emerge as more viable future fuel options.

Adoption of new technology and alternative fuels will take time to achieve commercial feasibility. There are inherent limitations towards adopting alternative fuels. Referencing remarks made by Mr. Morten Bo Christiansen (Maersk head of de-carbonization), methanol has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 15% vs conventional marine fuels while enjoying other advantages including having well-established infrastructure and manageable vessel retrofitting cost. Having said that, methanol has inherent limitations including low energy density and certain safety-related challenges. With respect to ammonia, Maersk expects ammonia to be an ideal replacement from a net zero carbon perspective, but overall technology capability remains at a nascent stage and no vessels today are equipped to utilize this fuel type. Maersk also takes a contrarian view compared to its peers and does not view Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) as a viable alternative, given its upstream and onboard emissions.

The IMO 2020 regulations on emissions for the global shipping sector took more than a decade to agree and finally to implement. That was emblematic of an era when there was some commitment to reducing emissions but no real sense of urgency and where industry lobby groups were given priority. Today, the situation could not be more different. Shipping companies see the future of regulation and taxation and expect to be able to pass on green premiums to customers. That will put an additional cost on everything and represents an even bigger tax on global activity than an oil price spike because it is permanent in nature.

Netflix has been warning for months that growth would slow after customers emerged from their Covid-19 hibernation, but few expected the company to stall so dramatically. The first quarter of 2020 was the strongest in its history, reeling in 15.8 million new customers, and Netflix’s pace was still brisk in the fourth quarter.

“We had those 10 years where we were growing smooth as silk,” Executive Chairman and co-Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings said on a webcast for investors. “It’s a little wobbly right now.”

Netflix added 3.98 million subscribers in the first quarter, compared with an average analyst estimate of 6.29 million and its own forecast of 6 million. That marked the weakest start of a year since 2013, when Netflix added about 3 million customers. If the company’s forecast for the current quarter holds, it will be the worst three-month stretch for Netflix since the early days of its streaming service.

Netflix blamed a “Covid-19 pull-forward” effect, meaning the pandemic accelerated its growth in 2020 while everyone was stuck at home and needed something to watch. Now that surge is taking a toll on the company’s 2021 results.

“It really boils down to Covid,” Spencer Neumann, the company’s chief financial officer, said on the webcast.

Veteran subscribers will be aware I am not a fan of Netflix. It pioneered streaming but its content is a triumph of quantity over quality. That latter point matters as competition increases and that is particularly true as the established content creators enter the fray.

There is one theme that seems to be running through every asset class at present. Perhaps it is because we have been locked up for a year, and literally can’t wait until it is all over, but there is a distinct air of impatience in every circle of life. The pandemic has accelerated the decision-making process for everyone in every facet of our lives.

Mrs. Treacy and I have been discussing moving from Los Angeles for two years but there was never a push big enough to stir us into action. We looked at Las Vegas suburbs in 2019 and toured schools but my eldest daughter was accepted into one of the most prestigious high schools in Los Angeles, so we decided to linger.

The experience of living in Los Angeles during the lockdowns, from schooling to public safety, made us impatient for a change. Like many others we decided to move and have only been delayed by reapplying to schools for our daughters and finding a suitable home.

On November 24th I began a series of reviews of longer-term themes which will be updated on the first Friday of every month going forward. The last was on March 5th. These reviews can be found via the search bar using the term “Secular Themes Review”.

The pandemic has been an accelerant. The full ramifications of what that means are becoming increasingly clear.

The pandemic took trends that have been in evidence for a while and exaggerated them. At the same time, it introduced new challenges which require new solutions.

Corporations operating without the safety net of cash on the balance sheet has been a feature of the markets for decades too. They continue to be bailed out when they get into trouble. There is no evidence that the trend of using all available means to buy back shares has ended. In fact, buybacks are back at pre-pandemic levels. Companies were touting “resiliency” last summer. It appears to have been just talk. Buybacks represent a powerful tailwind for stock markets that were absent for much of 2020 but are now back in force. 

This week Volkswagen AG provided a lesson in just how difficult it is to “be Elon.” VW’s U.S. arm claimed it was changing its corporate name to “Voltswagen,” denied it was an April Fools’ Day joke, then admitted that, um, it was in fact an April Fools’ Day joke gone wrong.  

The German giant has been riding a wave of investor excitement about its electric-car strategy. Thanks in part to some clever social media and marketing, VW seemed to have cracked Musk’s knack for share-price boosting publicity. The more frequently traded VW preference shares are close to a six-year high.

News of the purported name change helped VW’s American depositary receipts — the ones favored by U.S. retail investors — to climb as much as 12.5% on Tuesday. Which is where this cringeworthy incident goes from being a disastrous attempt at humor to something potentially more serious.

I’m not suggesting VW’s gaffe was an attempt to manipulate the stock market and I doubt the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission would view it like that. It’s a reminder, however, that we now live in the meme-stock age where even bad jokes can add or subtract billions of dollars in market value. It’s a minefield for corporate executives to navigate.

The market liked the Voltswagen idea. That’s going to give Volkswagen’s board something to think about. Tesla prospered because it gained a near monopoly on California’s carbon credits when Karma went bust. That allowed it fund loss making operations and meet payment deadlines while it was building its first battery factory. Many people wonder at Tesla’s business model. Is it a car company, a solar company or a battery company? The most accurate description is it is a regulatory arbitrage company. That’s a consideration every company board should be discussing.

The purpose of today’s letter is to share our thoughts on how AT&T can improve its business and realize a historic increase in value for its shareholders. Elliott believes that through readily achievable initiatives – increased strategic focus, improved operational efficiency, a formal capital allocation framework, and enhanced leadership and oversight – AT&T can achieve $60+ per share of value by the end of 2021. This represents 65%+ upside to today’s share price – a rare opportunity for any company, let alone one of the world’s largest.

There is increasing appetite for the companies that were left behind in the big 2020 surge. That’s being driven by the expectation for economic revival which will help to repair earnings potential and also by the rotation away from the stocks leveraged investors have been active in.

Ortega will likely be the first in a string of purchases by Tinuiti, which in December became part of private-equity giant New Mountain Capital and is hungry to broaden its capabilities. Tinuiti is in talks to acquire two other companies, said Zach Morrison, its chief executive.

“We set out at the end of last year to find a partner that could take this from a hundred-and-some-million-dollar company to a billion-dollar company,” he said.

Future deals will focus on resources related to working with the “triopoly,” he said, referring to Google, Facebook and Amazon, as well as marketing services around video, digital advertising and first-party data, he said. New board members, like Mr. Mayer, will also bring expertise in those areas, Mr. Morrison said.

Mr. Mayer recently joined sports-streaming company DAZN Group as chairman. He served briefly as chief executive of TikTok and in senior roles at Walt Disney Co. Tinuiti also added Anneka Gupta, president and head of products and platforms at data company LiveRamp, to its board.

Tinuiti, with about 750 staffers, had its strongest growth last year, as businesses sped up their investments in e-commerce and digital marketing to reach consumers in the Covid-19 pandemic, said Mr. Atkinson.

Tinuiti is one of the most successful ad agencies for ecommerce companies. They offer an end-to-end marketing and advertising service with a solid track record of boosting sales right across the Amazon/Shopify/Wal-Mart universe.

They generally require a minimum advertising spend of $25,000 a month to even consider taking on a new client. That suggests a revenue base of at least $1 million in turnover and solid margins to absorb the cost.

From the beginning, the air travel business has been capital intensive and highly competitive. During good times, new airlines emerged and drove down profits. During bad times, many less well-capitalized companies folded. Over the course of the last century, virtually every company in the business either failed or merged into a larger airline, most of which also collapsed.

The simple fact, as Warren Buffett so cleverly stated, is that technology does not translate into great fortunes for investors unless it is associated with barriers to entry that allow a company to earn returns significantly in excess of the cost of capital for an extended period. Of course, Apple, Google, and Facebook are well-known examples of such technological success, but they are the exception rather than the rule. For a host of complicated reasons, these companies have been able to build moats, or barriers to entry, around their businesses. They also benefit from the fact their products can be produced with limited capital investment.

Not every electric vehicle upstart is going to survive but they are currently priced as if they will be the ultimate successors to the global automotive industry. That’s the kind of contradiction bubbles are made of.

The move started in Australia, where bond futures fell heading into the market’s close to put modest pressure on Treasuries. At around the same time, there was a block sale of 10-year ultra bond futures, followed by a buyer of downside put options -- the hedging of which tends to weigh on the market. The three combined to tip 10-year Treasury futures through Thursday’s session low, which unleashed the wave of selling.

As many as 20,000 contracts changed hands in the next five minutes, the largest activity of the day. The speed and severity of the move left many traders perplexed, with volumes in the cash market comparatively modest.

The moves there were most pronounced in the benchmark 10-year tenor, with the yield curve steepening as two-year rates only rose as much as two basis points. European bonds followed Treasuries, with U.K. 10-year yields up five basis points to 0.79%.

Macro traders make money by sniffing out logical inconsistencies and pushing them until they break. George Soros and his ilk pressuring the Pound’s ERM fix is one such notable example so are the small number of traders that correctly called the demise of the subprime markets.

These kinds of contrarian bets are aided by the fact that crowds thrive on contradiction. The biggest bull markets inevitably breed the biggest contradictions because outlandish forecasts are required to justify buying at extraordinary highs.

Hamish Grierson, chief executive of Thriva, a home blood-testing company that helps users monitor their health, said founders were now eyeing subscription models instead of the Facebook approach of chasing huge growth with no immediate revenue stream. He said the “growth at all costs” model worked for only a handful of companies and meant that most failed.

“As a consequence of that, there is a little bit more sympathy for more pragmatic, more resilient business models — and subscription tends to be a good version of that story,” Grierson added.

Investors want a piece of the action, too. Last week, Deliveroo, which charges £11.49 a month for free deliveries of restaurant meals, confirmed plans to float in London.

Thematics Asset Management launched its Subscription Economy Fund in 2019 to let investors cash in on the trend. The first of its kind, the $230 million (£165 million) fund is invested in about 50 companies with subscription models. It is up 50 per cent already.

Nolan Hoffmeyer, who runs the fund, said: “Last spring, when many companies didn’t have visibility over the next 30 days, subscription-based companies still had a lot of visibility over the next 12 months [because of recurring revenues]. They’ve been able to continue to invest and innovate. It’s a competitive advantage.”

Having the ability to predict revenue growth over a 12-month horizon is a particular benefit where interest rates are low and asset prices are high. That visibility commands a higher valuation because cashflows are so easily modellable. In other words, these kinds of companies can carry more leverage because they have less risk on the revenue side.

On November 24th I began a series of reviews of longer-term themes which will be updated on the first Friday of every month going forward. The last was on January 8th. These reviews can be found via the search bar using the term “Secular Themes Review”.

The rollout of vaccines to COVID-19 continues to accelerate and that will continue through the balance of the year and 2022. There is encouraging news about the number of different vaccines which have been approved and their success against variants. By the end of the year, the world will be inundated with doses which will provide at least some protection from the virus for anyone who wants it. That’s all the rationale any government needs for reopening the economy.

On Valentine’s Day 2020 Mrs Treacy and I went out for dinner with another couple. We talked about the news of a virus threat from China and how it could potentially cause ructions further afield. We told them we had stocked up on rice, meat, protein bars and batteries just in case. They thought we were crazy crackpots jumping at shadows.

It was hard to imagine then just how disruptive the decision to lockdown was going to be. A similar condition exists today. After a year of being confined to our immediate vicinity it is tempting to think this is how it will always be. The reality, however, is we are going to see a surge back to normalcy much quicker than most believe possible.

Humans are social animals and we yearn for social contact. We’ve been starved of that basic need for a year and we’ll overdose on it when we are able. That suggests we are looking at a boom in consumer activity over the coming couple of years.

On November 24th I began a series of reviews of longer-term themes which will be updated on the first Friday of every month going forward. The last was on January 8th. These reviews can be found via the search bar using the term “secular themes review”. 

Highlighting secular themes has been a hallmark of this service for as long as I have been a part of it. I first met David Fuller in Amsterdam in 2003. He was giving a talk to Bloomberg’s clients and we went out for dinner that evening. His way of looking at markets, with a focus on suspending ego to see what the market tapestry is telling us, answered all of the questions I had about how to interpret
markets. I felt honoured when he asked me to come work with him a few months later.

The easy way to find secular themes to is to look at long-term ranges. Prices can so sideways for a long time, sometimes decades, and the whole asset class can be forgotten by investors. These kinds of markets need a catalyst to reignite demand. Once that new theme gathers enough pace, prices break on the upside because the supply side is not capable to responding in a timely manner to the new phenomenon. Sometimes that’s because they don’t believe in the new trend, or it may be because they simply do not have the financial wherewithal to expand. As the power of the new catalyst gathers, it takes time for supply to respond and the market will proceed higher until there is a robust supply response. That can take a long time because demand continues to grow as the new theme increases its dominance of investor attention.

Amazon.com Inc.’s equity performance has far exceeded the S&P 500 Index over the past five years, yet buybacks may be the best use of capital in the near term as financial flexibility grows and excess cash builds, according to Bloomberg Intelligence’s Robert Schiffman. With consensus free cash of almost $42 billion in 2021 and $58 billion in 2022 -- the e-commerce giant’s share-repurchase authority has gone unused since 2016 -- cash could exceed $100 billion over the next two years. The company is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings after the close of trading Tuesday.

Some of the largest tech companies like Alphabet and Amazon do not buy back many of their shares. That hasn’t impeded investor enthusiasm because they have been able to continue to deliver on growth and new product offerings.

Section 1 Global Macroeconomy: State of Play and Outlook Part 1 and Part 2

Section 2: Financial Markets Part 1 and Part 2

Section 3: Best Ideas

 

I enjoyed this series of roundtables last year and this year did not disappoint. The points made are all relevant to the market environment as we see it today. Ther participants expressed a great deal of fear that we are dangerously close to a bubble peak. There is a lot of worry about valuations, social unrest and the effects on the credit worthiness of the corporate bond market, when the Fed is backstopping it.

Until the beginning of last year you often spoke on the theme of the early stages of a secular bull market. David had begun speaking about it as long as 4 years ago. But with the onset of the pandemic, you have been largely silent about it. Has it stalled or, in your view, already peaked?

Thank you for this important question. In October 2008, I remember sitting at my desk and looking at the calculation that the S&P500 was sitting on the widest overextension relative to the 200-day ever. Acceleration is always a trend ending and the crash signalled the beginning of the bottoming process. By the time Wall Street reached its nadir in March 2009 many instruments were well off their lows and by the end of the year the leaders were making new highs.

Gold, commodities, ASEAN and technology took off. Of these, technology is the only one which had uninterrupted staying power all the way through the bull market to date.  

I started writing Crowd Money in 2011. At the time a host of big international companies, with global franchises, that dominate their niches were breaking out of long-term ranges. It was a clear signal that a new secular bull market was underway. By the time the book was published in 2013, it was still a minority view that a new bull market was underway.

Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC will shelf its next-generation UltraFan engine program and halt investment until a new aircraft is launched as the industry grapples with low demand for new airplanes, the Financial Times reports.

--The British engineering giant will finish testing the new engine in 2022 but will then put the program "on ice," including postponing the search for an industrial partner for the new propulsion system, according to the FT.

--Rolls-Royce Chief Executive Warren East said he expects a significant delay until the new aircraft appear as the industry reels from the acute shock of the coronavirus pandemic, the FT reports.

The challenge for many industrial companies is that their growth prospects are dependent on economic growth and the ability of their customers to boost capital expenditure. At present the enthusiasm which greeted vaccine approvals is being tested by the evolution of new strains of the COVID-19 virus. That suggests capex decisions will likely be delayed until customers have visibility on what their post pandemic businesses will look like.

Some lidar suppliers gained Tuesday after Reuters reported that Apple Inc. plans to build a self-driving car for consumers and is tapping outside partners for elements of the system as it develops its own battery technology.

Apple is approaching companies for some parts, including lidar sensors that provide autonomous cars with a real-time, 3-D view of the world, the report said, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.

Lidar supplier Luminar Technologies Inc. rose as much as 12% on Tuesday, while Velodyne Lidar Inc. surged 16%. Blank-check firms that are bringing more lidar players to the market also advanced: InterPrivate Acquisition Corp. climbed 17%, while Collective Growth Corp. jumped as much as 24%.

Apple has been working on driverless car technology since 2014, but pared back its ambitions from a full-fledged vehicle in 2017, Bloomberg News has reported. Since then, Apple has been working on the underlying autonomous system. The company has been deciding whether to attach this system to its own car, or existing vehicles, or to partner with an established carmaker, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month.

Apple enjoys an almost 40% gross margin on its iPhones and tablets. Porsche has about a 47% gross margin on the 911 and Ferrari has a more than 50% gross margin on its cars. Tesla’s is 16.5%. Toyota’s is 18% and Volkswagen’s is 19.5%. No mass market producer has been able to achieve margins on the scale technology companies are accustomed to.

NIO, BYD and Xpeng are examples of Chinese electric-vehicle makers that have surged in value, buttressed by national targets regarding electric vehicles on the road and investors' search for the next EV titans. The American depositary receipts in these companies have surged this year and the meteoric rises put their valuations in line with large traditional car makers, such as General Motors and Ford Motor. To help cut carbon emissions, China aims for EVs to make up 20% of car sales by 2025, and 50% by 2035. Tesla's success this year has also fueled investor appetite for the technology. Investors should be aware though that most Chinese upstarts are unprofitable, The Wall Street Journal reported, and they are also selling far fewer vehicles than major automobile groups.

Tesla’s success in attracting capital has set off a global gold rush in copycats seeking to cash in on investor demand for renewable investments. Anything that has a battery in the description is doing well and a lack of income was not seen as a barrier to entry when discount rates are zero and the world is swimming in cash.

The evolution of the SPAC market has been a gateway for a pace of IPOs to rival that of the late 1990s. The number in 2020 alone has exceeded the total for all other years combined. The result is new companies have been popping up on the stock market at a dizzying pace. Advice to pursue growth at all costs, capture market share and not to worry about profits carry heavy reminiscences of the tech bubble in the late 1990s.

In a presentation to investors Thursday, the world’s largest entertainment company outlined plans for dozens of new movies and TV shows from those major brands, with an eye toward becoming a streaming behemoth in four years. The company expects its program spending to reach $14 billion to $16 billion annually by then.

Disney+, the entertainment giant’s flagship streaming platform, also is getting a price hike. The U.S. monthly rate will climb $1 to $8 in a move that executives telegraphed earlier this year. In Europe, the price will rise 29% to 9 euros ($11) a month, although there it is getting additional content aimed at adults.

Shares of Disney rose as much as 11% to a record $171 in New York trading Friday. The stock has about doubled since March on the strength of the streaming business.

“The enormous success of Disney+ inspired us to be even more ambitious,” Executive Chairman Bob Iger said at the event. “Our pipeline is much more robust than we initially anticipated,” he said, adding that the Disney+ cadence should soon hit 100 new titles per year.

Disney+ ESPN and Hulu round out Disney’s streaming portfolio. The transmission medium is no longer dependent on cable TV and or satellite connection which affords streaming companies an opportunity to retain more of their earnings. So far, this saving has been passed on to consumers in the form of low subscription fees. However, the route to profitability lies in price rises despite the highly competitive environment.

On November 24th I posted a review of candidates I believe likely to prosper in the emerging post-pandemic market. It was well received by subscribers so I will post an update on my views on the first Friday of the month going forward. That way subscribers can have an expectation that long-term themes will be covered in a systematic manner and will have a point of reference to look back on.

Media hysteria about the 2nd or 3rd waves has not led to new highs in the number of deaths. The success of biotech companies in deploying vaccines means there is going to be a substantial recovery in the economic activity in 2021 and going forward.

The stay-at-home champions saw their sales growth surge in 2020. It will be impossible to sustain that growth rate in 2021. That’s particularly true for mega-caps. One-way bets on the sector are likely to work less well in the FAANGs going forward.

With the growing expectation of rising inflation in 2021 what areas of the world markets would you choose to be positioned in if this proves to be the case? I note you only have a few trades on at present. Ae you likely to broaden these in the future?

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-03/five-reasons-to-worry-about-faster-u-s-inflation

https://twitter.com/Ole_S_Hansen/status/1334476194218205186

Thank you for this question. Governments are going all in on reflation and they are unlikely to stop until they get the inflationary outcome their desire. When above trend inflation is policy rather than a “nice to have” is has to be a more credible option.

Sorry, but what does this mean? "As a result, the share offers a lot of optionality on future innovation."

Thank you for this question and I apologise for being less than clear. Options allow one to gain outsized exposure to an opportunity without having to pay for it upfront. The risk is that the opportunity fails to pan out.

“It’s a game changer,” says Andrei Lupas, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, who assessed the performance of different teams in CASP. AlphaFold has already helped him find the structure of a protein that has vexed his lab for a decade, and he expects it will alter how he works and the questions he tackles. “This will change medicine. It will change research. It will change bioengineering. It will change everything,” Lupas adds.

In some cases, AlphaFold’s structure predictions were indistinguishable from those determined using ‘gold standard’ experimental methods such as X-ray crystallography and, in recent years, cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). AlphaFold might not obviate the need for these laborious and expensive methods — yet — say scientists, but the AI will make it possible to study living things in new ways.

And

The first iteration of AlphaFold applied the AI method known as deep learning to structural and genetic data to predict the distance between pairs of amino acids in a protein. In a second step that does not invoke AI, AlphaFold uses this information to come up with a ‘consensus’ model of what the protein should look like, says John Jumper at DeepMind, who is leading the project.

The team tried to build on that approach but eventually hit the wall. So, it changed tack, says Jumper, and developed an AI network that incorporated additional information about the physical and geometric constraints that determine how a protein folds. They also set it a more difficult, task: instead of predicting relationships between amino acids, the network predicts the final structure of a target protein sequence. “It’s a more complex system by quite a bit,” Jumper says.

The sheer breadth of what we do not yet know about biology is becoming more apparent all the time. That’s the greatest benefit of advances in technology, it makes answers possible where questions were never considered.

I have been a subscriber for just over 30 years, and in that time, I can't recall many times when a clear and concise analysis of economic and political conditions was as important as it is today. You are doing a wonderful job at keeping the collective informed, allowing us to see a broader picture than our individual biases might otherwise give us. Thanks so much!

And

Congratulations our last subscriber commentary was exceptional. You have done wonders for my confidence and ability to help my clients. Keep up the good work. Best wishes

Thank you both for your kind words and it is enormously gratifying that subscribers find value in the Service. That’s particularly true for veterans who have been with us for decades. Given both the demand and positive response for a reasonably succinct list of thematic investments that cover the prevailing market outlook, I’ll review the list on at least a monthly basis. The first Friday of the month which would coincide with the Big Picture Long-Term audio/video makes sense to me.

I hope life for you in California is more fun than it is here in England. But let's hope we really are past the low point as far as the virus is concerned. I had thought that would be true for economies too, but this latest move by President Trump (summarised in the article by Ambrose Evans Pritchard) does raise questions. With this move, which asset classes do you think will benefit and which will lose on a 3-6 month timescale?

Best wishes to you and family. 

Thanks for the well wishes and this article which may be of interest to the Collective. All is well with us since the streets were blessedly free of protestors following the election. I guess they got the result they wished for. Here is a section from the article:

He instructed Fed chairman Jerome Powell to return the unused portion of a $454bn (£342bn) account approved by Congress during the market meltdown in March. This seed money gave the Fed $4.5 trillion extra lending power under a policy of 10:1 leverage and had an electrifying effect on market confidence, helping avoid the errors made in 2008.

Krishna Guha from Evercore ISI said the Fed’s market stabilisation policy had been politicised. Congressman Bharat Ramamurti, a member of the House oversight committee on stimulus, called Mr Mnuchin’s move an unjustified and ideological decision by the treasury department.

The Fed retains its monetary policy powers and can purchase further US treasury bonds but that is a blunt tool at this juncture unless it is married to aggressive fiscal expansion, which the Republican Senate has vowed to block.

The Fed is concerned that more QE will chiefly inflate asset prices without doing much to help the real economy, exacerbating social inequality.

Congress stripped the Fed of its discretionary powers under Article 13 after the Lehman crisis. The Fed now needs permission from the treasury to go beyond its normal mandate. This was granted immediately during the panic in late March.

1.Vaccine-led Recovery to Lift Cyclical Assets
2. Navigating the Path
3. A Steeper Real Yield Curve
4. Europe: Two Steps forward, One Step Back
5. China: Forging Ahead, with Assets in Tow
6. A New Commodity Bull Cycle
7. EM Outperformance: More than Before, Less than Sometimes
8. Rotations: Cyclical, North Asia in Focus but Vaccine News Key to Near Term
9. In Search of New (and Old) Safe Havens, Hedges and Diversifiers
10. Risks from Corona and Beyond

A link to the full report is posted in the Subscriber's Area.

If we had to distill the priorities of governments next year there is only one word captures their intentions. Reflation. With millions of unemployed people, defaults only kept at bay by massive intervention and rising public discontent economic revival is the only possible solution. That’s true of every country. No one has been left unscathed by the pandemic. Whether the challenge has been domestic or from a loss of export markets, the solution is the same. Reflation.

Analysts have long expected Amazon to dive deeper into health care in a bet the company can bring its digital real estate and logistical prowess to bear on a roughly $4 trillion industry in the U.S. with a reputation for inefficiency. The company rattled drug retailers with its PillPack acquisition, but Amazon has been slow to integrate the online pharmacy startup into its offerings.

The announcement Tuesday marks the first time that shoppers can order prescription drugs directly on Amazon. Previously, they were redirected to PillPack’s website. An integrated pharmacy removes one of the few gaps in Amazon’s offerings compared with major big box and grocery rivals, some of whom have long filled shoppers’ prescriptions in the same stores where they sold flat-screen televisions or cans of soup.

The discounts are a clear play for people who pay for their medications with cash, whether they are uninsured or are looking to save money. Strong demand for transparency and better deals have helped fuel the rise of discount card programs like GoodRx Holdings Inc. Amazon will display both the price when using insurance and the price without. Infusing transparency into a system that has been frustratingly opaque for consumers could alter the supply chain.

“We designed Amazon Pharmacy to put customers first – bringing Amazon’s customer obsession to an industry that can be inconvenient and confusing,” said TJ Parker, vice president of Amazon Pharmacy and co-founder of PillPack.

Waiting for 15 or 20 minutes while a prescription is filled must be one of the biggest nuisances of the retail experience. Being forced to walk around aisles of products one has no interest in begs the question, “how long does it take to select a product from a shelf and put it in a bag?

The challenge for pharmacists is they spend much more time ensuring the veracity of a doctor’s instructions than they do filling them out. Yet, that is only small part of their business. The bulk of volume is focused on repeat custom and it is this business Amazon is targeting. Chronic conditions are where the money is in selling pharmaceuticals, Renewable prescriptions do not need to be verified all that often and cashflows are received on a subscription basis. That’s the kind of service Amazon excels at.

Thank you for bringing Rolls Royce to our attention recently. Thanks to you I was able to open a position which looks excellent now. Do you think the volatility in the share will continue for much longer? And what are your views about this share now? Thanks again very much.  

Thank you for your kind words and congratulations on taking opportunities in the market. The big question at present is about the trajectory or interest rates and bond yields. It will shape where risk appetite focuses. Investors will either favour recovery candidates on the basis that survivors will have more market share to expand into or they will continue to favour high growth/high leverage plays as they continue to disrupt incumbents.

Resolution requires concerted and consistent effort over a long period of time. It took 25 years to reform Finland’s primary education system before it topped the league in PISA scores. Singapore achieves superior health care outcomes at 25% of the cost of the US and 40% of Europe thanks to a system which gives consumers “skin in the game”.  It’s now thirty years in the making. Denmark’s commitment to wind power dates back to the 1970’s when the benefits were egregiously uneconomic. More than half of its energy is now from renewable sources. Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has evolved over thirty years since Lamoureux convinced Canada’s labor unions that the fund needs to attract and pay the best people from Goldman Sachs and Blackrock to work for them, rather than paying them fees.  Ontario Teachers’ has had an annualized total-return of 10% since reforms were made in 1990, and retirees’ pensions are fully funded with 100% inflation protection provided on all pensions.

It may be far-fetched to think that small, successful, experimental nations can fill this vacuum of leadership, but the world is begging for consistent leadership and a positive example, so an opportunity presents itself to step up.  

There is a good reason small countries tend to succeed in niche areas, and are often more successful than larger countries on specific metrics. They have to. Israel, South Korea or Switzerland have spent lifetimes grappling with the uncertainty of geopolitics. They understand the reality that if they don’t succeed on their own no one is going to help them.

Ireland is small rainy island on the tip of Europe, without a commitment to education and active courting of FDI, coupled with low corporate taxes and light regulation it would be a very dreary place indeed.

RR shares finished the day at 84.54p whilst the newly issued rights finished at 51p.

When adding back the 10/3 of 51p to the share price of 84.54p, the result is 254p which is a very nice gain from the news of your first purchase at 154.75 p you gave the collective early October (your second purchase being adroitly at 105p). Thank you for advising us!

BUT:

Yesterday you wrote regarding RR  "...The knock-on effect of the rights issue could result in the share falling between 25% and 33% which may be priced into shares over the coming two weeks..."

Three interrelated questions:

1. Do you mean by this that the share price of 84.75 could go down to 57p (-33%) to 64p (-25%) which would be equivalent to the "old share price" coming down from today's 254p to 170p?

2. What would be the reason for this heavy decline - all endogenous factors should already be priced assuming a efficient pricing...

3. If such a decline is probable would it not make more sense to take good profits and then, if the share really comes down or stays where it is, and the turn-around story still seems valid, buy again a lower or more or less unchanged price?

It seems to me that from a risk-adjusted perspective, this would be the better action.

And

Dear Mr. Tracey,
Rolls Royce web site states for shareholder living in USA:
" Due to local regulations the rights issue cannot be offered in your country. We will arrange to try and sell your rights to new ordinary shares for you, and you will be sent the profit (after expenses) if it is £5 or more."
would elaborate on this process for those of us who are not familiar with it.
Many thanks for your great service.

Thank you both for these questions. The share was rebased yesterday and halved as a result of the rights issue. It subsequently rebounded from its lows because many investors were waiting for the uncertainty of the rebasing to pass before initiating long positions. The question now is what happens next.

General Electric shares jumped as much as 10% on Wednesday after the company’s third-quarter results
topped projections, earning the company plaudits from even the most bearish Wall Street analysts.

* Gordon Haskett analyst John Inch (hold) said GE’s EPS beat follows the pattern of mostly all other industrial companies that have beat bottom-line forecasts this earnings season

** Said overall, stronger healthcare and better free cash flow, despite still tough aviation business, “are likely to reinforce the messaging that GE has fundamentally bottomed – although the company will likely continue to face years ahead of difficult climb-back,” while Covid resurgence could arrest aviation fundamentals and future improvement in healthcare business

* JPMorgan analyst Stephen Tusa (neutral) said the across-the-board nature of the beat “is what it is, positive”

** The 4Q guide for free cash flow of over $2.5 billion suggests cash will be well ahead of JPM’s below-consensus expectations, and a “headline like that is tough to argue with”

* RBC analyst Deane Dray (outperform) said GE is still battling through a multiyear turnaround, worsened by the Covid-pandemic, but “there were encouraging signs” in the company’s EPS beat

** As is typical with a GE earnings, there are a number of moving parts involving charges/reserves, the analyst noted

** Said the most notable of those is the $100 million reserve taken for a potential settlement with the SEC for legacy accounting issues; however, since these issues date back to two CEOs ago, Dray expects investors would view it as a positive to see this issue resolved via a settlement

* GE 14 buys, 8 holds, 1 sell; avg PT $8.07: Bloomberg data

* NOTE: Earlier, GE Jumps on Surprise Profit as Culp Sees Faster Turnaround

The global economy is in a state of flux because no one can have an accurate reading what the future patterns of activity will be following the pandemic. The travel/hospitality sector obviously has a place in the economy but at what scale? The stay-at-home champions have seen a step change in demand growth for their products but how sustainable is that growth trajectory? For industrials is the economy going to bounce back on infrastructure development or be mired in political infighting?

The package is aimed at seeing Rolls-Royce through to 2022, when the company expects to resume sufficient cash generation alongside a gradual recovery in demand for air travel. Chief Executive Officer Warren East has also said the company could sell assets as it repositions for the future.

“We didn’t want to put the business and our shareholders’ interests at risk by gambling on the situation next year so that’s why we chose to go with this package now,” the CEO said at an investor meeting.

Even with funding secured, Rolls-Royce still faces an uphill road to recovery. The twin-aisle planes the company supplies are predicted to take until at least 2025 to recover to pre-pandemic levels and the group has announced plans to cut 9,000 jobs.

The 10 per 3 rights issue is due to close at November 11th and will ensure Rolls Royce has sufficient capital to see it through the next couple of years come what may. It’s a worst-case scenario funding raise and will take place against a background of low interest rates and high liquidity.

The company will issue no more than 1.67 billion shares in China, equivalent to 5.5% of the total outstanding before the greenshoe, according to its prospectus on the Shanghai stock exchange. It will issue the same amount for the Hong Kong offering, or about 3.3 billion shares in total.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which was co-founded by Ma and currently owns about a third of Ant, has agreed to subscribe for 730 million of the Shanghai shares, which will be listed in Shanghai under the ticker “688688,” according to the prospectus. Alibaba will hold about 32% of Ant shares after the IPO.

AliPay prospered by offering a higher interest rate than banks which was earned daily. That sensation of seeing one’s balance increasing by the day, even if only by a small amount, drove massive consumer adoption. The reason it was able to circumvent strict banking regulation on how much interest can be paid was because the government was willing to look the other way by not insisting on a banking license.

Sees growth reverting back to levels similar to pre-COVID as the world recovers, and sees paid net adds likely to be down year over year in 1h 2021 as compared to the big spike in paid net adds in 1h 2020
Sees 2021 free cash flow be -$1 billion to break-even
As productions increasingly restart, we expect Q4’20 FCF to be slightly negative and therefore, for the full year 2020, we forecast FCF to be approximately $2 billion, up from our prior expectation of break-even to positive
With $8.4 billion in cash on our balance sheet at the end of the quarter plus our $750m credit facility which is undrawn, our need for external financing is diminishing

Netflix is running a capital-intensive model that is entirely dependent on growth. It got a significant boost in subscriptions from the pandemic but in an increasingly crowded competitive space the ability to continue to sustain growth has to be questionable.

As per JPM and Nomura   the mkt is pricing a Biden win, caution that a blue wave is necessary, otherwise will get gridlock.

Even if it happens probably get turmoil specially if we do not get clean sweep. Otherwise legal problems will be forthcoming. The groups would be HC, alternative energies, cyclical, education, infrastructure. Also China as frictions will be reduced

Can you identify possible winners, using the charts and share them?

Trust you and your family are well. Stay safe.

The narrative about who will win the US Presidential election has morphed over the last couple of weeks to pricing in a Biden victory. The catalyst for this change was the debate where the two candidates harangued each other and dropped the bar for political decorum another notch lower. Since then, confidence among Democrats has increased substantially. There has been talk of a double-digit margin of victory and a blue wave where they control both legislative branches and the Presidency.

I hope you and the family are well. well done on your XXX trade. What would you do now if you are not in the shares? and why are the shares up 25 per cent today? Is that shorts closing out their positions, realisation that the company will not go bust or just volatility associated with the rights issue? Many thanks

Thank you for this question which may be of interest to other subscribers. I agree the most likely reason for today’s significant additional surge today was because of short covering. It’s up almost 100% this week so buying the rebound requires one to have some tolerance of volatility. The only way to deal with that and not lose sleep is to control the size of the position.

A link to the full report is posted in the Subscriber's Area. 

The fourth quarter is going to bring two strong sales events for Amazon. Prime Day usually occurs in July but was delayed because of the pandemic. It will now take place on the 13th. That might just kick off the beginning of the holiday season. Considering the extent of excess savings this year is likely to deliver a bumper holiday season for Amazon’s retail operation.

Hi Eoin, could you please state what your APPROXIMATE price objective is for XXX to know whether you see this more as an opportunistic trade or more of fundamental return to e.g., the 200dma? Thank you

Thank you for this question. I view my trades as opportunistic and my investments as holdings in a long-term portfolio. 

Hello Eoin 1.) domiciled in Switzerland I wonder what is your opinion on the SMI? 2.) watching the presidential debate, I am impressed by Biden’s face lifting - would you know or could you find out which doctor did this great job?

Thank you for this question which may be of interest to subscribers. Politics is a visual profession and looking good on TV has been important since the days of JFK. Whoever is looking after the appearance of the septuagenarians running for US President deserves every penny they are earning. I'll keep my ear to ground for who that is. 

Thanks for another good Friday’s audio and comment. I too have been watching XXX. But did not buy yet. Your purchase will be an incentive for me. I am also watching Airbus. Considering their main rival Boeing is in bigger trouble, I thought it would be a good company to own for the post pandemic era. I would love to read any reasons for not investing in Airbus and your/collective’s view on Airbus. Thanks in advance. And THANK YOU for the excellent service.

Airbus’s market cap is about half that of Boeing but their revenue figures are broadly in line. The primary reason for that divergence has been because Boeing was so aggressive in buying back its shares and has long been seen as the leader in the aerospace sector.

One of the most commonly asked questions by subscribers is how to find details of my open traders. In an effort to make it easier I will simply repost the latest summary daily until there is a change.

Key markets are stabilizing and GE is making “good progress” in cutting costs by $2 billion and saving $3 billion in cash to contend with the coronavirus pandemic, Culp said. While the recovery will be gradual, results are improving and GE is poised for continued cash-flow gains through the end of the year, he
said.

“I sit here today feeling very confident about where we are and where we’re going despite all of the trials and tribulations that Covid has certainly thrown at us,” Culp said at a Morgan Stanley conference Wednesday.

The CEO’s optimistic tone marks a turnabout from late July, when he stopped short of saying GE would generate free cash flow in the second half. The pandemic has prompted an unprecedented collapse in air travel, gutting demand for the company’s jet engines and crimping sales of other products such as gas turbines and medical equipment.

Manufacturers of big pieces of equipment that require teams of people to operate were hit hard by COVID-19. However, a number had been trending lower for a long time before pandemic hit and rationalisation plans were already well underway. There is no doubt that the ill effects of the lockdown are non-trivial but valuations are much improved and a return to profitability is likely to be rewarded by investors.

A link to the full report is posted in the Subscriber's Area. 

Media commentary continues to focus on the number of new cases of COVID-19 but that is an irrelevant figure. The numbers of hospitalisations and deaths and the fear that healthcare systems would be overrun was the reason for locking down economies. The reality today is even in countries where the number of cases is increasing, the hospitalization rate has not increased because most newly infected people are younger. Obviously, there are risks that younger people will infect older people but that is a manageable risk compared to the financial stress of total cessation of economic activity.

Jan $180 Strike Calls costs $4
Jan $80 Strike Puts costs $1

*Both options are $50 out of the money, approx data, BUT it is nearly 3x more expensive to buy upside risk in AAPL equity. Downside protection normally costs more than upside risk participation, NOT today. What does this mean? One large buyer has made a colossal splash in the market and the scent of greed has drawn thousands of other market participants into the dangerous game. Several clients in our institutional chat on Bloomberg have cited SoftBank as the original size buyer. We have NO IDEA if this is true, just that highly credible clients have made this reference several times over the last week. It’s a high-stakes game of musical chairs, the ultimate greater fool theory moment. The colossal call buyer has thrown meat in the water and drawn in the sharks, but unfortunately thousands of Robinhood minnows at the same time. When the large players’ exit, the little guy and gal will be left holding the bag.

Apple closed near $130, while the cost of speculative upside calls is weighted heavily against the buyer. Someone must have reached out to Buffett today because he can make a fortune in selling $AAPL upside calls.

Options volume has spiked higher over the last few months to hit multi-year highs. Options offer significant leverage to both the upside the downside and are among the primary vehicles for traders to take on outsized positions relative to their capital. The significant rebound in stay-at-home shares has resulted in an impressive momentum move which is not taking at least a breather. 

Rolls-Royce's GBP2 billion disposal announcement is materially more than what the market had in mind, and may imply a lower need for fresh equity to repair its balance sheet, Credit Suisse says. This raises questions as to whether the company was waiting for things to improve before a rights issue or taking the risk of seeing things get worse, the Swiss bank says. The lack of visibility on the balance sheet rebuild, persistent volatility in forecasts and the unattractiveness of the underlying investment case mean the stock remains unappealing for many investors, CS says. The bank has an underperform rating on the stock, and lowers the target price to 200 pence, from 210 pence. Shares are down 9% at 219.40 pence.   

As a major plane engine supplier Rolls Royce has been significantly negatively impacted by the Boeing 737 Max debacle. As if that were not enough the collapse in air traffic and cancellation of orders for new planes has been a double blow. The share is down more than 80% since early 2019 and made a new low today.

Facebook analysts were positive after the social-media company added a new shopping section, called Facebook Shop, to its main app, seeing strong e-commerce growth potential.

JMP Securities (market outperform, PT $305)

There are “multiple catalysts” for Facebook, and e-commerce “can be a significant opportunity”
There is “a clear line of sight to monetizing Shop”
While advertising should remain Facebook’s focus, the growth in e-commerce means Facebook “can generate greater product discovery” for small and mid-sized businesses relative to other channels

Stifel (buy, PT $290)

The accelerated roll-out of the service “suggests the benefits to growth could be evident as early as 2021,” and Facebook waiving selling fees in 2020 “could accelerate the adoption of these tools”
Over the long term, Facebook’s e-commerce opportunity “should come more from increased adoption of digital ads” by small and mid-sized businesses than transaction fees

Shares up as much as 2.86%, the stock has nearly doubled off a March low, and it is trading at a record

Companies like Alibaba and Tencent were quick to introduce payment platforms into their social media and ecommerce products. The impending IPO of Ant Financial represents the consumer finance crown jewel of Jack Ma’s empire. It is a revenue engine that was successful because it afforded Chinese consumer the opportunity to earn daily interest at rates which were significantly higher than from banks. That’s the kind of regulatory two-step Silicon Valley start-ups have been performing for years and, so far, the Chinese government has been willing to look the other way.

The top three holdings of the machine-guided fund in July were Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. Those are far from the kind of undervalued stocks typically favored by a value strategy. But to Qraft, it’s just value 2.0.

“Intangible assets have become a more important factor in the actual value of the company due to the development of information technology,” founder Hyungsik Kim wrote in an email.

“It is easy to tell which of the following is more important in measuring the value of Amazon: warehouses (tangibles) or automated logistics systems (intangibles).”

It’s the rallying cry for many remaining proponents of value: The factor isn’t dead, it’s simply plagued by outdated accounting rules that treat intangible investments such as research as expenses rather than capital.

As a result, knowledge-intensive firms end up with much lower book values and higher costs, which make them look more expensive than they actually are.

The new ETF’s eye-catching backtests also speak to the variety of methods underlying even the best-known equity factors. One study estimated there are well over 3,000 different ways to define a value strategy.

Intangible values is a fascinating subject because it forms the basis for the investing in technology firms but is the reason to avoid legacy firms. The challenge in teaching an algorithm to know the difference means a great deal of labeling would be required to identify the differences.

I am a pre-subscriber (financial constraints, exacerbated since Covid-19, make it impossible for me to become a full subscriber, I'm afraid, so I may not qualify for a reply. But David did reply to me on more than one occasion;  he was always so kind, and is greatly missed).

I remember your being on the panel at a money show in the conference centre in Westminster Square (I forget the name - possible Westminster Conference Centre) - it must have been about 2009 because I remember asking a question as to whether there were any "good" banks left that might be worth investing in.
  
Anyhow, in response to a question from another attendee about companies drilling for water in Australia, (or possibly into wind power or solar or even lithium miners (if it wasn't too early) - I forget exactly which), I remember you replying that you never favoured chasing these early-stage stories, and in general you have been proved right since.   

I still tend to class hydrogen fuel and battery power for vehicles in the same category, but perhaps you feel that times have changed sufficiently now?    Since I am only a pre-subscriber, and not able to read the full article, I appreciate that you may have said more on this there, or in previous Comments of the Day.
    
It seems to me that since hydrogen when mixed with oxygen is a very explosive mix (although this could also be said to a lesser extent of petrol vapour, I suppose), it would only take one careless mistake or faulty construction to cause a serious explosion.   But perhaps the design features are so tight that this would be impossible.   

At least I would trust an electric vehicle more than a self-driving one! In fact, I am a bit nervous by nature. I would never trust a Toyota now, after that stuck accelerator pedal caused a fatality. What the last minutes of those poor occupants were like I cannot face thinking about.

Whether it is possible to reply to this or not, many thanks Eoin for the comments that I am able to read daily. They give a very sane and reassuring perspective, especially in these difficult times.

David always saw value in conducting a public discourse with subscribers because it helped to educate us as much as the Collective. It also ensures we are covering topics of interest. I agree and one of the things I enjoy most is attempting to provide satisfactory answers to subscriber’ queries. However, as someone who has been familiar with the Service for at least 11 years, might I suggest you at least take a trial subscription?

If that is too much of a financial constraint it may be time to reassess your investment/trading ambitions. Investing involves a degree of risk. If you are uncomfortable with driving a Prius because of a fault corrected more than a decade ago, it might be time to conclude investing is not for you.

The response to this email continues in the Subscriber's Area. 

GM does plan to sell more than 20 EV models around 2023. That business could be spun off for $20 billion and eventually be worth as much as $100 billion, Deutsche Bank’s Rosner said. GM’s core business selling gasoline-powered sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks is generating cash but viewed as being in long-term decline and is less exciting to investors than the company’s electric-car plans, he wrote.

Despite the share gains this week, the Detroit-based automaker’s stock is down about 17% so far this year while all-electric rival Tesla Inc.’s value is eight times that of GM. By spinning off its EV business, GM could get the kind of momentum enjoyed by Tesla and a handful of startups that have lured capital despite their having no vehicles on the market.

Battery-powered cars have caught the imagination of investors in recent weeks, sending shares of Tesla to successive record levels and boosting the value of electric startups such as Nikola Inc., Fisker Inc. and Lordstown Motors Corp., all of which took a fast track chasing public listings after being acquired by special purpose acquisition companies.

The entire automotive supply chain has concluded there is no future in internal combustion engines. Not only are battery costs coming down and efficiency improving but the regulatory environment continues to squeeze traditional manufacturers.

Trump’s order on WeChat came after a similar injunction against ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, the viral video service the White House accuses of jeopardizing national security. But while ByteDance’s business outside of TikTok is largely confined to home, Tencent is central to the global distribution of games and a major conduit for American companies that sell products in the world’s No. 2 economy.

Apple, for instance, makes the majority of its iPhones in China, where WeChat is the oil that lubricates communications both on the factory floor and in the boardroom. In a worst-case scenario, American consumer brands like Walmart and Starbucks Corp. may be prevented from selling goods and services to Chinese buyers via WeChat’s “mini-programs” in China -- now one of the fastest-growing avenues for e-commerce. China accounts for about 9% of Walmart’s international sales and is its fastest-growing market.

“If you can’t pay for Starbucks coffee on WeChat, people will stop drinking it,” said BOCOM International analyst Connie Gu, commenting on the extreme cases where American brands are banned from using WeChat as a payment method.

Less quantifiable is the spillover effect on the gaming industry.
Tencent ranked as the world’s biggest games publisher by revenue in 2019, according to Newzoo data, and it collaborates with U.S. industry leaders like Activision and Electronics Arts Inc. It also holds a large stake in Fortnite maker Epic Games Inc. and owns League of Legends developer Riot Games Inc. That sprawling but somewhat stealthy gaming empire, deeply rooted in the U.S., was deemed under threat when the WeChat sanction was first announced, though a U.S. official later clarified that the action only involved the messaging service and not its parent.

Chinese language blogs were afire this morning with discussion of the WeChat ban. It is the primary vehicle many people use to communicate, shop, play and remit money across the Chinese diaspora. If India’s ban of Chinese apps is any guide, they will disappear from app-stores but will remain on consumers’ phones. That means existing users will still have access but will not have access to future updates.

Digital continues to rise. Pre-COVID-19 trends will likely accelerate, with direct-to-consumer e-commerce, such as brands’ websites, shoppable social-media platforms, and marketplaces becoming more important. Across the globe, consumers indicate they are likely to increase their online engagement and spending. Beauty-industry players will need to prioritize digital channels to capture and convert the attention of existing and new customers. On the operations side, the use of artificial intelligence for testing, discovery, and customization will need to accelerate as concerns about safety and hygiene fundamentally disrupt product testing and in-person consultations.

The pace of innovation accelerates. As the COVID-19 crisis has shown, the world can change quickly, bringing substantial shifts in demand. Sometimes, supply cannot catch up. Even before the pandemic, brands were under pressure to overhaul their product-innovation pipelines, inspired by the ability of digital-native direct-to-consumer brands to go from concept to cupboard in less than a month. Now, the need for speed is even greater. To achieve it, there may be a greater role for contract manufacturers, both to diversify (and thus reduce production risks) and to serve as thought partners in product innovation. There is also potential for closer collaboration—among brands and retailers, in particular—through data sharing and inventory pooling.

M&A rises as multiples fall. With the COVID-19 crisis causing significant damage to the balance sheets of brands, retailers, and suppliers, many companies will need to find new sources of capital. At the same time, given the hits to revenues and the global economy, multiples could fall from precrisis levels, when some brands were trading for more than eight times revenue or 10 to 15 times earnings.

The clearest trend in online retail is the evolution of the in-person sales experience. Most men think of shopping in a perfunctory manner but most women think of it as a pleasurable experience which is part of a daily social experience. It is very difficult to replace the sales experience of in person contact online and from a purely technological experience it is inefficient. That’s where livestreaming comes in.

They are not alone. Other players in the “banking services via a messaging” space include Kotak Mahindra Bank in India (on WhatsApp) and ICICI in WhatsApp (India). However, neither of these can do actual provisioning of the card and addition to Apple Pay and Google Pay in the messengers, which is what Zelf can do.

With Zelf, users get an account and a virtual card via their Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber and Telegram accounts. For offline and online purchases Zelf supports Apple Pay and Google Pay. This lightweight onboarding means card issuance takes less than 30 seconds via a Passport or national ID. Users then get a virtual Mastercard debit card available in their favorite messenger app. Operating inside the EU’s “Single Euro Payments Area” means it’s pretty easy for the startup to scale its offering to other countries.

One of the biggest advantages emerging markets have is they are afforded the opportunity to skip whole stages of development. This is because technology is immediately available to them without having to develop it themselves. China has been able to progress meaningfully because of its adoption of technological knowhow and the introduction of India’s 4G network offers India the same opportunity to evolve the entertainment, communication, banking and ecommerce sectors.

Robusta coffee futures have surged about 16% in London this month, the biggest gain for a most-active contract since June 2010 amid a shift toward home coffee consumption. Worldwide lockdowns that shuttered cafes, restaurants and offices have supported demand for robusta beans, typically favored to brew instant coffee at homes.

“Nestle results provide confirmation at-home sales is doing very well,” said Carlos Mera, an analyst at Rabobank in London. “It was priced in to some extent, based on IRI data from the U.S., but this is more global.”

Robusta spreads have firmed up and its certified stockpiles have fallen to the lowest since the start of last year. Speculators covering their negative positions has also helped prices rally in recent weeks. Smaller robusta crops expected in Brazil and Vietnam in the 2020-21 season are also bullish for prices, Rabobank said.

I’ve been working from home for 13 years and even I am drinking more coffee than normal lately. Many people have probably discovered that with the help of capsules of home espresso machines it is possible to get better tasting coffee than what is available from Starbucks. Arguably, that wouldn’t be difficult.

Looking at the daily charts of the Dow Jones and S&P there appears to be potential "island reversals". Do these "islands" carry much weight in charting terms?

Thank you for this question which I believe will be of interest to the Collective. In order for an island reversal to form we need to first see a breakaway gap form which is generally consistent with a burst of enthusiasm. That has to be followed shortly afterwards by a breakdown gap which is consistent with a sudden bout of fear which nullifies the initial surge.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. and Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV are seeking to buy back bonds through separate tender offers launched Thursday. Both are targeting debt due in the next three years.

Companies are seeking breathing room on debt payments as they contend with lower earnings amid the coronavirus outbreak, threatening to push leverage even higher. Credit raters are running out of patience: Occidental, already one of the largest fallen angels of this cycle, may be cut again by Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings, while AB InBev was recently downgraded by S&P with a negative outlook.

Both companies largely amassed their massive debt loads by funding acquisitions. Much of Occidental’s nearly $40 billion of debt came from borrowing to help finance its takeover of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. last year, while AB InBev’s roughly $103 billion of obligations mostly stems from its purchase of SABMiller Plc in 2016.

While some firms are looking to buy back debt outright, others are pursuing different liability management exercises to push out maturities. Rite Aid Corp. launched a $750 million exchange offer Thursday, while Macy’s Inc. initiated one earlier this week. They’re also trying to amend certain covenants through what are known as consent solicitations.

Corporate debt issuance has surged over the last three years to a new all-time high and combined total of $2.4 trillion in only a couple of months. That is all aimed at ensuring they have enough capital to see them through a particularly uncertain period.

The settlement is more comprehensive than expected, since it includes the dicamba and PCB cases, and the price will be reasonable for most investors, Sebastian Bray, an analyst at Berenberg, said by email.

It’s a “big relief,” Bray said, and “should allow investors to draw a line under the saga of the last two years.”

The Roundup agreements will resolve 75% of about 125,000 filed claims and those that were unfiled, the company said Wednesday in a statement. Bayer said it will pay $10.1 billion to $10.9 billion to resolve all lawsuits over the popular herbicide, including $1.25 billion for future claims handled as a class action.

Bayer pretty much bet the value of the entire firm on the speculation they would be better able to settle the Roundup claims than Monsanto. It’s looking increasingly likely that they were correct.

The analysts, led by chief investment officer Mark Haefele, said three narratives were currently driving markets; the ‘Fed story’ — ongoing central bank stimulus — the second-wave story, and the U.S. election story. Fears of a second coronavirus wave have come to the fore in recent days, with spikes in Beijing, Germany and a number of U.S. states. The UBS team said that U.S.-China tensions fed into the election narrative, which would come into focus over the next four months.

“Overall we see the second-wave and U.S. election stories as contributing to market volatility as headlines feed investors’ hopes and fears about the speed and strength of the economic recovery. But it is the Fed story that will endure over the medium term,” they said in a note on Monday. They said they were positive on the outlook for both equities and credit, preferring USD high yield, Asian high yield and USD-denominated emerging market sovereign bonds as well as stocks in sectors that have so far lagged behind the market.

“Against this backdrop, we think the most important thing an investor can do is to be invested, rather than sitting on the sidelines. As earnings are likely to recover in the second half of the year and excess liquidity continues to support risk assets, we see further upside potential in global equities, in particular among sectors that have lagged the rally so far,” they added.

Monetary policy beats most other factors most of the time” was one of David’s favourite sayings and it has certainly helped to inflate asset prices over the last 12 years. The process began another upward cycle when the Fed reversed its quantitative tightening program last year in response to the illiquidity in the repo market. It went into overdrive when following the imposition of the lockdowns.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the U.S. shouldn’t shut down the economy again even if there is another surge in coronavirus cases.

“You create more damage, not just economic damage -- medical problems that get put on hold,” Mnuchin said Thursday on CNBC. “We can’t shut down the economy again.”

Mnuchin added that he believed President Donald Trump made the right decision to urge states to ease social distancing rules that have crippled the U.S. economy. He said that in the event of a resurgence, it will not be necessary to impose restrictions again because Covid testing and contract tracing are improving and they understand more about how to contain outbreaks.

As restrictions are lifted across the country, signs of a second wave of coronavirus cases in the U.S. have been raising alarms. More than 2 million people in the U.S. have been infected so far.

The majority of coronavirus cases in the USA emerged on the coasts. The middle of the country was comparatively unaffected initially and was afforded the luxury of lax containment measures as a result. The uptick in locations which had large protests a week ago, like Los Angeles, and the rising infection rates in places that did not have a significant issue in March, suggest the first wave of infections is still rolling through communities.

According to the city’s transit manager, Transport for London (TfL), maintaining social distancing means that buses and London Underground trains will only be able to carry around 13–15% of the 9 million passengers who use the services daily. One of eight carriages on a Central line train can carry 131 people in a typical peak hour crush. Only 7% of these passengers could travel if 2-meter distancing was achieved.

TfL has imposed a limit of 20 passengers on its double-decker buses, that can usually carry up to 87.

To help alleviate this precipitous drop in passenger capacity, TfL and London Mayor Sadiq Khan unveiled their ‘London Streetspace’ program in May, which aims to accommodate a possible 10-fold increase in cycling and a fivefold increase in walking. “Many Londoners have rediscovered the joys of walking and cycling during lockdown and by quickly and cheaply widening pavements, creating temporary cycle lanes and closing roads to through traffic we will enable millions more people to change the way they get around our city,” Khan said.

I’m all for walking or cycling to work but a 90% drop in occupancy for the Tube and a 75% drop in bus occupancy is completely unworkable. The age of the Tube network has always mean ventilation is a problem. The 10 to 15 degree pick up in temperature when entering the network has long been a testament to that fact.

“We’re not even thinking about thinking about raising rates,” he told a video press conference Wednesday. “We are strongly committed to using our tools to do whatever we can for as long as it takes.”

The Federal Open Market Committee earlier said it would increase its holdings of Treasury securities and agency residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities “at least at the current pace” to sustain smooth market functioning.

A related statement from the New York Fed specified that the pace of the increase would be about $80 billion a month for purchases of Treasuries and about $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities.

“Acting on mortgage-backed securities and Treasuries underscores their belief that more support is needed,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist with Grant Thornton in Chicago. “The Fed does not see a victory in the employment bounce-back. The risk of deflation is still high and the economy needs more support to heal more fully.”
 

$120 billion a month for the next two years will add nearly $3 trillion to the size of the Fed’s balance sheet. It sounds like a lot but the Fed added nearly $500 billion to its balance sheet in May, so $120 billion is a significant deceleration of support.

At the heart of the speculative activity are smaller investors, according to Sundial. Small trader call buying made up more than 50% of total volume last week, the highest since 2000, it said.

Past instances when bullish small trader positions made up 45% or more of volume preceded a median loss for U.S. stocks of about 3% in two months time and 15% in a year, according to the note.

“Small traders are pushing their luck in a major way,” said Goepfert. “It seems increasingly risky to try to chase this rally along with traders who have traditionally been extremely reliable contrary indicators.”

Regardless of any mitigating argument, chasing the rally has been the right decision. The major Wall Street indices blazed through potential areas of resistance in short order. The Nasdaq Composite is now at a new all-time high and the worst performing, most at risk of bankruptcy companies, have staged spectacular rallies. The determination of retail investors to ride the coattails of the Fed while institutional investors stepped aside is a clear example of speculative fervour.

“You have been calling for some ‘consolidation’ for equity markets for a number of weeks now (which I expected too), but this just hasn’t come to pass. Instead we have seen a relentless charge higher in virtually every market. You’ve stated that it’s liquidity driven which until recently at least, little participation from the professional money managers. Short term yields no longer can be relied upon as a risk indicator with the Fed deliberately compressing yields at the front end. To what extent, if any, has this recent episode viewed the way you look at markets through a charting lense. A despondent sceptic of this rally here, it seems the only winning strategy is just to ride the liquidity train, and rotate one’s positions towards riskier assets (travel, emerging etc) as the new safe havens (tech) reach maturity.

Thank you for this question which may be of interest to other subscribers. In a response to a similar email on May 12th. I led with this observation. “The best time to buy is following a significant pullback. The next best opportunity is following the first reaction from an important low. The next will be when a breakout to new highs occurs.

There’s no sign yet that the stimulus package is anything more than a one-off response to an unprecedented crisis. Even so, investors are viewing it with a bullish lens. “It’s completely new territory for the European Union,” Michael Strobaek, global chief investment officer at Credit Suisse Group AG, said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “And that would make the European Union as an investment much more attractive for global investors.”

That would represent a shift for European markets, which have been unpopular compared with the U.S. For example, European equity funds suffered from outflows more than any other major region this year, losing about $31 billion, according to data from EPFR Global and Bank of America Corp.

Bond Buyers Toast EU Ambition in Moment They Were Waiting for Gary Kirk, a money manager at TwentyFour Asset Management in London, which oversees 17.8 billion pounds ($22 billion), is sticking with his U.S. bias. “It’s a bit early to get overly excited,” said Kirk, who’s waiting to see how the details are hammered out and whether it will pass muster with more austere governments in north Europe.

The Eurozone’s so-called sovereign wealth crisis arose because investments creditor nations’ pension funds made in private enterprises in the Eurozone’s periphery went bad. That was blamed on lax regulation and egregious behaviour with the result respective governments were forced to absorb private sector debts. That blew out sovereign debt ratios and caused a crisis. The response to the coronavirus could not be more different. Coupled with a willingness to loosen fiscal constraints, there is now also willingness to break the taboo of direct transfers to weaker nations. That is significant development even if it proves transitory in the near term.

But he brought up another problem - the prices were off. He was frustrated that customers were seeing incorrectly low prices. A pizza that he charged $24 for was listed as $16 by Doordash.

My first thought: I wondered if Doordash is artificially lowering prices for customer acquisition purposes.

My second thought: I knew Doordash scraped restaurant websites. After we discussed it more, it was clear that the way his menu was set up on his website, Doordash had mistakenly taken the price for a plain cheese pizza and applied it to a 'specialty' pizza with a bunch of toppings.

My third thought: Cue the Wall Street trader in me…..ARBITRAGE!!!!

If someone could pay Doordash $16 a pizza, and Doordash would pay his restaurant $24 a pizza, then he should clearly just order pizzas himself via Doordash, all day long. You'd net a clean $8 profit per pizza [insert nerdy economics joke about there is such a thing as a free lunch].

He thought this was a stupid idea. "A business as successful a Doordash and worth billions of dollars would clearly not just give away money like this." But I pushed back that, given their recent obscene fundraise, they would weirdly enough be happy to lose that money. Some regional director would be able to show top-line revenue growth while some accounting line-item, somewhere, would not match up, but the company was already losing hundreds of millions of dollars. I imagined their systems might even be built to discourage catching these mistakes because it would detract, or at a minimum distract, from top-line revenue.

So we put in the first order for 10 pizzas.

I had to smile when I read this article because it is almost the exact plot line from an episode of HBO’s Silicon Valley Mrs. Treacy and I watched over the weekend but from two years ago. Start-ups lighting money on fire is about as clear a sign of bubbly activity one might wish for.

Both the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet Inc.’s Google—and are well into planning for litigation, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department is moving toward bringing a case as soon as this summer, some of the people said. At least some state attorneys general—led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican—are likely to file a case, probably in the fall, people familiar with the matter said.

Much of the states’ investigation has focused on Google’s online advertising business. The company owns the dominant tool at every link in the complex chain between online publishers and advertisers. The Justice Department likewise is making Google’s ad technology one of its points of emphasis. But it is also focusing more broadly on concerns that Google uses its dominant search business to stifle competition, people familiar with the matter said.

The issue of Google abusing its power to give preferential treatment to some advertisers over others has been brewing for some time. The additional charge that the company actively censures free speech and anyone who does not agree with their view of the world is an additional challenge which will be tackled eventually.

Eoin - appreciate your use of both the P&F and weekly chart against the moving average in your discussion of Microsoft.  When evaluating the consistency pattern of stocks (Microsoft and others), how do you "adjust" for circumstances such as COVID 19?  Clearly, Microsoft was negatively impacted like many other equities in the COVID induced meltdown, but has also rebounded more smartly than others.  Thanks, as always, for your insight and willingness to share same.

Thank you for this question which gets to the heart of a question I think most people are thinking at present. There are three important considerations when looking at market reaction. These are: where are we in the secular trend? Is liquidity expanding or contracting? What does the chart tell us about sentiment?

Thanks for your very clear and objective commentaries at moment. It is good that you are looking beyond the current crisis and thinking about what investments are likely to do best over the longer term. I notice that you have been referring to point and figure charts more recently. Under what circumstances do you find it best to use these, rather than a 'standard' daily / weekly price chart? Also, what do you recommend using for box size / reversal as an unleveraged investor, taking a medium / long term view?

Thank you for this question. It was pointed out to me at the last Chart Seminar that it had historically always been conducted using point and figure charts and that David had been known as a point and figure analyst so what caused the change.

David’s Chart Craft business produced chartbooks because they were the only way to get good charts before the internet changed everything. Point and figure allows one to look at a vast amount of history in a very condensed area and since the patterns do not change all that often, they were ideal for a monthly publication. When I started to work with David in 2003, just as we transitioned to a fully online service, the only time I saw David use p&f was at The Chart Seminar.

P&F is best in my opinion for investors rather than traders. We have always used closing prices, a 3-box reversal and the system defaults to a 2% box size. However, p&f charts need to be tailored and that is why a custom box size option is available.

I think p&f charts are most useful for clearly depicting how a trend’s consistency has broken down.

With respect to the second note, and knowing your own preference to stay with the "winners" and cut the "losers", at what point do you look to valuations and question the sky-high prices people are willing to pay for these "winners"? I personally have a tough time chasing stocks that have already run, but for now at least, they just keep going, proving highly frustrating!

Thank you for this question which others may also have an interest in. The best time to buy is following a significant pullback. The next best opportunity is following the first reaction from an important low. The next will be when a breakout to new highs occur.

The rate of labor force dislocation, albeit distressing, appears to be moderating. The weekly 3 million jobless claims number is the lowest in the last seven weeks and less than half the worst level.

The report highlights the urgent and important policy priorities of dealing both with the implications of such a terrible shock to jobs and with ensuring that short-term problems don’t become long-term ones that are much harder to solve.

With markets focusing on the improvement in the “second derivative,” that is a reduction in the rate of labor force dislocation, U.S. stocks rose. This widens an already considerable decoupling from the real economy and will fuel the debates on Wall Street versus Main Street, companies versus people and the well-off versus the marginalized. 

Didi’s CEO was quoted today stating the company has recovered to about 70% of the number of rides taken before the Chinese lockdown began. That’s an impressive rebound, particularly as we look at what the trajectory of recovery will be for countries only beginning to ease lockdowns today.

I am really enjoying Mr Treacy’s comments of the day and look forward to it every morning.

Mr Treacy in today’s update mentioned key sectors that have the most chance of trending up over the next decade – and alluded to a couple shares (e.g. Google and Apple) that may make it to dividend aristocrat list in 10-15 years.

It would be great if Mr Treacy could provide a list of top 20-50 shares that have steadily increased dividends over the last 10 years and based on trends have the highest probably on making it to dividend aristocrat list in 10-15 years.

Thank you for your kind words and this email which may be of interest. I mentioned in last night’s audio that technology companies are often among the most reliable in increasing their dividends once they eventually decide to initiate payments. That’s been true of companies like Apple and Microsoft but Google and Amazon do not pay dividends so even if they started today it would be 2045 before they become dividend aristocrats. For a list of companies with solid records of dividend increases, but which do not yet fulfil the criteria to be dividend aristocrats, take at a look at the dividend champions and contenders sections of the International Equity Library. 

Facebook's investment of $5.7 billion in India's top telecom operator Reliance Jio highlights a broader bet on India’s online growth beyond ads. Jio has more than 388 million subscribers with reach in content, payments and ecommerce, all of which Facebook can scale up via its 380 million WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram users in India. Plans to integrate Jio’s small businesses to enable shopping on WhatsApp shows an acceleration in e-commerce.

THESIS: Facebook will be the hardest-hit internet company in 2020 from the virus fallout as a sharp ads decline and small and medium business exposure can take growth down to low-single digits, while surging usage hits profit harder. Yet we believe exiting this uncertainty with a higher user base and new habits means diversification into new businesses and a 2021 ad rebound will make its growth emerge the strongest among peers. More than 60% of Facebook's sales are in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Japan, France and Italy. Small and medium business make up the majority of Facebook's 7 million advertisers. Earnings in 1Q will likely reset growth expectations, creating room for longer-term sales outperformance as Facebook pushes into diversifying its business post-virus.

Where are the largest tech companies going to find the next billion users? There are only three potential options. China, Africa and India. They have been cut out of China as it champions its domestic firms. Africa is a continent rather than a country, and on aggregate is further down on the per capita income scale. That leaves India with a massive young population, large number of English- speaking consumers, an independent judiciary, financial market norms familiar to westerners and a democracy intent on raising living standards.

Although it's true that millions of hospitality workers now are out of work and available for immediate employment, the generous unemployment benefits passed by Congress in the $2 trillion rescue bill may make some of them less interested in going back to their old jobs. Ernie Tedeschi of Evercore ISI notes that between state insurance and the federal supplements, the average weekly unemployment benefit for workers in states such as New York, California, Washington and Massachusetts will be more than $1,000. That's the equivalent of $25 an hour for a 40-hour work week. For restaurant workers who earn significant tips, returning to work may offer enough economic incentive to be worth it. For lower-paid dishwashers and line cooks, unemployment might be a better deal -- at least through the end of July, when the benefits are set to expire. That means restaurants may have to pay much higher wages than in the pre-virus market level to staff up.

Combining these two dynamics -- restaurants aren't going to be able to serve as many patrons and they will have higher labor costs -- and it's likely that many restaurants won't survive. The most obvious way for the survivors to make up for this is to charge more for the same menu offerings, perhaps much more. The good news for the restaurants that do survive is that between fewer seats available at each restaurant, and fewer restaurants competing for customers, eating out might become a scarce, coveted experience, particularly after weeks or months of much of the population sheltering in place.

Not everyone is a good cook and few are ever likely to be. If eating out and receiving full service becomes inordinately expensive then the law of supply and demand means dark kitchens will proliferate. Uber was helping to pioneer this trend ahead of the virus outbreak and the sector is likely to pick up a lot of the slack from fast casual dining.

When we look at the company’s costs and expenses per barrel of oil equivalent (BOE), we find they totaled $14.01 for 2019.  Based on the company’s average oil price (which was not adjusted for its gas output given its low price), this translates into a cash profit margin per BOE of $36.88.  If we include the cost of depreciation, depletion and amortization expense (largely a non-cash expense), but indicative of the amount of investment the company needs to make to insure it replaces produced barrels and remains an ongoing enterprise, the cash profit per BOE falls to $19.06, or 37.4% of the average selling price after adjusting for hedging.  That is a pretty attractive return.  

With WTI oil futures prices falling to $20 per barrel, and assuming the location and quality discount remains at $6, Whiting Petroleum was looking at generating no positive cash from the oil it produced.  It also assumes cash operating expenses remain at 2019 levels.  This means Whiting Petroleum would be unable to invest in new exploration and development, which makes the company a self-liquidating entity.  In that condition, the company essentially has no value.  The bankruptcy filing indicates that reality, as current shareholders will only retain 3% of the shares of the reorganized company, as the debt holders will hold 97% in return for agreeing to cancel their bonds.  

Under today’s very depressed oil and gas prices, few producers will be able to fund operations.  If the companies have a significant amount of debt on their balance sheets, they will face serious challenges to sustain their businesses if they do not address their financial leverage.  To understand the precarious health of the producer sector, energy consultant Rystad has prepared a chart showing the debt maturity schedule and annual interest expense for a group of 29 significant producers.  While this represents only 29 producers, we believe it is indicative of the financial condition of the balance of the producer sector.  

The only way the unconventional oil sector is going to make it through the current crisis is to reduce the cost of production. There is no getting around the fact hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling operations are considerably more expensive than conventional drilling. Technological innovation will help improve that spread but it will be impossible to eliminate. Therefore, scale and proximity to end markets are the primary route to reducing costs.

A link to the full report is posted in the Subscriber's Area. 

Let’s set aside for the moment questions of timing and think about what changes we can expect to be durable from the virus-induced recession.

The first thing that springs to mind is a loss of income which will take a while to recover. For some that will be quite soon, for others who need to find a new job it will take longer. As we go from full employment in many countries to something less that necessarily represents lower growth overall and by extension lower corporate earnings.

Many thanks for your continuing high-quality service, exemplified by the comprehensive Income ITs spreadsheet you produced yesterday. It will be invaluable for Private Investors such as myself. On a separate topic, do you have any views on the banks in the light of the suspension of dividends? In particular, I see that HSBC shares are approaching chart support from 1997-98 and 2016.

Thank you for this question. There is no denying that bank shares have declined significantly so it is logical to question whether they are close to a low. With dividends being eliminated, a rise in defaults inevitable, a moratorium on buybacks, and tight margins from low interest rates the big question is whether the bad news has been priced in.

“The Fed has effectively shifted from lender of last resort for banks to a commercial banker of last resort for the broader economy,” said JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli.

The coming rain of credit -- historic in both size and scope -- will be made possible by $454 billion set aside in the aid package for Treasury to backstop lending by the Fed. That’s money the central bank can leverage to provide massive amounts of financing to a broad swathe of U.S. borrowers.

“Effectively one dollar of loss absorption of backstop from Treasury is enough to support $10 worth of loans.” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in in a rare nationally-televised interview early Thursday morning. “When it comes to this lending we’re not going to run out of ammunition.”

He told NBC’s “Today” show that the Fed was trying to create a bridge over what may well be a substantial decline in the economy in the second quarter, to a resumption of growth sometime in the latter half of the year.

“It’s very hard to say precisely when that will be,” he said. “It will really depend on the spread of the virus. The virus is going to dictate the timetable here.”

While the Fed can help by keeping interest rates low and ensuring the flow of credit, “the immediate relief” for Americans will come from the Congressional aid package, Powell said. The bill includes direct payments to lower- and middle-income Americans of $1,200 for each adult and $500 for each child.

Combined with an unlimited quantitative easing program, the Fed’s souped-up lending facilities are set to push the central bank’s balance sheet up sharply from an already record high $4.7 trillion, with some analyst saying it could peak at $9-to-$10 trillion.

The new stimulus plan is providing money to 90% of consumers, but also to corporations, municipals and both the government and corporate bond markets. In terms of both size and scope the package is designed to provide a life line to all markets and, so far, it is having the desired effect.

The Coronavirus crisis, the most serious event since the Global Financial Crisis (“GFC”) of 2008/2009, has set in motion a series of governmental policies whose unfortunate effect is to choke both demand and supply in the global economy.  These policies - prudential measures taken by governments united in their desire to appear to be “doing something”- are likely to be worse, economically speaking, than the disease itself.  Relief comes only with the passing of time or the finding of an anti-viral remedy, the latter a distant prospect at this stage.

Earnings news, monetary news, fiscal news and pandemic news are all following the disheartening course that we feared.  An emergency Fed meeting last Sunday, slashing rates to near zero, failed to reassure.  The next day, Wall Street produced the second of 2 record points drops in a week, falling -13%.  Equity markets have fallen by an average of about -30% from their January highs.

Equity markets are now oversold and distorted by panic.  The market finds it hard, if not impossible, to “price” risk when an end to the crisis is undefined and earnings unknown. And what discount rate should one use in a global panic when rates are near zero?  Many stocks trade under “fair value” on “normalized” earnings.  But the risks being taken by governments are such that there may be worse to come: bankruptcies in directly affected sectors like leisure, hospitality, airlines, hotels and “bricks and mortar” retail.  There may even be nationalizations in troubled sectors.  On the other hand, other sectors, also hit hard by the same waves of panic selling, may emerge as new long-term leaders in a changing world where personal safety, health fears, depersonalizing technology and e-commerce may enjoy further and more widespread adoption.

Millions of people just lost their jobs in the retail and restaurants sector. Weekly jobless figures are reported with a two-week lag, so today’s 281,000 increase is reflective of the week ending March 7th. Most cities in lock down made the decision over last weekend so next week’s figure will be higher but the release on April 2nd is likely to take jobless figures to new highs. The only limiting factor is the ability of people to sign on for benefits given the system’s capacity restraints.

I used to be able to find a list at the chart library for a list of the shares that are dividend aristocrats by Eoin. I was unable to do so today. Is it still available and if so, can you please advise how I can reach it? Tks in adv.

Thanks for this question which others may have an interest in. The route to find the lists of dividend aristocrats is to open the Chart Library. Select the International Equity Library. The lists of Dividend Aristocrats stocks are the second item on the left-hand column. Here is a link to the lists. 
 

Boeing obtained the loan from a group of banks last month to help it deal with its cash burn while it prepares to return its 737 Max plane to the skies. It initially tapped about $7.5 billion of the debt, and is now expected to draw the rest, said the people, asking not to be named discussing private information. Boeing plans to draw the remainder of the loan as a precaution due to market turmoil, one of the people said.

Companies affected by the virus are increasingly turning to banks for short-term financing to provide a safety net. United Airlines Holdings Inc. raised $2 billion in new liquidity with a secured term loan, while Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. recently signed a new $675 million revolver. Should credit conditions worsen, more firms may start to draw down their credit lines, market watchers say. Boeing’s loan came about before Covid-19 spiraled into a global crisis and was expected to be fully drawn eventually.

“They want to have cash on the balance sheet,” said Bloomberg Intelligence’s Matthew Geudtner. The Max grounding, the company’s joint venture with Embraer SA and looming debt maturities will also weigh on Boeing’s cash hoard, he said.

The easiest way to determine where the biggest risks reside in this market is to use this metric: Whatever people were worried about in 2019, the coronavirus makes things worse.

Last week in Vienna, ministers from Russia, Saudi Arabia and other members of the group left a fractious meeting with no deal to continue the cuts beyond April 1. Saudi Arabia heavily discounted its oil over the weekend, triggering a plunge of more than 20% in international crude futures.

Rosneft’s London-listed shares dropped 19.5% on Monday, while markets in Moscow were closed for a public holiday. In a separate statement, Russia’s finance ministry said that the country’s oil-wealth reserves would be sufficient to cover lost revenue “for six to 10 years” at oil prices of $25 to $30 a barrel.

 

Unconventional oil and gas has been one of the biggest gamechangers for the global economy in history. When the world’s biggest consumer, where production peaked decades ago morphs into the world’s biggest producer and a net exporter it changes the fundamentals and interrelationships of the market.

A link to the full report is posted in the Subscriber's Area. 

The Credit Suisse team do an excellent job of highlighting where the risks are and provide a handy list of instruments to monitor to get an idea of how liquidity flows are functioning.

The repo market illiquidity in September was a signal to everyone that the tightening program had gone too far. There was nowhere near enough available capital in the system to allow the global money market to function. The Fed stepped in with a large swift injection of liquidity; inflating its balance sheet by $400 billion in four months.

Unfortunately, because of Sequoia’s presence in many regions around the world, we are gaining first-hand knowledge of coronavirus’ effects on global business. As with all crises, there are some businesses that stand to benefit. However, many companies in frontline countries are facing challenges as a result of the virus outbreak, including:

Drop in business activity. Some companies have seen their growth rates drop sharply between December and February. Several companies that were on track are now at risk of missing their Q1–2020 plans as the effects of the virus ripple wider.

Supply chain disruptions. The unprecedented lockdown in China is directly impacting global supply chains. Hardware, direct-to-consumer, and retailing companies may need to find alternative suppliers. Pure software companies are less exposed to supply chain disruptions, but remain at risk due to cascading economic effects.

Curtailment of travel and canceled meetings. Many companies have banned all “non-essential” travel and some have banned all international travel. While travel companies are directly impacted, all companies that depend on in-person meetings to conduct sales, business development, or partnership discussions are being affected.

It will take considerable time — perhaps several quarters — before we can be confident that the virus has been contained. It will take even longer for the global economy to recover its footing. Some of you may experience softening demand; some of you may face supply challenges. While the Fed and other central banks can cut interest rates, monetary policy may prove a blunt tool in alleviating the economic ramifications of a global health crisis.

The knock-on effect to consumer confidence from the coronavirus and most particularly its influence on social interaction is a wild card for the global economy. It should help to focus minds on how best to deal with the situation but the global response, so far, has been haphazard. 

Over the last five years, Baric, working closely with Vanderbilt University infectious-disease specialist Mark Denison, tested almost 200,000 drugs against SARS, MERS and other bat coronavirus strains.  He found at least two dozen that appeared to hinder the virus.

Among the most promising was Gilead’s remdesivir, a drug that fared poorly when used against a recent Ebola outbreak in Africa. In the lab, it worked against numerous coronavirus strains, including SARS and other bat coronaviruses that are similar to the new strain. Every coronavirus it was tested on, “it had high potency and efficacy,” Denison says.

That work was fortuitous. In early January, Baric got an urgent call from an infectious-disease colleague to send his unpublished data on remdesivir to colleagues in China who were dealing with a then-mysterious outbreak. Baric says he “was shocked” to see how fast the coronavirus was spreading.

Since then, work at his lab has been virtually nonstop. Each scientist puts in from one to six hours inside two different clean rooms equipped to handle the virus. The lab’s workday begins at 6 a.m. and often goes until 11 p.m. Individual sessions are short for safety and practical reasons — researchers aren’t permitted to eat, drink or visit the bathroom once inside the lab. Everyone has to pass an FBI background check and undergo months of safety training.

The WHO has stated remdesivir is their best bet for a suitable treatment for coronaviruses. It’s another question whether Gilead will make money form that evolving market since it will be under extreme pressure to provide an affordable range of treatments ahead of a vaccine being developed over the next year. 

After a week characterised by selling across the board, a great deal of profit taking has taken place and many overextensions relative to the trend mean have been unwound. The question I believe many people will be concerned with is whether the coronavirus is going to be the catalyst for an economic contraction? I thought it would therefore be worth monitoring the kinds of instruments that offer a lead indicator for that kind of concern.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy is now celebrating its 20th year under our ownership. That anniversary suggests that we should be catching up with the company’s accomplishments.

We’ll start with the topic of electricity rates. When Berkshire entered the utility business in 2000, purchasing 76% of BHE, the company’s residential customers in Iowa paid an average of 8.8 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Prices for residential customers have since risen less than 1% a year, and we have promised that there will be no base rate price increases through 2028. In contrast, here’s what is happening at the other large investor-owned Iowa utility: Last year, the rates it charged its residential customers were 61% higher than BHE’s. Recently, that utility received a rate increase that will widen the gap to 70%.

The extraordinary differential between our rates and theirs is largely the result of our huge accomplishments in converting wind into electricity. In 2021, we expect BHE’s operation to generate about 25.2 million megawatt-hours of electricity (MWh) in Iowa from wind turbines that it both owns and operates. That output will totally cover the annual needs of its Iowa customers, which run to about 24.6 million MWh. In other words, our utility will have attained wind self-sufficiency in the state of Iowa.

In still another contrast, that other Iowa utility generates less than 10% of its power from wind. Furthermore, we know of no other investor-owned utility, wherever located, that by 2021 will have achieved a position of wind self-sufficiency. In 2000, BHE was serving an agricultural-based economy; today, three of its five largest customers are high-tech giants. I believe their decisions to site plants in Iowa were in part based upon BHE’s ability to deliver renewable, low-cost energy.

Of course, wind is intermittent, and our blades in Iowa turn only part of the time. In certain periods, when the air is still, we look to our non-wind generating capacity to secure the electricity we need. At opposite times, we sell the excess power that wind provides us to other utilities, serving them through what’s called “the grid.” The power we sell them supplants their need for a carbon resource – coal, say, or natural gas.

Berkshire Hathaway now owns 91% of BHE in partnership with Walter Scott, Jr. and Greg Abel. BHE has never paid Berkshire Hathaway a dividend since our purchase and has, as the years have passed, retained $28 billion of earnings. That pattern is an outlier in the world of utilities, whose companies customarily pay big dividends – sometimes reaching, or even exceeding, 80% of earnings. Our view: The more we can invest, the more we like it.

Today, BHE has the operating talent and experience to manage truly huge utility projects – requiring investments of $100 billion or more – that could support infrastructure benefitting our country, our communities and our shareholders. We stand ready, willing and able to take on such opportunities.

I found this to be an enlightening discussion of the utilities sector. The long-held perception is that these kinds of businesses can afford to pay out the majority of free cashflow in dividends because they are charging rents on established pieces of infrastructure with easily forecastable maintenance and renewal trajectories. As Berkshire’s experience with wind demonstrates, this ignores the long-term risk of exogenous shocks, technological innovation, changing regulation and infrastructure reaching the end of its useful life.

A link to the full report is posted in the Subscriber's Area.

“The Fed has got your back and they will do whatever is necessary to support asset prices” That is the mantra of stock market investors who have been following a diversified or balanced investment strategy for the last decade. In between there have been occasions when the mantra was challenged, particularly following Jay Powell’s appointment as Fed chair. However, the pivot to easier policy and the response to the repo tightness in Q3 have reasserted belief in the mantra.

Kraft Heinz Co. was downgraded to junk status by Fitch Ratings, which predicted the company’s leverage will remain high for an extended period as the maker of Jell-O and Classico pasta sauce works to stabilize declining sales.

The food company was cut to BB+ from BBB- by the credit-ratings company, with a stable outlook. Fitch said the company may need to divest a sizable portion of its business in order to reduce its debt.

The downgrade follows Thursday’s earnings report, in which Kraft Heinz reported a drop in fourth-quarter sales that sent its bonds and stock tumbling. It was the latest sign that the company’s turnaround plan still has a long way to go.

Kraft Heinz said Thursday it would release a more detailed turnaround plan around the time of its next earnings report in early May, though many investors and analysts had been looking for it sooner.
 

Kraft Heinz’ dividend was 62.5¢ in 2018, 40¢ in 2019 and is expected to be 20¢ in 2020. The decline in the share price has supported the yield, which is currently 5.98% but the outlook for additional dividend cuts puts that under question. The company is likely to be a case study in how intangible values cannot be used to underpin a credit rating during a time of technological and social upheaval.

Still, a last taste of aid is creating a temporary buffer. Payments of the final tranche started in January, contributing to the gains for this year’s profit projection. The USDA forecasts farmers will receive $15 billion in direct government payments in 2020, down from $23.7 billion in 2019 but still above the $11.5 billion received in 2017, before the trade war started.

While the USDA’s estimates take into account the trade pact, they may not reflect the true scope of the impact, according to Carrie Litkowski, a senior economist with the USDA’s Economic Research Service.

The projected gain for income also doesn’t reflect any potential blow-back from the outbreak of the deadly coronavrius in China, the world’s biggest food importer. The health crisis has in recent days called into question whether the Asian nation will meet the purchase targets established in the trade deal.

Soybeans has been ranging mostly above 850¢ since 2018 and returned over the last month to test the lower side of its range. This area represents the lower side of the volatile trading pattern which has evolved since the breakout in 2007. Bull markets in commodities are defined by an increase in the marginal cost of production and prior to 2007 the price failed to hold moves above 850c. That suggests we are seeing a long-term example of past resistance offering future support.

Economists had a broad range of forecasts for when the Fed would stop buying Treasury bills, though June 2020 received the highest response at 43%. Respondents overwhelmingly expected officials will taper the monthly purchases rather than stop them suddenly. The Fed has been buying $60 billion in T-bills each month since October.

A scarcity of bank reserves was blamed for an unexpected spike in overnight funding rates in September. This led the fed funds rate to stray briefly out of its target range. The new cash created by the Fed’s T-bill purchases has since relieved that scarcity. The Fed, intent on ensuring an ample supply of reserves, has said it will continue the purchases at least into the second quarter.

The news headlines are full of news about the coronavirus and the number of countries where it has been found continues to rise every day. That injected a degree of caution in the markets that was not present a week ago. The clearest effects are evident in safe haven assets where Treasuries, precious metals and the Dollar have steadied.

The biggest risks and tradable opportunities discussed by the panel members focus on the fixed income markets but it did get me to thinking where I see the biggest risks and where are the biggest opportunities right now.

Boeing Co. is telling 737 Max customers that the grounded jet won’t be approved to fly until June or July, months later than previously anticipated, said people familiar with the matter.

The new delay comes after two recent discoveries, a software flaw that will require more work than expected and an audit that found that some wiring on the plane needs to be rerouted. The timetable also includes a buffer for unanticipated complications, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

The new expectations mean that Boeing’s best-selling jet would miss the busy summer travel season for the second straight year, adding to the compensation that the U.S. planemaker is likely to pay airlines. The Max was grounded in March 2019 after two deadly crashes that killed 346 people.

Trading was halted on Boeing’s shares ahead of the above announcement. The retort from the FAA that no timetable for the recertification of the aircraft has been set and that safety remains the top priority represents an additional blow.

The one point that jumps out to me is how eager the majority of participants are to point out the potential problems in the market. Even allowing for the fact that DoubleLine is a bond house, and therefore more predisposed to the bearish case because of the benefit that provides to bonds, the extent of the bearishness is interesting.