Down goes the Dow

all time highs

SP500

Nasdaq

I'll just keep saying this...these are the good old days.

At some point in the future with markets down 20% we'll wonder how the market could ever set all time highs. Well this is what it feels like.

“Per the BLS..

Approx 948,000 of the jobs added in ‘22 & ‘23 were from government. Twice as many were added per month last year vs 2022.

Health care - much of which is likely taxpayer/government funded - added 1.2 million jobs last two years, based on BLS averages.

Manufacturing, trade and information related jobs stagnated or fell.

Private sector struggling to keep up.”

—Brian Sullivan, CNBC

You seem to like Mike Wilson. The lady interviewing him if she had any balls would have asked this:

"Mr. Wilson - you are very bearish on the market for 2024. Sounds like a reasonable assessment. You were also very bearish on 2023. But the market did fantastic.

2 questions - have you said you were terribly wrong AND

Question 2: why should anyone give any credence to your 2024 prediction when you sucked so bad in 2023?

^^^^More perma-bear spin.

Hiring had a great year. Stellar. But don't take my word for it (or some nobody's):

Cheer up, Igy. Lots to be excited about.

https://www.usnews.com/news/economy/articles/2024-01-05/labor-market-ends-2023-with-a-bang-adding-216k-jobs

“The last time the price ratio of Utilities relative to the S&P 500 traded at this level, the Tech bubble was beginning to burst.

It was March 2000.

The peak for Tech, after which the NASDAQ crashed over two years.

Fear mongering, right?

This time is different, right?”

Lots to cheer about:

1 YEAR AGO ANALYSTS EXPECTED TESLA TO MAKE OVER $7 DOLLARS IN PROFIT PER SHARE IN 2024

EARNING ESTIMATES ARE NOW DOWN 50% TO JUST $3.70 YET THE STOCK IS AT THE SAME EXACT PRICE

TSLA is down 50% from its all-time high. Ouch.

Still at a PE of 67

But stocks trade on the future, not the past. Apparently they have a new car coming out in mid 2025 - supposed to finally be the mass market car they've wanted to build since the start. Bulls will latch onto that.

2 years later from first post. It wasn't exactly $6000 in each but close.

Now
AMZN $6274 loss of $88
AVGO $13247 up $7095
CRWD $10509 up $4451
NVDA $14132 up $8178
RIVN $1916 big loss -4513
Total for account now $45361 up $15123

I'll take it, especially where this account was at last year. I suspect this year won't be a good one. My guess is once the yield curve is no longer inverted that people will jump on cyclical stocks and tech will be out of favor. But I am going to stick with this for many more years to see what happens.

You picked some real winners and not only that, you stuck with then when many an investor would have bailed in the downturn.

I would pitch the Rivian, for sure, but that's about it. Rivian may reasonably be expected to prosper in the long term, but how long will you have to wait? Given that, would there be better places to park your money in the mean time, even if in one of the others you hold?

Sally has made this point a few times - that buying after a bad year like 2022 is usually a good strategy for the brave. Worked in 2023, certainly.

Ryan Detrick, CMT
@RyanDetrick
The average year sees the S&P 500 pullback 13.7% and gain 20.2% a year off those lows.
But large bears (like last yr) see much better returns.
When there's a >25% bear or greater, stocks are up 38.0% a yr later and lower only once out of 9 times (2001).
Bodes well for 2023.

11:14 PM · Jan 20, 2023
·

I'm not quite clear on whether conditions are tight or loose.
QT has continued relentlessly...borrowing rates are very high...but this measure says conditions are among the loosest in recent history.

chicagofed.org

National Financial Conditions Index: Current Data - Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Open link

Agip - at the gym right now so can't access that chart I have shown a few times (I think NASDAQ) but in the last 50 years (outside of 2000-2002) there has not been consecutive down years AND a bad year (haven't been too many) has almost always been followed by an an even better good or great year.

Well, it certainly looks like that big bloated balance sheet will never go away. The National Home Equity Line will remain until the house is sold. :-)

More perma-bear spin, this time from Brian Sullivan, CNBC:

“The per month job creation rate coming off the pandemic is about 100,000 jobs per month *lower* than the pre-pandemic monthly growth since 2013. We had big gains off financial crisis during President Obama years.

The recent sluggish jobs growth even includes the huge jump in government and government-funded health care related jobs.

Private sector struggling … likely due to cost/inflation/labor issues.

$10 trillion added in debt.”

Meanwhile the market advances in spite of the increasingly complex and extreme monetary gyrations of the Fed and Government.

NVDA rocking again. Might be at 1,000 in a year.

Agip - put me down for a 1,000-plus NVDA YTD 2024.

I meant year-end 2024.