All the air is running out of the iPhone balloon, the WSJ reports. The growth in global smartphone shipments ground to a near halt this year, according to research firm International Data Corp., in the latest sign that the mobile-phone boom is petering out. The accelerating slowdown this year comes in part from an estimated 11% decrease in shipments of Apple Inc. ’s iPhone—the first full year of declining shipments for the device since it made its debut in 2007. Apple held about 14% of the global smartphone market this year, IDC said. IDC estimated shipments this year of smartphones … [Read more...]
Are We Still Early in the Oil-Stock Rally?
Here MarketWatch offers a timely look at the brightening oil-stock scene. Among the 36 energy stocks in the benchmark S&P 500 Index, 16 were up at least 10% on Wednesday. So now the question is, how much higher can they go? With OPEC’s action, a revised 3.2% GDP growth rate for the U.S. economy in the third quarter and an ADP report showing 216,000 net jobs added during November, a roaring economy could provide strong support for higher oil prices. The potential for another $10 increase in the price of oil, along with all the positive economic indicators, should prompt analysts to … [Read more...]
Trump’s Treasury Pick a Missed Opportunity
Who will be the real winners from Treasury nominee Steve Mnuchin? My gut tells me it won’t be Main Street. Trump needed to thread the needle with the pick, appeasing the millions of voters that can’t stand Wall Street. Mnuchin is a Goldman Sachs guy. That’s not exactly a pick for the Forgotten Man. I hope Mnuchin turns out to be a solid pick. But the fact that he made money investing in the ruins post 2008, and investing in Hollywood is not why they voted for Trump. Guys with special access were supposed to be the losers in this election. Guys on Harley-Davidsons didn’t vote for a Wall … [Read more...]
Trump Promises to Revive the U.S. Coal Industry
Here the WSJ announces some surprisingly bright coal news: CSX Corp. reported improving demand trends for the current quarter in many of its markets, particularly for coal, which in recent years has seen shipment declines that have hit results across the railroad sector. The railroad operator’s shares, up 18% in the past month, rose 3% to $35.90 in recent trading. Stocks of coal-related companies have climbed since the election of Donald Trump, whose campaign included promises to revive the U.S. coal industry. Coal volume has stabilized from the third quarter and is essentially … [Read more...]
Amazon Innovates with Old Tech
Who knew big rigs were on the cutting edge of technology? The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon is using trucks to move data from its clients' servers to the cloud servers its web services unit manages. The amount to data warehoused on company servers has grown so large that it could take up to 26 years to move an exabyte (1 billion gigabytes) of data to the cloud via the internet, but with trucks, the time can be reduced to 6 months. Transporting data from companies to cloud providers has become immensely time-consuming as corporate data storage has ballooned from terabytes to … [Read more...]
This State is Open for Business, Here’s Why
You shouldn’t have to join a union if you don’t want to. But that’s exactly what happens to teachers in states that don’t have right-to-work laws. A friend on mine who is a history teacher in non-right-to-work Boston, Massachusetts complains about the dues automatically deducted from his paycheck. He has stood up in meetings to complain about the lack of freedom. When Becky and I see him and his wife on Friday in Boston, I’ll tell him that there’s still hope. Teachers in Wisconsin, thanks to Governor Scott Walker’s reforms, have a choice whether to join or not. They have voted with their … [Read more...]
It is Time to Scale Back Trade with China
The Financial Times explains why the West should take a close look at its trading relationship with China. Free trade tends to be a net positive over the long-run when both parties play by the same rules, and both parties run free-market economies. Does China play by the same rules? Does China run a free-market economy? As the FT explains in detail here the answer to both questions is a resounding no. China is in fact moving further away from a free-market system. At the Chinese Communist party plenum three years ago, party leaders pledged to support private entrepreneurs and break down the … [Read more...]
Consumer Spending Fuels Excellent 3rd Q U.S. Expansion
The Wall Street Journal provides an in depth peek at a first rate-third quarter. Corporate profits continued to rebound last quarter alongside solid growth in the broader U.S. economy. A key measure of after-tax earnings across U.S. corporations rose 5.2% in the third quarter from a year earlier, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. That was the first annual increase since late 2014 and the strongest year-over-year growth since the fourth quarter of 2012. Profit gains were reflected among large U.S. companies in most industry sectors as healthy consumer spending and other forces … [Read more...]
Trump’s Core Economic Team
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Portfolio Strategy: This is What Happens When You Try to Pick up Nickels in Front of a Steam Roller
After enduring years of the Federal Reserve’s zero percent interest rates and trillions worth of long-term bond purchases meant to drive widows and orphans into riskier assets, many investors capitulated, reaching for yield in long bonds and other risky assets. You can see the tracks of this behavior in the stock market as well as the bond market. In the bond market, the reach for yield may have climaxed over the summer. The 30-year bond yield hit a low of 2.11% on July 8th. That is lower than the lowest-low during the height of the financial crisis. What were these investors thinking … [Read more...]
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