Looking Backwards …
LB #1
Wednesday was a big day with the CPI print coming out, more on that in a minute, and the Federal Reserve rate decision, it didn’t move rates, and the Powell press conference. Powell, known for being a real sweetheart, if you are long the market never fails to almost get in trouble by saying too much. This report was no different. This from ZeroHedge, “there is an argument that [payrolls] may be a bit overstated.” Damn it, Jerome, are you trying to get someone over there fired. If so, please continue. We have been saying that the BLS has been cooking the books over there and trying to keep this fragile flower of an economy propped up, but when the Chairman of the Fed says it, it carries a bit more weight.
LB#2
Pop Quiz hot shot, what do you do when your stock is up 144%so far this year? You sell and you sell quickly evidently. Nvidia the AI chipmaker has taken the tulip loving public on a red rocket ride this year and now its executives are cashing out. This from Barron’s Angela Palumbo, “Nvidia said in a late May regulatory filing that Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang adopted the Rule 10b5-1 trading plan on March 14 to sell up to 600,000 shares through March 31, 2025.
He wasn’t alone. The filing also mentions three other executives at Nvidia who recently sold shares of the company. Debora Shoquist, Nvidia’s executive vice president of operations, on March 4 also adopted the 10b5-1 trading plan to sell up to 41,140 shares of Nvidia through June 2, 2025. She was followed on March 22 by Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress, who adopted the same rule for the sale of up to 50,000 shares of common stock through May 15, 2025, the document shows.
Lastly, the filing says Nvidia’s executive vice president of worldwide field operations, Ajay Puri, adopted rule 10b5-1 for the sale of up to 100,832 shares of Nvidia’s common stock through July 11, 2025.”
Good for them, they are now rich. However, don’t they have a catbird seat to information about the future growth and prspects of a company doing 70% plus margins. If they were excited about the future prospects of a company that has grown 300% + in the last year, why would they sell? I know that T-bills are offering a nice fat juicy 5.4% right now, but seriously, where do they think they are going to put their money that would get even close to their last 12 month’s returns. OR and this is or not oar, they realize that this is a golden opportunity to sell at a high because they can’t believe their good fortune. I will follow the money.
LB #3
The Fed is down to expecting just one rate cut this year. The infamous dot plots came out Wednesday and the answer is higher for longer despite a lower CPI print earlier that morning. Nick Timaraos and David Uberti write for the Wall Street Journal “New economic projections showed 15 of 19 officials expect the Fed will reduce rates this year, with that group roughly split between one or two rate cuts. The median, or midpoint, of those projections reflected expectations of one reduction.
Fed officials meet four more times this year, in July, September, November and December, and the rate projections tempered investors’ expectations of a September cut. Those expectations rose earlier Wednesday after the inflation report.”
Do you remember back in December when there was this frozen water droplets blanketing the ground and the market rallied and scorched the earth thinking the Fed was going to cut rates 6 or even 7 times this year. Well we are making new high in the stock market now after all that exuberance has been pulled back. I haven’t seen something this strange since the marriage of Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett. Interest rates are dropping as well with the rates almost 30 basis points off recent highs. That doesn’t make any sense either. This often happens when the market is deciding if good news is bad news or if good news means good news or if bad news is just good news or is it in fact bad news being bad news. It is actually very simple when explained eloquently like that.
Looking Forwards…
LF#1
Joe Biden has a great look nowadays, he looks like he is always looking for a puppy. He is kind of confused and kind of carrying a childish enthusiasm about where his canine companion might be. This from ABC News viz ZeroHedge, “In a move that can only add risk to the financial system, the Biden administration is proposing a rule which will ban medical debt from credit reports. The rule, announced on Tuesday by Vice President Kamala Harris and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra, will improve the ability for millions of Americans to take out more debt to purchase things like homes and cars.
According to Chopra, the rule – which has been in the works since September, could go into effect sometime next year.
“Our research shows that medical bills on your credit report aren’t even predictive of whether you’ll repay another type of loan. That means people’s credit scores are being unjustly and inappropriately harmed by this practice,” Chopra told ABC News.
CFPB’s research estimates that the new rule would allow 22,000 more people to get approved for safe mortgages each year — meaning lenders could also benefit from the positive impact on peoples’ credit scores, by being able to approve more borrowers.”
Biden loves being able to give other people’s money away, that is his financial puppy and he loves it. He loves talking about it, its just awful. This bureaucrat is saying that by hiding financial data from people that need to make financial decisions, the people can now buy more stuff. This Rohit Chopra should run for office, ladies and gentleman we have a budding political superstar here. Don’t worry, its just money, we will make more. I’m actually thinking about driving down to the hardware store with my remaining cash in my wallet and asking for 16 penny nails and a ball peen hammer. Then I can go home and hammer nails into my hands to keep myself from scratching my own eyes out when I read this stupid stuff. But I digress.
LF#2
Speaking of needing my hammer and nails another real cupcake. ZeroHedge has this article talking about how crime is down dramatically and they have captured some of social media’s reactions with twits from watchers like sundae girl shows how Baltimore homicides are down the most since 1970 and another gem Art candee says crime went up under Trump and its going down under Biden. This is countered by “The Epoch Times’ Jeffrey Tucker had this to say last fall about falling crime statistics:
“Mass statistical ignorance is extremely costly. It allows a ruling class to toss around numbers all the time to sound vaguely sciency but without having any real substance behind the claims. This is what enabled the Biden administration to say daily that the job market is great, that economic growth is strong, that Americans are growing wealthier, and now, that crime is down. It’s all completely gibberish and contradicted by every bit of reality that we observe with our own eyes.”
And more recently RealClearInvestigations’ James Varney wrote in a note, “Baltimore department acknowledges its numbers may not be the same as those it submits to the FBI, but states on its website that “any comparisons are strictly prohibited.”
I love that so much. Comparisons are strictly prohibited. Against what? By whom? What for? Why do the stats comparisons have to be prohibited. Watch this, I’m going to make a comparison, this from the same article, “Here’s more from the NRA-ILA report:
In “2021, 37% of police departments stopped reporting crime data to the FBI (including large departments for Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York),” and for other jurisdictions, like Baltimore and Nashville, crimes are being underreported or undercounted. This leaves a large gap; by 2021, the real crime data collected by the FBI represented only 63% of police departments overseeing just 65% of the population. When compared to pre-2021 data, the result is a questionable “decline” in crime.”
You see my little sweets, the crime didn’t go down just the reported numbers because they stopped turning in the data. Go back and read our June 2 piece entitled History doesn’t repeat but stupidity does as I find it more timely than ever.
LF#3
Perhaps some other ideological youngsters have learned a lesson this time in the city of brotherly love. ZeroHedge reports, “Turns out trying to extort the person paying your salary isn’t the best way to go about making sure a business is successful.
Take Philadelphia, for instance, where a chain of three OCF Coffee Houses are closing down “immediately” after its workers informed the owner of their intent to unionize.
Instead, now, none of them have jobs. Alex Riccio, a Local 80 spokesperson and the organizing coordinator of the Philadelphia Joint Board (PJB) of Workers United added: “OCF workers took a courageous stand against a bully boss … That same bully boss chose to shutter his operations, without even the grace of advance notice.” This is a lesson that many people will soon get to learn. Their demands are as hollow as one of their croissants they served along with a French press. This union leader will still have a job, but the baristas who skill set is quickly being replaced by robots try to out maneuver a small business owner. Not likely.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
The Dow Jones finished trading at Wednesday …..at 38,712.
The 10-year Treasury bond is at …at 4.308%
The price of Brent Crude is … at $81.83 per barrel.
The price of gold is … at $23.29/oz.
The price of silver is … at a $29.36 /oz.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.