1. Stock Buybacks on Track for Record Year
The Market Ear
https://themarketear.com/the-newsletter
2. The Small Cap Profit Recovery
Small cap EPS outlook. “The profits recovery has once again been pushed out another quarter – with 3Q S&P 600 y/y EPS growth now projected to be negative.”
Jill Carey Hall – BofA, h/t @mikezaccardi
3. Tech stocks dominate the list of hedge funds top 20 equity positions
Tech stocks currently account for 16% of hedge funds’ portfolios compared to 30% of the wider S&P 500 index by market value, the blog notes.
4. XLF: Financial Sector ETF – Chart Has Not Broken Uptrend Line Since Coming Out of 2008 Crisis
XLF Blue Trend Line Unbroken
5. Coca-Cola Took 13 Years to Recover from 1998 Highs
Kailash Concepts-The chart below shows the evolution of Coke’s market cap into its 1998 peak and a decade after. A full 10 years after it peaked in 1998, the company’s equity had fallen nearly 60 billion dollars. From the stock’s high in 1998, with dividends reinvested, a buyer of Coca-Cola stock did not break even until March of 2011. Nearly 13 years to breakeven on one of America’s most storied and safest blue-chips. A doubling of sales and a 233% increase in profits is what it took to overcome that hefty 1998 multiple.
Kailash Concepts, LLC – Behavioral Finance, Portfolio Strategy & Quantamental Tool Kits
6. Macy’s Chart at 1998 Levels
7. Will Sodium Replace Lithium in Batteries?
Natron Energy Announces Plans for $1.4 Billion Giga-Scale Sodium-Ion Battery Manufacturing Facility in North Carolina
Edgecombe County, NC facility to produce 24 GW of Natron’s revolutionary sodium-ion batteries annually, representing a 40x scale-up of current production capacityNatron to invest nearly $1.4 billion in the facility, supported in part by a North Carolina Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG), creating more than 1,000 high-quality local jobs and growing the state’s economy by $3.4 billion over the next 12 years
Partnership to meet the rapidly expanding demand for critical power, industrial and grid energy storage solutionsNatron’s high-performance sodium-ion batteries outperform lithium-ion batteries in power density and recharging speed, do not require lithium, cobalt, copper, or nickel, and are non-flammable
BUSINESS WIRE)–Natron Energy, Inc. (“Natron” or “the Company”), a global leader in sodium-ion battery technology, today announced plans to build the first sodium-ion battery gigafactory in the United States. The facility will be located in Edgecombe County, NC, and is expected to produce 24GW of Natron’s revolutionary sodium-ion batteries annually at full capacity. Natron’s sodium-ion batteries offer higher power density, more cycles, a domestic U.S. supply chain, and unique safety characteristics over other battery technologies.
“North Carolina’s momentum in the clean energy economy reaches epic proportions with today’s news”
The nearly 1.2 million sq. ft. facility, located at the 437-acre Kingsboro megasite, will represent a total investment of nearly $1.4 billion from Natron Energy, facilitated in part by a Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) approved by the state’s Economic Investment Committee earlier today. Today’s news was announced by Governor Roy Cooper at an Edgecombe County event attended by Natron executives, North Carolina Commerce Secretary Machelle Baker Sanders, and a number of local officials. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240815622233/en/Natron-Energy-Announces-Plans-for-1.4-Billion-Giga-Scale-Sodium-Ion-Battery-Manufacturing-Facility-in-North-Carolina
LIT Chart- I have shared this chart many times on way down
8. Population Turns Negative in China
Torsten Slok, Ph.D.Chief Economist, PartnerApollo Global Management
Population growth in China has now turned negative. This is important because a growing labor force used to be a strong driver of growth in China. Combined with falling home prices and ongoing trade wars with Europe and the US, the headwinds to growth in China are intensifying. One implication for markets is continued downward pressure on commodity prices.
9. Labor Day Travel Seen Climbing 9% After Record US Summer
Bloomberg By Antonia Mufarech
Traffic on highway 101 in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, June 29, 2023. More than 43 million motorists will drive 50 miles or more from their homes this Independence Day weekend, according to a forecast from AAA. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
Bookings for domestic travel over the US Labor Day weekend are up 9% from last year, according to motor club AAA.
While the estimate only includes travel booked through AAA, the data adds to a sanguine picture for summer fuel demand in the US. Domestic travel was forecast to reach a record over the July 4 holiday week, and seen at a 20-year high for the Memorial Day weekend before that. Growth in travel has remained resilient in the US this year, supported by pump prices that are trending lower. Retail gasoline prices for Labor Day weekend are seen at $3.50 a gallon compared with $3.81 last year, said AAA.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/2024/08/19/labor-day-travel-seen-climbing-9-after-record-us-summer/
10. Warren Buffett Says True Success in Life Comes Down to Just 12 Key Decisions. Here’s Your Checklist -INC
https://www.inc.com/
EXPERT OPINION BY BILL MURPHY JR., FOUNDER OF UNDERSTANDABLY AND CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, INC. @BILLMURPHYJR
Warren Buffett is known for two things: making money and giving advice.
In his Berkshire Hathaway letter to shareholders last year, Buffett wrote that his success over 58 years was mainly the result of “about a dozen truly good decisions — that would be one every five years.”
He listed just a few of these decisions, but having written a lot about Buffett (and also having studied all of his shareholder letters), I believe you can use Buffett’s well-documented life as a framework to inspire just about anyone to make these kinds of truly good decisions.
So here’s a checklist: 12 life decisions that lead to success, using Buffett’s example:
1. The decision to nurture curiosity.
Let’s start with one that starts early — early in life, and early on a journey to success. In fact, it’s so early that I tend to think of this as something that people might do to help their kids find success, even before they know what the word means.
In Buffett’s case, I think we can point to two experiences, both of which happened before he turned 10 years old, that he says sparked real interest. The first was that he borrowed a book called One Thousand Ways to Make $1,000 from the Omaha public library and read it over and over.
The second was that once he started showing interest in finance and the stock market, his father took him on a tour of the New York Stock Exchange.
2. The decision to get started.
Curiosity is great, but the next step has to do with experimentation and execution. Buffett has talked a lot about the first businesses he founded — things like a paper route, detailing cars, and buying cases of Coca-Cola from his grandfather’s grocery store and selling the individual bottles at a markup.
Even at 93 years old, Buffett remembers many of these early ventures in detail — and he has a highly unusual advantage. In short, Buffett reports that he has saved a copy of every federal income tax return he ever filed, dating back to 1944.
3. The decision to find mentors.
Nobody does anything worthwhile alone. Most of us mere mortals need mentors to show us the way.
Buffett has talked at length about his first and most important mentor in business: the man he describes as his “investing hero,” Benjamin Graham, who died in 1976 at age 82. In fact, one of the reasons Buffett decided to attend Columbia University’s business school was that Graham was a professor there.
4. The decision to be bold.
Fortune favors the bold, they say. Actually, the Romans said it. Probably my favorite early Buffett story about boldness has to do with what he decided to do on a January weekend in 1951.
Having learned that Graham, his investing hero and professor, was chairman of Government Employees Insurance Company, or Geico, which was to Buffett at the time “an unknown company in an unfamiliar industry,” he decided to take the train to Washington, show up at the company, and ask about it.
Serendipitous result: Lorimer Davidson, who would later become CEO of Geico, gave Buffett a four-hour explanation and tour of the insurance industry. Fast-forward quite a few years, and Buffett’s Berkshire Hathway wound up owning Geico.
5. The decision to be healthy.
“You only get one mind and one body. And it’s got to last a lifetime,” Buffett famously told a group of students. “But if you don’t take care of that mind and that body, they’ll be a wreck 40 years later…. It’s what you do right now, today, that determines how your mind and body will operate 10, 20, and 30 years from now.”
The irony here is that Buffett has never been known particularly for exercise or healthy habits, and says he has “the diet of a 6-year-old.” Actually, there’s no way I’d let my 6-year-old consume as much candy, red meat, and can after can of Coca-Cola as Buffett does — but then again, he has lived to be 93 and counting.
6. The decision to nurture relationships.
One of the decisions Buffett listed in the shareholder letter that sparked this whole exercise was his decision to work with Charlie Munger, who passed away last year but was Buffett’s partner for decades.
But Buffett talks about many other crucial partners and relationships as well, among them Thomas Murphy (no relation to me, as far as I know) who was chair and chief executive officer of Capital Cities / ABC Inc., and Chuck Feeney, a billionaire turned intention-former billionaire. (We’ll talk more about Feeney below.)
7. The decision to plan for afterward.
Nobody lives forever, and once he began knocking on the door of nonagenarian status, Buffett began to acknowledge this himself — although he does like to joke about being an exception to the actuarial tables.
Finally, in 2021, he explained the succession plan for Berkshire Hathaway, which will be led by Greg Abel, who is currently the head of all non-insurance businesses at Berkshire Hathaway.
8. The decision to cut your losses.
So many people never learn this lesson, and as someone once put it, they wind up spending their entire lives in the wrong room rather than admit they might have picked an incorrect door.
In Buffett’s case, one of the big examples and decisions involved his acknowledgment, after years of trying, that the textile business — the core of Berkshire Hathaway’s business for more than its first 100 years — was no longer viable in the United States.
9. The decision to laugh.
Life is happier when you laugh more. And while Berkshire Hathaway is a serious business — what’s more serious than money, investments, and people’s futures? — it’s striking how often Buffett’s letters, speeches, and interviews are peppered with jokes.
He’s partial to the corny kind, and also to the bawdy kind that, if you heard your grandfather tell them, would leave you on the fence about whether to laugh or cringe. Here’s one from the 2011 shareholder letter that I don’t mind quoting:
A good underwriter needs an independent mindset akin to that of the senior citizen who received a call from his wife while driving home.
“Albert, be careful,” she warned, “I just heard on the radio that there’s a car going the wrong way down the interstate.”
“Mabel, they don’t know the half of it,” replied Albert. “It’s not just one car, there are hundreds of them.”
10. The decision to teach.
They call Buffett the Oracle of Omaha, and he clearly loves the role. In fact, there are so many moments in his letters and other communications in which he makes asides to offer advice or hard-learned lessons that teaching truly seems to be his second calling.
One of my favorite examples here is the advice he gave verbatim twice over the years, in both the 1987 and 2003 shareholder letters. (Maybe he thought the audiences had turned over sufficiently in the interim?)
Anyway, it’s this, and it really goes back to the first item on the list: “Develop your eccentricities when young.”
11. The decision to do nothing.
This one is important: Besides the limited number of very good decisions Buffett says he’s made, the other key to success is simply not to do anything when you don’t see any good option. Instead of the old adage, “Don’t just stand there, do something,” Buffett suggests the opposite: Don’t just do something, stand there!
Actually, let’s use his precise quote: “The trick is, when there is nothing to do, do nothing.”
12. The decision to give back.
This is where we get back to Chuck Feeney, who I mentioned all the way back in item No. 6 on this list. Feeney was a multi-billionaire who made it his life goal to give away all of his money.
It was Feeney’s example that inspired Buffett to team up with Bill Gates to launch the Giving Pledge, and get more than 200 other billionaires to sign it as well.
I write more about these kinds of decisions and insights in my free e-book, Warren Buffett Predicts the Future.
More than his wealth, more than his advice, more than his 12 decisions — many years from now, these are the kinds of things for which Buffett will be best remembered.
