1.Market Cap Dispersion and Sector Dispersion One Year and Year to Date
https://oxlive.dorseywright.com/research/bigwire
2. Netflix Chart….1 Year Tunnel.
NFLX—March 2020 to March 2021 tight band….needs to break one way or other.
3. Year to Date…XLE Energy ETF +26% vs. TAN Solar ETF -14%
TAN Solar ETF -30% Correction
4. China Internet ETF -25% Correction.
KWEB ETF traded back to flat for 2021
5. TNX 10 Year Treasury Yield………Hit 100% Overbought on Charts.
History of Returns Post 100% Overbought…..
TNX -10 Year Treasury Yield Chart….See Overbought on RSI ….Traded back to Jan 2020 level.
6. What’s fueling the rise of M&A? -Capital Group Blog
“Companies have come out of the shell shock of the first half of 2020 and are now more confident about the future,” Wendt says. Many have strong balance sheets and consider M&A as a growth strategy.
Companies are also sitting on record amounts of cash, says Scott Sykes, a fixed income portfolio manager with American Funds Multi-Sector Income Fund℠. Some industries such as cruise lines and hotel chains raised money to stay afloat through the pandemic. Others — after an initial dash for cash in case of a prolonged downturn — raised additional funds to take advantage of low interest rates.
Many investors expect companies to buy back stock and debt, put funds toward acquisitions, or do a combination of all three, Sykes notes.
Companies have amassed a record amount of cash
Sources: Federal Reserve, Refinitiv Datastream. As of 9/30/20.
The coming M&A wave: 5 key questions answered https://www.capitalgroup.com/advisor/insights/articles/mergers-acquisitions-5-questions-answered.html
7. Consumer Spending Set to Spike.
Yahoo Finance–The most pointed chart comes from JP Morgan’s U.S. economics team, which reveals the dual impacts of additional stimulus and also the lapping of last year’s collapse in spending as the pandemic got underway.
Stimulus, economic re-openings, and lapping last year’s collapse in spending is going to make data like JP Morgan’s credit card tracker explode higher in the months ahead. (Source: JP Morgan)
The spring spending binge is here: Morning Brief Myles Udland
8. Big News Outlets Numbers Dive Post-Election
Francis Scialabba
| If you haven’t felt the itch to check Twitter 24/7, skim your preferred news site, or keep cable news humming in the background since President Trump left office, join the club. A few months into the new Biden administration, news consumption has significantly declined, according to the Washington Post. TV: CNN lost almost half of its primetime viewership in the key 25–54 demographic in the period between President Biden’s inauguration and March 15. Online: From January to February, unique visitors to the NYT’s website dropped 17%, while the Washington Post clocked in a 26% decline over the period, per audience tracking firm ComScore.Trump’s dramatic time in office was like San Francisco in 1849 for media companies that covered politics. The NYT started his presidency with 3 million paying subscribers and ended it with 7.5 million. CNN had its best year ever in 2020 and drew more viewers aged 25–54 than Fox for the first time in 19 years in Q4. Throw in the onset of a global pandemic and door-busting subscription deals, and news companies were inundated with traffic. But now, strategies are shifting The NYT warned last November that its subscriber gains would start to slow once No. 45 left office. Now, it’s investing more resources into its Games and Cooking divisions in order to push beyond news content into more anchovy content. The Washington Post is going the opposite route. It’s bringing on 150 new employees in the outlet’s biggest hiring spree ever, pushing its newsroom to well over 1,000. It plans to use the extra bodies to expand reporting on issues of race and international news. Bottom line: With DC going from House of Cards to C-SPAN 2, the focus is shifting from filibusters to stonks. Politics consumption on major new sites dropped 28% from January to February, according to analytics company SimilarWeb, but interest in business and finance news only slightly declined over the same period.https://www.morningbrew.com/ |
9. Column: West Virginia: Another tax-free haven?
By CAL THOMAS
TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY |
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice speaks during the State of the State Address in the House Chambers of the West Virginia State Capitol Building in Charleston on Feb. 10, 2021. (Chris Jackson / AP)
West Virginia is unique among America’s 50 states. At a convention in Wheeling, Virginia, in 1861, delegates from Virginia’s northwest counties, which were loyal to the Union, voted to break away from that state over the issue of slavery and their refusal to be part of the Confederate states.
West Virginia is again attempting to “break away,” this time on the issue of taxes. While the Biden administration wants to raise federal income taxes to cover overspending, the governor of West Virginia, Jim Justice, wants to reduce and eventually eliminate his state’s personal income tax. If successful, West Virginia would join nine other states that do not impose state income taxes on their citizens.
Though his state has experienced a population decline for 70 years, Gov. Justice believes now is the right time to reverse the trend by cutting the state’s income tax by 60% in the first year, leading to its eventual elimination.
In an interview, I asked the governor for his rationale behind erasing his state’s major revenue source. He said it is because the state’s economy is booming and it now has a “$100 million surplus,” in spite of the pandemic. That’s because, he says, businesses, including restaurants, “are 100% open” and people are flocking to the state to spend time and money.
He estimates that if his tax cut proposal passes the majority Republican legislature it will “put $2,200 more in people’s pockets. Every single person in the state will end up cash positive.”
What about those who do not earn enough to pay state income tax? “I’ll just write them a check,” he says. The governor says that expenditure will be paid for and the lost revenue recovered by raising the state sales tax from 6% to 7.9% “on beer, sodas, tobacco and luxury items.” He predicts his proposal will raise property and home values, and result in more jobs and higher wages.
Such an outcome would replicate the pre-pandemic economy under the Trump administration, which cut federal income taxes.
Asked why the state is seeing relatively strong financial numbers when many other states are struggling, Justice says, “It’s absolutely economic growth. Our tourism industry, our state parks — everything — are booming in West Virginia. This is across high tech, higher education, medical, tourism, etc.”
With such an improving economy, will the governor accept the state’s portion of the $1.9 trillion relief bill recently passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden?
“Absolutely,” he says. The problem, as The Wall Street Journal noted, is this language in the measure: “A state or territory shall not use the funds to either directly or indirectly offset a reduction in the net tax revenue.”
Gov. Justice blames Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, for including that language in the bill, but he says he will abide by the law if it is interpreted in a way that frustrates his proposed tax cuts.
A federal fair, or flat, tax — even a “use” tax — instead of a graduated income tax, has been a dream of many Republicans and conservatives for decades. Not only would it give everyone “skin in the game,” as opposed to the current situation where half the country pays no federal income tax, it would also eliminate much of the class warfare the left uses to raise taxes on “the rich” and successful.
If Gov. Justice manages to navigate the legal challenges that will likely come from his proposed cut in state taxes, West Virginia could be a model for other states and even the federal government. This would require many voters to get off the gravy train and take more responsibility for themselves.
Tribune Content Agency
Cal Thomas is a syndicated columnist.
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10. How Tom Brady has Gotten Faster, Smarter, and Better
Can brain training improve processing speed and working memory?
Tom Brady must be faster, smarter, and better than ever before. How else can you explain a 43-year-old leading his team to winning the Super Bowl against Patrick Mahomes, an opponent 18 years younger and considered to be far and away the best quarterback in professional football?
Prior to the game, Brady had two advantages: his experience at playing in the Super Bowl and his memory and vast institutional knowledge of NFL defenses and formations. Brady, well known for his adherence to a strict regimen of physical and mental exercises to keep him young (which you can read about in his book, The TB12 Method), goes beyond the typical strength conditioning used by most NFL players. In addition to a strong and accurate arm, quarterbacks need quick recognition, recall, mental agility, and the ability to hold many pieces of information in mind simultaneously—the definition of working memory skills—for efficient decision making. Beyond the typical film study to prepare for opponents, Brady uses a rigorous online brain training tool to improve his working memory skills. Of course, this tool, TB12 BrainHQ, is part of the TB12 Method. It’s demanding. I tried it. And it appears to work!
For most of us, working memory skills begin to deteriorate around the age of 35. Most adults of Brady’s age routinely notice glitches such as walking to the refrigerator to get something and then staring blankly trying to remember why they went there. Or they start to say something and quickly forget what it was. More akin to Brady’s assessing a defensive formation as he prepares to run a play, adults see or hear something that reminds them of a previous experience, but they aren’t sure what that experience was. Brady states that he is able to recognize defenses, movements of players, and different types of formations more quickly as a result of his brain training. He asserts that brain training provides him a split second longer in order to make decisions about what to do on any particular play. In the TB12 Method, he argues that online, computerized brain training is one of the core reasons for his ongoing success.
Before starting yourself or your kids on a regimen of brain training, it’s important to know about its pluses and minuses. Yes, it’s easily accessible on your phone or screen, costs only a fraction of other interventions, is modestly engaging (at least at the beginning)—and Tom Brady recommends it! However, it’s a lot of work. I’ve been “working out” on TB12 BrainHQ and I’m exhausted after about 30 minutes. It takes a commitment of your time, you need to be fully focused,and it might take you away from other activities that are more productive in enhancing your health.
Source: By cianleach.
And what about its effectiveness? Some leading researchers in the field suggest that brain training helps you improve in the training tasks themselves, but that this improvement doesn’t necessarily generalize to applying these skills in day-to-day life. Others assert that there are “dozens of randomized, controlled trials published in peer-reviewed journals that document specific benefits of defined types of cognitive training.”
Maybe the better question would be how to make these technologies more effective at enhancing real-world skills. The best studies are structured to have many controls in place, assess only one small “independent” variable, and often use limited laboratory measures to measure change. Given the complexity of how humans use their working memory skills, measuring the impact of brain training may be overly restrictive, as many factors will play a role in improving the use of these skills in the real world.
As much as it would be a boon to Boomers and Gen Xers to stay young and vibrant (like Tom Brady) through daily brain training, there’s more to staying on top of your game than playing a game on your phone. I imagine Brady would be indignant if all his success were attributed to his brain training regimen. And he’d be right. Brain training alone (and apparently the influence of Bill Belichick) does not explain Brady’s success. But it may be a part of Brady’s beautiful mind, which provides him with an edge on some of his quarterbacking contemporaries whose skills have deteriorated as they approach their 40s.
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