The Buzz on Business for June 12th 2024

Back in January, during fourth quarter earnings season, we questioned a report filed by some Wall Street analyst or other, who downgraded Apple stock to a sell rating based upon his channel checks in China and his estimate that demand for iPhones was way off.

Actually, we didn’t question the report, this analyst’s report, we ridiculed it.

But, if you sold your Apple stock based upon this report—and it was all over the news at the time—if you sold your stock, you were wrong. Because yesterday, Apple hit a new all-time high and was up over 7.0% on the day.

The worst thing about all of these Wall Street firms and all of the financial advisors who promote all of these reports is not that they are wrong, so often wrong, so wildly wrong, so wrong that even when they happen to be right they’re wrong, the worst thing is that these reports are used as an excuse by your advisor to call and attempt to persuade you to buy something or sell something or, typically, both.

Your personal investment policy should never be set or modified based not upon some random diatribe of some random guy sitting in some random basement office in lower Manhattan.

Your portfolio should be designed based upon your risk tolerance and time horizon. Your investment policy can be changed if your risk tolerance changes, as it most definitely does as we get older. It shouldn’t be changed based upon market conditions and never ever be changed based upon whatever some random market analyst might have to say.

Please. Ignore these people.

Stock Market Report

Another day, another new all-time high for stocks as both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ Composite closed with new records. But it was also another day of falling volume and another day where decliners crushed advancing stocks as Wall Street awaits the CPI data and the results of the Fed meeting.

• No new record high for the Dow Jones Industrials! They was off 121 points or three-tenths of one percent and closed at 38,747.
• The S&P 500 gained fifteen points or 0.25% and closed at a new all-time high of 5,375.
• The NASDAQ Composite was up nine-tenths, or 151 points and closed at 17,344, a new high for the techs.
• Not so much the small caps. They were down almost four-tenths of one percent. That’s seven Russell 2000 points and they start the day today at 2,024.

Bond Market Report

Rates were down across the board yesterday.

• The yield on the 2-year treasury was off five basis points and it closed at 4.834%.
• The 20-year closed at 4.627% off six ticks.

Oil, Gold, and Bitcoin

• Oil was off $0.12 and closed at $78.09.
• Gold was up $6.00 and a troy ounce now changes hands at $2,332.40.
• And Bitcoin was down $2,069.59 and at 4:00 PM ET stood at $67,433.63

Fed Meeting Concludes, No Changes Expected

A slow news week gets crazy busy today as the CPI report and the conclusion of the Fed meeting.

Expectations are that prices for consumers rose at a 1.20% annual rate in May, although expectations for the more closely watched Core number are higher. If expectations are met, that would, in our view, represent genuine progress against inflation and could very well set off a round of buying on Wall Street. We’ll have the numbers at 8:30 AM ET this morning!

Or, investors and traders might sit on the sidelines until Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s press conference which gets underway at 2:30 PM ET. There are few politicians who can go on at some length while saying nothing of consequence as can Chairman Powell. Here at the Ministry of Truth, we make underperforming employees watch back episodes of these press conferences. We find performance rapidly improves.

But whatever happens, today is a big day. We will be slicing and dicing long into the night so we can have it all for you tomorrow, here on the Buzz!