Let's get through the administrative stuff quickly because I have some hot takes on a few news topics.
First, market performance:
Weekly Market Movement Wrap
U.S. Indices
Dow +1.8% to 27,931. S&P 500 +0.6% to 3,373. Nasdaq +0.1% to 11,019. Russell 2000 +0.3% to 1,575. CBOE Volatility Index -0.7% to 22.05.
S&P 500 Sectors
Consumer Staples +0.9%. Utilities -2.1%. Financials +1.3%. Telecom -0.3%. Healthcare +0.3%. Industrials +3.1%. Information Technology +0.1%. Materials +1.5%. Energy +2.3%. Consumer Discretionary +1.6%.
World Indices
London +1.% to 6,090. France +1.5% to 4,963. Germany +1.8% to 12,901. Japan +4.3% to 23,289. China +0.2% to 3,360. Hong Kong +2.7% to 25,183. India -0.4% to 37,877.
Commodities and Bonds
Crude Oil WTI +2.5% to $42.23/bbl. Gold -3.7% to $1,953.6/oz. Natural Gas +4.6% to 2.341. Ten-Year Treasury Yield -0.6% to 139.13.
Forex and Cryptos
EUR/USD +0.47%. USD/JPY +0.63%. GBP/USD +0.25%. Bitcoin +1.1%. Litecoin -1.4%. Ethereum +10.6%. Ripple +1.7%.
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And earnings season isn't quite over yet:
Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Target, Lowes! Looks like a week to hear about the consumer.
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Alright, so on to news items. The first one is pretty important. And before I get going, it's one thing to have an opinion that something is wrong/bad and then not do that thing. For example, I think smoking is bad. So I don't smoke.
So Trump has been talking up how mail-in voting is horrible and will lead to fraud. Right? Well, two things:
1) He's begun to defund the Post Office to ensure that they can't handle the volume of vote-by-mail ballots. Stories about postal boxes being removed, sorting machines being dismantled, and slower than normal mail are easy to find in the last few weeks. So he's not trying to make the highest ever vote-by-mail election run smoothly, like a normal person would. He's ensuring it fails. Why make cuts and slowdowns just a few months before a surge?
2) HE IS VOTING MY MAIL HIMSELF!!!!
If voting by mail is so horrendous, why in the HELL is it okay for him to vote by mail? It's another in the long list of "do as I say, not as I do" hypocrisy that is his disaster of a Presidency. If he's so against the practice of voting by mail, how can he possibly justify doing it himself?
Remember when VP Pence was exposed to coronavirus? And the White House tested everybody every morning? And required masks for everybody? But the President said that a national testing policy isn't needed and masks aren't the answer?
This is the same as that. He does the right thing - but only for himself - while telling others not to do it the way he's doing it!
I've never been a fan of Trump, but never hated him. Until this pandemic. It has highlighted and laid bare every single weakness of his - and shown the nation, hopefully, that he is a buffoon - unfit to flip burgers, let alone be President of the United States.
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The next item I want to quickly discuss is college football and politics. How playing football (and going to school) became political is just another example of how we've been failed by our leadership. The Ivy League led the way with pushing fall sports to the spring (if they happen). The power 5 conferences then announced they wouldn't be playing non-conference games. Then, my dear Mid-American Conference lead the way in pushing fall sports as well. That lead to the Big 10 and others doing the same. Where we sit today is that the northern states have cancelled fall sports while the southern states have kept it. Someone came up with a college football map compared to an electoral map....and it's kind of clear how politics has driven the decisions, not health & safety of the players, fans, coaches, and communities.
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I don't know what I plan to do this week. Keep chopping wood, of course, but also thinking about de-grossing my book and sort of taking a week off. I had a rough go trading last week and need a reset. But we'll see if things turn around on Monday and stay the course.
I'm ready to re-short Apple and any other bubble stocks. NVDA reports this week and they're my favorite short...but maybe after earnings? Before for a day-trade? We'll see!
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Whether you vote for Trump or not, I hope you can see that he is an absolute moron. I tried to justify not hating him because the GOP could get legislation passed and his bad would be outweighed by the good of less regulation, smaller government, etc. But he's too far down the fascist, moron, idiot, bigot, asshat path to garner anything but outright hatred from me. I voted for a 3rd party in 2016 after voting red my entire life. I pulled a Democrat ballot in the primary here in Illinois and voted for Yang. I'm not a bleeding heart liberal by any stretch. I'm also not a so blinded by hating the Democrats that I'll drink the Trump Kool-Aid and follow his increasingly hateful followers to the ends of the earth. He needs to go.
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Good luck. It felt good to rant a bit.
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