Tesla – still not part of the S&P 500

This will be fun to watch when it happens.

Tesla’s market cap is $US277 billion, it’s one of the largest companies in the U.S. yet it isn’t part of the S&P 500Index yet.

“The keepers of that list, S&P Dow Jones Indices, have a rule that new companies must have been profitable in their most recent quarter and over the past year before being added. With its latest earnings, Tesla just crossed that line.

At current prices of Tesla and other stocks, managers of passive funds will have to sell about $US35 billion to $US40 billion of shares in the rest of the index’s companies to make a hole big enough to fit purchases of Tesla shares”

https://www.afr.com/markets/equity-markets/what-will-happen-when-tesla-hits-the-s-and-p-500-20200804-p55ieh

 

In theory, it’s a buyer’s market

Seen in today’s Australian Financial Review,

“Home listings jump 21pc in Sydney as vendors rush to sell

New home listings jumped 21 per cent in Sydney during July, while new stock in Canberra surged 40 per cent as vendors rushed to sell, possibly in expectation of further price falls.
A total of 2,328 homes hit the Sydney market, while Melbourne added 1,294 stock – a 10 per cent rise ahead of the level four restrictions.”

How are “home opens” or inspections going to work?

EUR & GBP – Overbought

And interesting, acute points for the Euro and British Pound, both trading strongly and making recent highs….

but now butting up against a downward trend line.
(see attached charts below)

At this juncture both currencies are overbought against the US Dollar and inversely, the USD is quite oversold.

I don’t expect them to and I’d be surprised if they trade notably above these trend lines, for the time being.

#eur #gbp #fx #currency

31 July 2020
by Rob Zdravevski
rob@karriasset.com.au

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Coffee – the anatomy of a pretty trade

Arabica Coffee Futures (current forward contract) Price Chart
Arabica Coffee Futures (current forward contract) Price Chart
 

Rob Zdravevski

Rob Zdravevski

Global Investment Advisor at Karri Asset Advisors

July 31, 2020

By Rob Zdravevski

The price of Arabica Coffee is setting up and acting is a very constructive manner to suggest rising probability of notably higher prices.

By no means is this meant to be a comprehensive lesson but I’d like point out some signals (see attached headline chart) which have lead to this call of rising coffee prices.

Firstly, note the vertical yellow line highlighting July 17th, 2020.

On this day, Coffee moved from its meandering price of 98 to close at 102 and technically speaking, it broke above a descending trend line.

Furthermore, ALL AT THE SAME TIME (throughout the July 17th trading day) my specific moving averages “crossed” upwards, the Directional Movement Index (DMI) turned positive (incidentally its strength indicator “blue line” was positioned optimally) and the MACD and its Stochastic Oscillator crossed positively.

But the real “set-up” was in the prior 6 weeks.

From the beginning of June, the price of Coffee ($0.96) registered an oversold reading whilst simultaneously trading at 2 standard deviations below its daily mean. The Stochastic’s were at a matching nadir.

The price of Coffee then proceeded to “digest” and consolidate its decline from its April’s $1.30 high and traded sideways into mid-June. It did so whilst “down” volume was increasing and remained robust – yet it failed to register a subsequent oversold RSI reading.

In other words, it “hung tough”.

Now back to today’s price and action.

Coffee traded up to $1.174 last night, closing at $1.154.

It has risen 14% in the past 2 weeks.

It’s now overbought and extended as referenced by the circles on the RSI and MACD, while the circle on the price chart shows its daily mean is approx. $1.03

The advance is now due for a rest and some price reversion.

So, I am setting up to Buy the Coffee “C” futures contract at $1.06 and $1.03.

Why ?

These technical indicators are also being mimicked by my Weekly indicators and bode well for a longer and stronger rising trend.

Subjectively, coffee has seen a supply/demand distortion, mainly through supply disruption coupled with shipping/delivery constraints. The demand equation has stayed relatively steady, as bean consumption has been distributed from the cafes to the home.

The upside argument is that overall demand will rise once visitation to cafes resembles some sort of normality.

As far as equities are concerned, I’m not sure that the likes of Nestle will be able to pass on rising coffee prices in what seems to be a deflationary environment. This may stifle margins amongst those companies but that’s a different pile of research to conduct.

Incidentally, Cocoa has some similar technical pricing traits to that of Coffee.

rob@karriasset.com

This is not personal advice. Please see my disclaimer.

A difficult upcoming week for the ASX 200

Next week could be carnage !

Or at least, difficult for the ASX 200 (XJO) Index.

Short term indicators are turning lower, longer term technicals are losing steam and the AUDJPY is in the early stage of suggesting “risk-off” as the media has coined it.

Incidentally, for the month of July, the XJO rose 0.5%.

As I’ve written over the past few weeks under the heading of “being aware of illusions”, the ASX 200 has continued to hover around the same price it was 2 months ago.

And as readers have noticed, I’m not short of having a view.

10 days ago, I published this opinion (in the link below) along with several price targets on the ASX 200.

https://lnkd.in/gSdaHNN

The first “gap” mentioned in that post was reached in todays trading.

My main message is to be prepared with your “shopping list” and your Buy prices.

31 July 2020
by Rob Zdravevski
rob@karriasset.com.au

EUR & GBP not strong in their own right

There is plenty of action in the is currency markets lately, mainly due to the recent weakness in the USD.

In turn, the GBP and EUR have strengthen against the US Dollar.

Whilst thinking that the EUR/USD has “no business” trading at 1.18, I decided to look at the EUR/GBP cross when I saw that it has idled within a 2 cent range for 2 months.

So it’s confirmed, the Euro and Sterling are not “strong” on their own merit.

They have indeed only risen due to USD weakness.

#usd #eur #gbp #currencies

30 July 2020
by Rob Zdravevski
rob@karriasset.com.au

a close up picture of a graph

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Not Interested owning Big Oil

There is serious risk for shareholders of big American oil companies such as Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX).

I feel there is a tone of complacency amongst the management and to some extent, an adamancy of cutting costs or increasing debt with the main aim of maintaining their dividends at any cost.

In March 2020, S&P cut XOM’s credit rating from AA+ to AA. They also maintained its negative outlook on Exxon’s credit and have warned of another downgrade if the company doesn’t address its financial issues in the next 12-24 months.

On the day prior to both corporations reporting quarterly earnings, both stocks fell nearly 5% .

Well, there goes your annual dividend in one day’s of trading.

Finding solace in the bosom of a dividend at the behest of incurring loss of capital is a mistake many investors are increasingly making.

In XOM’s case, I can “see” the stock trading down to $33.

Conversely, I am bullish on the price of Oil but not the shares of U.S. oil majors.

#oil #crude #xom #exxon #cvx #chevron

by Rob Zdravevski
31 July 2020
rob@karriasset.com.au

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Why do people hand money over to those who breach the law

I keep seeing the words “Ethics” and “Integrity” featuring in financial services advertising and marketing collateral.

It made me laugh.

So, I thought I’d Google the words “fines”….followed by a random selection of company names. My cut and paste efforts are in the attached PDF.

Over the past 10 years (and especially in the past 2 years), there is no end to news stories reporting the fines, breaches and violations of trust incurred by hosts of companies who ask you to trust them with your money.

And we seemingly continue to hand it over.

Why?

by Rob Zdravevski
July 29, 2020
rob@karriasset.com.au

 

Untitled 23

Fees – Fair or Fleeced ?

So you have either $500,000 or $5 million to invest and your selected investment fund charges a fee of 1% p.a. of the amount you hand over.

That means the fee is either $5,000 or $50,000 per annum.

Does that funds management firm do 10 TIMES more work ?

Why not charge a flat, fixed fee?

Is charging a fair amount in exchange for a commensurate amount of work conducted such a radical idea?

p.s. these questions also apply to financial planners and advisors, the M&A fees charged by investment banks and the selling commissions charged by real estate agents.

Macro Extremes are being seen in….

28 July 2020

by Rob Zdravevski

The U.S. Dollar (DXY, 93.93) is heavily oversold on a Daily basis

The AUD, EUR, GBP, NZD are all overbought. There is a prospect of an additional spurt higher in these currencies in the coming days, however you are likely to be squeezing the last juice out of this trade.

Tactically, I have been selling AUD / Buying USD at 0.68 and 0.71 and will do some more if it shoots to ~ 0.74

Silver ($24.23) is overbought on a Daily and Weekly basis

On a Weekly basis, the last two times Silver has seen these overbought levels were in mid-August 2019 and July 2016.

Copper ($2.90) is mildly overbought and it’s my preferred Short idea in the broader metals complex.

Gold ($1,935) is heavily overbought on a Daily and Weekly basis

Previous moments when Gold was this “overbought” were in July-August 2019 and July 2016. Beyond that, you’ll need to go back to August 2011 to find a similar reading.

I was wrong in the previous Gold short call in May, 2020 from the $1730 mark. That trade was closed at a 2% loss, at $1765.

Re-entering the Short Gold trade offers good probability though I think as mentioned above, Short Copper is a better trade considering the research I have done toward its relationship to price action I’m seeing in the U.S. 10 year Treasuries.

On the Equity Index front, the Nasdaq 100 10,674) has registered an extreme overbought reading in the past week, similar to that seen in February 2020.

Adding to this fact, that the Nasdaq 100 is trading at 50% above its Weekly 200 Daily Moving Average, which I consider “stretched” as this percentage spread hasn’t been seen since October 1999.

Keep in mind, that the index then fell 10% before doubling into the month of March, 2000.

It’s still worthy to note that trading at 50% above its Weekly (a long-term measure, not Daily) is a significant fact not having occurred for 21 years.

On a more subjective view, 

the narrowing breadth in U.S. stocks,

lack of confirming, mimicking new highs in the Russell 2000, Banks, Transport, Dow Jones adds weight to the S&P 500 turning lower,

the strength in the S&P 500’s uptrend is waning and losing steam,

recent aggressive buying in US Treasuries and more so EUR 10’s signify a more defensive stance,

and the “risk” indicator being the AUDJPY is soon indicating “risk-off”.

These (amongst other indicators) are confirming my cautious stance and justification of a 60% cash holding in client equity portfolios.

I don’t have any “macro” buy signals out there, however on a specific stock front, there are ideas we are close to accumulating.

* this is not personal advice

* read my disclaimer

* please seek your own advice

Rob Zdravevski

Rob Zdravevski

Global Investment Advisor at Karri Asset Advisors