Notes From All Over -- February 6, 2022

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

The market: this is not ready for prime time -- overheard at Hopdaddy's, my favorite watering hole. Much of this is paraphrased taken from multiple conversations. 

Preface: I have not checked the market since the Meta (FB) debacle last week and have not watched CNBC since Wednesday. I've checked in on a few stocks but have no idea how the general market did on Thursday or Friday except what I overheard. Much of what I overheard may be entirely wrong. Anyway, having said that, here are the takeaways from what I overheard, some are mine, some are others, but heed the disclaimer.

Anticipation: I can hardly wait to see what the market does this week. There are several overriding themes:

• the Fed: every analyst has baked in their own numbers based on what they think the Fed will do; the consensus is that the Fed action for the next several months will be bad news for investors. I disagree. A lot depends on the time line that various folks use and the "narrative.
  

• Ukraine: this is the biggie. Anyone familiar with Sun Tzu knows this is the only think that bears watching, but having said that no one has any idea of the time frame in which the fireworks begin. Before after, or during the Olympics is my hunch.

• oil: two really, really widely divergent views. One group says we're going to see $90 by March (which, by the way, we're already there) and $100 by the end of summer; another group says there will be a severe pullback. It's hard to believe but Art Berman actually tweeted to expect a severe pullback. No time frame provided. So, at some point, he's bound to be correct. 

• oil bears: those who look for a severe pullback often mention two things -- a) Saudi Arabia has huge spare capacity; and, b) it's just a matter of time before sanctions on Iran are lifted and that country will add an additional 1.3 million bopd on the global market
• oil bulls: for them there is no spare capacity. The data seems to point in this direction based on data points posted on the blog in the past few days, and, regardless Iran adding 1.3 million bopd isn't going to happen any time soon. 

• Meta: way, way, way oversold. Maybe I'll come back to this later. But this is one reason I can't wait for the market to open tomorrow. I am cocked and loaded to buy FB at this level. Again, see the disclaimer and note that these are not necessarily my thoughts. These were comments from others at my favorite watering hole. I was taking notes as fast as I could.

• semiconductors: like oil, there are two wildly divergent views. 
• semiconductor bears: talking heads on CNBC are bearish on semiconductors, suggesting at some point there will be an oversupply of semiconductors. 
• semiconductor bulls: on Friday night after the news cycle closed for the day, Ford announced that it was shutting down completely or partially eight factories because of chip shortages. That speaks volumes. Then, tonight, out of nowhere, I see that President Biden is being quoted that there is no quick fix for the semiconductor shortage. I have no idea when he said it, but it's a headline story so I assume it was said recently. 
• On a scale of 1 (bear) to 10 (bullish) with regard to semiconductors, one could say I'm comfortably at 9.9 (very bullish) and have been accumulating shares in semiconductors companies for the past several weeks. With the Ford announcement, my bullishness went to 9.99 and then with the Biden story my bullishness went to 9.999. If If I knew more about semiconductors I might be able to provide some rationale to my bullishness. My horizon is measured in years.
  

• Ford's earnings: holy mackerel. I haven't checked Ford since last week. Now I am triply excited about tomorrow. I just checked. Ford dropped almost 10% on Friday and closed at $17.96. Are you kidding me? I was going to write about Ford earlier this weekend which would have supported a $17.96 thesis but I never got around to it. And, of course, no one would have taken me seriously anyway. 

I'm going to quit here. That was about as much as was covered in our little group this evening. Again, this is not ready-for-prime-time. Simply some open-ended thoughts about some things on my mind.