Headlines II — December 15, 2023

Locator: 46308INV.

Personal investing: in early 2024, I started adding new money into the first bucket, see below — “dividend-paying-large-cap.” 

Background: UNP is a long-time favorite. With the improving economy, UNP should do well. I can’t increase the overall number of tickers — 20. If I were to buy UNP, the only option for me was / is to replace CAT with UNP. 

Decision: Today was "time" to add new money into the large cap bucket. I already have a lot of "legacy" UNP in my portfolio. UNP would go in the large cap bucket for new money. Unfortunately, UNP is not currently in the investing bucket for large cap. I would have to remove something if I wanted to add to my UNP position. I considered replacing CAT with UNP. 

Looking at the charts:

• UNP with a P/E of 23 is a bit more expensive than CAT with a P/E of 18; 28% to be exact;
• both pay a dividend of around 2%. 

This was the tipping point. While sorting this out there was a trucking story on CNBC. The trucking companies are likely to have a challenging 2024. Some / many will go out of business. Why? The supply chain has begun to normalize and not as much trucking is needed. JPow said as much. [Never mind incredibly expensive diesel and incredibly draconian California regulations.]

I would assume that the challenges facing the trucking industry will also affect the rails. 

I kept the buckets as they were and added more CAT. 

$Re-looking at the charts, CAT seems to be "moving" a bit better than UNP right now. Both are long-term investments so it really doesn't matter but ...

Personal investing: bought ORCL today.

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. 

All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 

Again, all my posts are done quickly. There will be typographical and content errors in all my posts. If any of my posts are important to you, go to the source.

CNBC talking heads: some talking heads are really, really angry with JPow’s surprise comments. You can guess who really, really loss money in this end-of-year rally — who were betting on a hard landing, a recession.

Triple witching day; all it means — three trading events occur on one day; occurs four times a year— simply more likelihood of significant volatility. [For the archives: the market closed at another record high.]

GM: layoffs. GM bracing for tough times. Link here. See also this stand-alone post.

The car market said in filings with state regulators that it will lay off almost 1,000 workers at its Lake Orion facility and more than 300 at the Lansing Grand River assembly plant. 

The news comes a day after its Cruise robotaxi business said it would trim its workforce and that executives from the unit were leaving. 

The layoffs suggest GM is bracing for tougher times ahead. Economic growth is set to slow, the excitement around electric vehicles is cooling, and the company just got through a protracted labor dispute earlier this year. Some Wall Street analysts see GM as a better buy than rival Ford because of its higher margins. GM stock is up 29% over the past month after it rose 6.7% on Thursday. It was up 0.6% in Friday’s premarket. Ford F was up 0.8%, as was EV maker Tesla TSLA.

Rivian: partners with ATT. 

Huge development. RIVN up 1.65% in pre-market trading. RIVN was up in after-hours trading yesterday. I still don’t understand why big brokerages don’t move to 24-hour trading. Must be a regulatory rule. 

UNP CEO: buying UNP shares. 

UNP is up 14% this past year. P/E at 23; seems high for a railroad. AAPL not much higher. UNP is trading near its 42-week high. Pays a paltry 2%. At end of November, UNP declared 4Q23 dividend of $1.30, record date December 8th. Unchanged now for seven quarters. Payable last trading day in 2023. 

Cramer live now:

• hedge funds getting crushed — wow, I just posted that earlier this week!
• yesterday: worse day in history for shorts; repeat — worst day in history
• for every $1 in Home Depot in 1981 —> worth $1,000 today, per Faber — needs to be fact-checked;
• Costco: experiencing huge deflation — repeat, deflation — in cost of goods
• wait until McDonalds starts reporting reduced prices in cost of goods — will offset costs in services
• industrial production up 0.2% in December, vs a negative 0.6% in November, the worst monthly number in two years (have to double-check; not sure about the exact numbers but the “direction” is correct — positive in December, negative in November)
• Dow: on that news, Dow is down 16 points; had been. As much as 100 points in the green earlier this morning; later, Dow hits a new high but not by much.