DHUnplugged #659: Summer Doldrums

Make it or break it time - earnings season is right ahead... Fed heads - 8 speakers this week. Tesla - blows away delivery estimates - what that means for profitability. Change of direction for this currency? What the players expect. PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts! Click HERE for Show Notes and Links DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter Warm Up - It is make or break - Earnings season is here - Hot weather and hot inflation - 8 Fed Speakers this week - CPI data Wednesday - expected to be soft - Base effect - Summer Doldrums but a Buying Frenzy! Market Update - Resilient - that's the word - Eco divergence as employment stays strong - Tech in the lead - But Banks ALL pass stress tests - Europe favored over US on valuations (new analyst call) - Big best on rising USD being reversed AI - Party’s over for ChatGPT Plus subscribers as OpenAI announced it has temporarily disabled the Browse with Bing beta tool from its service. - Apparently, people used the feature to completely bypass paywalls and consume content for free. - If a user specifically asks for a URL’s full text,” the AI will fulfill the request, including displaying content from paywalled articles - How did it avoid the paywall? ---- Some paywalls are simply pasted over” articles, ChatGPT could simply read the code rendering the text and display the content without a problem. META - New Threads is threat to Twitter ---Twitter has degraded severly since Musk took over (IN AH opinion) - META stock on fire, 100 million accounts created already - Twitter is threatening to sue (of course) West Wing Scandal? - White powder was found in the White House last week - Turned out to be Cocaine... - - Who leaved a stash of coke anywhere - much less the White House? Best Stock Market - This year (to date) ??? - Zimbabwe ---- 5, 10, 20% daily gains - Up 800% YTD - Argentina up only 100% in 2023   Best Market 2023 FOLLOW UP - Hyper-Inflation seems to boost stock markets - Is it possible that this is the playbook that investors are using in US and other developed countries? Change of Plans - Apple is slowing its headset production and also slowing the rollout --- By appointment only? - Goldman is in talks to offload Apple credit and savings products to Amex ---- Goldman trying to rid itself of bad bet on personal/retail finance endeavor under CEO Solomon. Jobs/Employment - End of June: US weekly jobless claims post biggest drop in 20 months as economy shows stamina - July saw a slight uptick in initial claims - ADP report - HOT - 450k new jobs added to payrolls - BLS official disappointed - 200k added but Unemp Rate ticked down to 3.6% -- Jobs report still solid down to wage growth ---- Last 4 months added near 1M new jobs - not a jobs markets that is seen as being held back by rates Fed Rate Plans - Since we last spoke.... Odds are now 83% +/- of a rate hike in July - 10 year treasury over 4% - 2 year treasury over 5% - Inversion of 2/10 worst since 1980s (and holding for LONG time) -- Powell's recent commentary discussed potential for 2 more hikes and acknowledged that the inflation rate will not come to 2% target until at last 2025 ------ Note - they have never nailed a prediction for as long as time itself Meanwhile - Rates do not seem to be bothering many... --- Consumer Confidence hits 17-month high --- Housing seems to be coming back from brief dip - - Many of the homebuilders shares are at ATH China Economy - Another story - PPI inflation shrank to -5.4% below expectations - Industrial profits are in bad shape - Factory activity is in contraction for last few  months - Government pushing stimulus - targeting housing TESLA - Big print on deliveries