Michael Lee Strategy

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Markets still looking good!

Today I was on the FOX Business Network’s Making Money with Charles Payne to discuss our overall thoughts on the market.

It is my opinion that the stock market is going higher, pullbacks may come, there may be small sell offs here and there but ultimately the market is going higher. M2  - The amount of cash in short term treasury's checking savings money market is still up 25% since March, and there's over $5 trillion in savings and checking's accounts, and the personal savings rate is at 19%. When you have this much liquidity asset prices go higher, specifically stock prices go higher.

The four pillars of my overall investment thesis are still very much intact. We have almost an Infinite amount of liquidity as far as the market is concerned. The Fed is still buying assets in the form of US Treasury Bonds and corporate ETF’s. This back stopping of hundreds of companies through their bond buying programs this is made borrowing cost disappear. As a result we have had the largest investment grade issuance ever year to date.

The third pillar is the economic data - yesterday the Redbook same source tales came in I'll be year-over-year positive in the Richmond fed came in at 18 versus expectations of 10 today we got durable goods orders which just absolutely blew the doors off durable goods doors are only down 6.7% since the absolute all-time highs in February.

The last pillar is earnings. Analyst estimates keep going higher with a 13%+ gain expected in the first quarter of 2021.  Earnings growth in 2021 maybe the largest, in terms of percentage, of gains growth in history.

There is some talk of a double dip recession I think this is hogwash the only thing you double dip is chips if you're George Costanza or economy doesn't do that. We are a boom bust economy, and as of now in a new economic cycle. This new business cycle started in April or may and that means for the next 4 to 12 years we are going to be in an expansion mode. How fast an expansion is how long that expansion is remains to be seen, but it is a multi year process to play out, and as a result we are in a multi year bull market. That will continue until that expansion comes to an end and we are in a debt bubble that is going to be burst.

Apple is getting a lot of attention as the company races higher. Many forget it traded in a 12 or 13 times earning multiple for many years this was 3 to 5 turns below the overall market. It is only really just take it off while they have entered in the 5G supercycle for upgrades as well as the services business really just growing as fast as possible. These lockdowns have benefited a lot of these big tech names or all the FAANG stocks - Facebook Apple Amazon Netflix Google - some feel these lockdowns are designed to help these business’s (As the conspiracy theorist may say) that the government put for these lockdowns in place specifically for these businesses.

The other topic we were supposed to discuss is yield, stocks that have pulled their dividends, and what names might re-instate them.  We didn’t get that far in the interview, but there are a few categories of these types of names. This happened in Oil Stocks and travel & leisure names. For the oil names to reinstate their dividends we need to sustained higher oil price and I just don't know if, or when, we're going to see that.  I am not an oil expert or commodities expert, but I just think with all of the production worldwide it will be hard to see that.

In the travel industry I tend to think the cruise lines will come back quicker as cruise bookings are up 40% in 2021 over 2019 numbers. People love cruises in an almost religious way.  I don't know anyone that feels that way about business travel. That is why I think the airlines will come back later if they every come back to pre-pandemic capacity. There's a lot of business travel that is not going to return, as we’ve now proved much of it can be done remote.