2024 Q2, total returns. It’s AI or go home this quarter.
NVDA’s massive gains (+150% YTD, +37% Q2) on the back of the AI investing mania drove the tech sector and related Big Tech stocks and semiconductors higher, so much so that NVDA itself comprised around 1/3 of all the gains SPY made this year so far(!). Gold continues to do well, while fixed income and smaller stocks were roughly flat. Bitcoin lost some ground (-10%), with the halving and perhaps competition from a new, more popular AI bubble, but is still well up YTD.
ticker
type
Q2’24
QQQ
tech
+8%
GLD
gold
+5%
SPY
large caps
+4%
EEM
foreign (emerging)
+4%
USD
cash
+1%
CPI
inflation (est)
+1%
JNK
junk bonds
+1%
BND
bonds
+0%
EFA
foreign (developed)
-0%
PFF
preferreds
-1%
IWM
small caps
-3%
BTC
bitcoin
-11%
Q2 was not great for me due to ill-fated meme stock speculation, which ended up consuming more than all of my other profits .
“Now more than ever is not the time for low conviction positions”
Markets are getting ugly, AAPL and NVDA down over 5%, crypto down 10-20%, Japanese equities have lost 20% in the few weeks, war drums getting pretty loud over the middle east. Worse than all that, when we got all the bad news (on jobs, unemployment, etc) so that the Fed will likely cut rates in Sept (Fed futures show 1 cut for sure, and 75% chance of 2 cuts for Sept)
the market decided this was not longer good news and that the rate cuts weren’t going to bail out the equity markets and things sold off heavily.
Things have been priced to perfection for a long time now, and I think we could see a sizable reversal with this sentiment shift together with all the other negative factors out there currently.
Rough day for equity markets, although it was a lot worse earlier on around the open. Major indexes for US stocks were -3-3.5%, having been as low as -5% earlier.
The vaccine companies and biotech sector generally (XBI etf) were not encouraged by RFK’s proposed appointment to Make America Healthy Again, which you can see towards the end of Thursday’s trading and continued on Friday. Healthy is bad for business after all.
RFK Jr. knows nothing about public health or medicine. Sadly, head of the HHS department is an important job that shouldn’t go to a Trump loyalist/lover but to somebody that is competent.
We may or may not agree with the decisions Anthony Fauci made during the pandemic. He has a long history of advancing medicine at the NIH and that can’t be denied.
RFK Jr. has no knowledge that makes him qualified to be at the helm of the HHS department. He went to Trump’s camp in exchange for a government appointment. He’d had given his endorsement to Kamala should the Dems had entertain his requests.
Change RFK Jr.'s name to Robert F. Smith and nobody would listen to anything that buffoon says.
Is Fauci funding coronavirus gain of function research at a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan notorious for their lax biosafety standards part of his history of “advancing medicine”?
Fauci Was ‘Untruthful’ to Congress About Wuhan Lab
There’s been a fair bit of corruption in the FDA recently, despite a quite good longer term history. See the Alzheimer’s drugs approved with no good evidence that they worked and a huge financial windfall for a drug that will cost the taxpayers huge amounts of Medicare money for something that might slow down the disease, a little, if you believe the small sample and the bad mechanism (the plaques as a cause have their origin in recently uncovered fraud).
So I’m thinking an opened minded approach might not be a bad thing, esp given CDC’s bad track record on Covid coverups and lies. I can forgive some of the ad hoc precautions as a panic response to an unfolding situation, but funding the gain of function research, not applying the legally required safeguards, and then orchestrating a cover up and a white washing propaganda campaign against the public just to keep their jobs… well, let’s say I’m in favor of new leadership rather than more of the same. Latest on Covid corruption…
So what? How does that justify RFK Jr. becoming the head of HHS? That is like saying that since G. Floyd was unalived by a psycho policeman, we should make the Joker our new commissioner and let him run a campaign to defund the police too.
RFK Jr specifically may be a debatable choice, I’m not going to comment on that. But all that stuff does indicate that maybe putting an outsider in charge is a good thing. You dont need degrees and experience and education to be able to understand what those with the degrees and experience and understanding are explaining to you. Instead of having someone with a stake in the research in charge, let the person in charge be someone who those with a stake need to convice to get on board. Good leaders do not need to have a clue about what they are leading to be effective.
And this specific person has no history of leadership. Not even the party of his uncle and father cared for him. That should tell you something about his leadership.
Today’s democrat party is far from the party of JFK and RFK. Can you imagine JFK and RFK supporting the gender bending transgender craziness?
HHS Will be a target rich environment for an outsider like RFK Jr to clean up.
Edit. I am not a fan of RFK Jr and I wish president Trump had chosen someone else. I do support Trump’s other outsider choices, such as Pete Hegseth at department of defense and Chris Wright at Department of energy. What do you think of them Harish7631?
No, I can’t imagine as DEI and transgender agendas have gone too far.
But that still doesn’t justify having an unqualified, mendacious individual like RFK Jr. as head of the HHS department.
I hope my position is clear: just because there are bad characters in some government agency, doesn’t justify bringing in morons to turn the organization upside down.
South Korea’s Prez briefly declared martial law, some troops came into their Congress, and then the rest of the politicians voted to end it. It was a half day reminder that S. Korea is still classified as an “emerging market” for a reason.
US-LISTED SHARES OF KOREAN FIRMS DOWN AFTER SOUTH KOREAN PRESIDENT DECLARES MARTIAL LAW
COUPANG DOWN 5.4% POSCO HOLDINGS DOWN 5.9% KT CORP DOWN 3% KB FINANCIAL DOWN 2.6%
Microstrategy’s massive gains (MSTR +360% YTD, up over +600% during Q4’s peak) made it the poster child stock of the year. Sure bitcoin was up around +115%, but MSTR, a company which basically just owns a ton of bitcoins and keeps buying more, was up 3-4x that which is an impressive feat to be sure. Fundamental value might be questionable, given it trades at several multiples of the value of the bitcoins it holds, but especially towards the end of 2024 was not a time when… how shall we say, when fundamentals were the primary driver of returns.
This is just Q4’24, a tough time for big indexes (as the big tech boom enthusiasm abated, and these big tech stocks, “Magnificent Seven” are about ~1/3 of the indexes nowadays), and a tough time for bonds (as hopes for many additional rate cuts faded near EOY and the market is now hoping for just 0.5% more in cuts for 2025).
ticker
type
Q4’24
BTC
bitcoin
+41%
QQQ
tech
+5%
SPY
large caps
+2%
USD
cash
+1%
IWM
small caps
+0%
CPI
inflation (est)
+0%
GLD
gold
-0%
JNK
junk bonds
-0%
BND
bonds
-3%
PFF
preferreds
-3%
EEM
foreign (emerging)
-7%
EFA
foreign (developed)
-8%
Q4’24 was a frustrating time - things were going very well until a couple short picks ran up 5x against me and I cut my losses and gave back most of the hard earned gains for the quarter. No fun either.
Stocks might be up 25% for the las year, but Your Betters in Congress did better than that. Democrats beat the market by about 6%, Republicans only by a little. Nancy Pelosi, whose husband makes lots of timely risky options wagers on stocks coming up for political benefits (contract awards, lack of regulation, etc), made 70%.
That echoes the WSJ Capital Assets investigation of 2023 on very high probability of insider trading by members of Congress. 6% extra seems sufficiently statistically significant to me to warrant some stricter guardrail on the swamp. The timing of trades from some members with WH announcements, laws being brought to the floor, awards of gov contracts, etc… is just too good to not be insider trading.
All I’ll say is that I won’t hold my breath for any of them to push for an ethics committee investigation of this phenomenon. Biden pushed for a ban on congressional stock trading last month but like Sen. Ossoff’s bill, you could bank on bipartisan opposition to it despite a huge majority of Americans being in favor of it.
US Representative Nancy Pelosi continues to baffle investors with tremendous stock market gains over the past decade. Her portfolio returned over 700% since 2014 and an impressive 54% in 2024 to beat top global hedge funds and leading AI trading systems.
According to a 17th January periodic transaction report, Pelosi sold 31,600 Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) shares on 31st December 2024, almost worth £6.45 million ($7.91 million), considering the stock price of £204.29 ($250.42) on the day.
She also purchased 50 call options for both Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Alphabet Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL) stocks, with a £122 ($150) strike price and a 16th January 2026 expiry. The purchases for each company were worth between £203,949 ($250,001) and £407,897 ($500,000).
Meanwhile, Pelosi also diversified her portfolio by purchasing 50 call options of Texas-based energy generation firm Vistra Corp. (NYSE: VST) with a £40 ($50) strike price and a 16th January 2026 expiry for between £407,897 ($500,001) and £815,795 ($1 million).
Pelosi also disclosed purchasing 50 call options last week in health-tech firm Tempus AI (NASDAQ: TEM), with a £16.32 ($20) strike price and an expiration date of 16th January 2026, for between £40,789 ($50,000) and £81,579 ($100,000).
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