(New York)

So those following the news will have noticed that Bank of America’s key stock market indicator, the “Bull & Bear”, has been flashing red for the last couple of weeks. Now, the brightness is getting stronger. The recent rush out of Treasuries and into stocks has been the fastest ever, which has BAML worried that markets are about to crash. The rotation amounted to $102 bn flowing into stocks in January alone, which BAML calls “massive”.

FINSUM: The move has been more of a stampede than a flow, but then again, there are a lot of reasons to be worried about rising rates, especially as new Fed leadership is coming in.

(San Francisco)

One doesn’t quite know how to feel about the news, but the gut instinct is that it is negative. Apple’s earnings came out yesterday, and the company reported its greatest profit ever. But guess what, sales came in weaker than expected for the new flagship iPhone X. iPhone sales dropped 1% in the fourth quarter (the most important time of year), which has scared many into thinking the new phone has not sparked the next replacement “super cycle” that the company and analysts hoped. Apple did mention that the quarter was a week shorter than in the previous year, and that iPhone sales would have been 22% higher had they been equivalent.

FINSUM: Okay so the note about the length of quarter is relevant, but the overall impression is that the iPhone X has failed to live up the hype. And it makes sense to us—have you heard any friends raving about the new iPhone? We certainly have not.

(Houston)

MLPs can perform well during periods of rising rates, such as in the last tightening cycle. While they are broadly more risky than bonds, they can provide good returns. Many MLPs collect inflation hedged payments, so they should perform better than bonds in a tightening environment. As an asset class, MLPs have been holding back on payouts, but these should accelerate in 2019 and 2020. Three names to look at are Enterprise Product Partners, yielding 6.1%, Magellan Midstream Partners, yielding 5.2%, and Antero Midstream Partners, yielding 4.8%.

FINSUM: Those yields look really juicy don’t they? And they are moderately inflation hedged, which is also quite promising. Worth a look.

(New York)

Okay, we are calling it. Officially. While some had been holding out hope that Bitcoin might regain ground back up to its peak of around $20,000, the bottom appears to have officially fallen out. The cryptocurrency is now trading under $8,000, down around 60% since its peak. The currency continues to suffer setbacks from regulatory efforts in various jurisdictions, and it has put bears firmly in control.

FINSUM: Bitcoin and cryptos will be around for a long time, but the price discovery for a realistic level is going to be painful.

(Houston)

Oil prices have been rising strongly on the global market. However, those gains took a breather yesterday when eye-opening new info emerged on the oil market—the US is now producing more than 10 million barrels of crude oil per day. The mark was hit in November, and arrived much sooner than anyone expected. The US has only broken that threshold twice in the past, both times in 1970.

FINSUM: Okay so our big concern with the oil market right now is that these higher prices are not sustainable. The fundamental oversupply of oil has not been solved. The only thing holding up prices is the fact that OPEC members, for the moment, are happy to let the US benefit disproportionately from their output cuts. This output figure might change that.

(New York)

ETFs have been the dominant investing trend for the last half decade or so, eating away at mutual funds’ grip. However, what will be the next major investing trend? The answer may have just debuted. Orion Advisor Services has just announced a new product called ASTRO (Advisor Strategy & Tax Return Optimization tool). ASTRO “allows advisors to build tax-efficient SMA portfolios that can take into account clients’ environmental, societal and governmental concerns”, according to Michael Kitces, who says that the new technology is a threat to asset management and could prove highly disruptive, as it would allow better loss harvesting and more tax-sensitive liquidations in retirement. The system would allow advisors to “buy, own and manage a portfolio of all the underlying individual investments directly”.

FINSUM: This sounds like it could be a very potent offering, but we do not expect ETFs do go away any time soon.

(New York)

Morgan Stanley went on the record yesterday arguing that market liquidity will likely vanish in the event of turmoil. The bank says that the reduction in bank participation in trading, brought on by post-Crisis regulation, has led to “shadow banks” taking up the burden of liquidity. Such shadow banks including entities like professional trading firms, hedge funds etc. However, Morgan Stanley points out that this type of liquidity provider has never been tested in a tumultuous market, and that liquidity is likely to vanish.

FINSUM: While there may be some truth to it, banks love to over play the amount of liquidity they provide in periods of turmoil. When the market gets ugly, they tighten up just like everyone else.

(Houston)

So oil has staged a slow and cautious recovery over the last year powered largely by OPEC’s oil cuts. That said, prices are still ~35% below the $100 per barrel threshold. But guess what, it does not matter. In an absolutely eye-watering piece of data that is a testament to both management and technological innovation, Shell oil company is making as much profit barrel with oil at $60 as it did when oil was $100. Exxon performs even better.

FINSUM: Oil companies have done a truly commendable job rejigging their business models and cutting costs to maintain profitability.

(New York)

While there has been some speculation that the US housing market may be facing a tough period ahead, new data is showing that prices might continue rising. The big worries are that rates will rise quickly, hurting mortgage demand, while at the same time, the new tax package will reduce home-buying because of the lack of deductibility of mortgage interest above a threshold. However, new data shows that housing inventory continues to sink. There are few homes for sale compared to buyer demand, and the building rate of new homes is weak. This means there is much more demand in the market than there is supply.

FINSUM: We are not very worried about home prices, especially in the lower and middle pars of the spectrum. The largest ever US generation—Millennials—is entering the key home buying period of their lives.

(Detroit)

General Motors is ramping up its efforts in the self-driving car space. In what has become somewhat of a new age automotive space race, the company is doing well in its testing of autonomous vehicles. That said, it is still well behind the performance of Waymo, Google’s self-driving car unit. GM’s vehicles are getting very autonomous, with a human driver only needing to intervene 0.797 times for every 1,000 miles driven in 2017, down from 18.51 in 2016. Google’s number is 0.179 per 1,000 miles. Some criticize this “disengagement” metric because it is not well controlled or defined.

FINSUM: There is probably a little bit of “play” in how these stats are recorded, but if they are anything near the truth, the technology sounds like it is performing very well. GM says it wants to debut self-driving cars in 2019.