It makes sense for the stock market to be on fire today.
The US president recently taunted Russia over an accident with a failed nuclear weapon
China is amassing troops near the Hong Kong border & there was violence at the Hong Kong airport.
Argentina’s stock market lost 48% of its value in USD terms in a single day in response to a primary vote
That marked the second-biggest one-day rout on any of the 94 stock exchanges tracked by Bloomberg going back to 1950. Sri Lanka’s bourse tumbled more than 60% in June 1989 as the nation was engulfed in a civil war.
The mainstream media is starting to eat some home cooking. They’ve got their paying subscribers so used to a particular slant that honest reporting drives subscription cancelations.
Today’s stock market liftoff was based in part on waiting to apply additional tariffs against Chinese imports until December 15th instead of September 1st.
The Trump administration abruptly offered China—and U.S. consumers—a reprieve from sweeping tariffs that were poised to hit on Sept. 1, sending stocks sharply higher and raising hopes for reviving talks on a trade deal.
That will prevent the tariffs on toys, computers & cell phones from providing any consumer sting until the holiday shopping season is over & just about everything sold through Christmas will be pre-stocked.
Trump uses Twitter to announce imposing new prospective tariffs, but this announcement of delay came through the press versus being a Tweet.
On yesterday’s sell off (which also had the bonus of being an ex-div day for XOM, providing an additional organic down draft in pricing) I picked up some XOM which I sold off today on the rebound. I also bought a bit of OZK which I sold today.
I also exited a big chunk of Cars.com. Yesterday CARS hit a low of $8.71 & I think I bought a big slug of the bottom to the penny. I sold that as it rebounded yesterday & also sold a bit more today at a hair under $9.50 a share.
Workiva has pulled back from their recent all time high on announcing a secondary offering where existing shareholders will be selling 1,287,038 shares while the company is not issuing any new shares.
Roku once again crushed earnings:
Roku “is an arms dealer,” Martin wrote. “It is indifferent about which over-the-top services or business models win. Roku negotiates a 20-30% revenue share from every over-the-top service that wants access to its 30 million homes. At 3.5 hours a day per household of viewing in the second quarter of 2019, it would be impossible…to launch a new over-the-top service without access to Roku’s 36% of connected TV homes.”
As subscriptions fail to appear in adequate quantity (as competition saturates the streaming marketplace), old media players who dumped billions into acquisitions will ramp up marketing spend & account trials to try to prolong recognition of malinvestment (hey, we are investing in growth). Roku will be one of the primary beneficiaries of that capital misallocation bubble.