Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) stock is down 5% in the past one month. The sudden decline is largely due to a recent report in a Canadian newspaper, which alleged that the bank has pressured employees to open accounts for customers that they did not need. The article raises questions about TD Bank’s sales targets. In the aftermath of the report, several analysts downgraded TD, with some drawing parallels to the Wells Fargo (WFC) fake accounts scandal. TD Bank does not qualify as a Dividend Achiever, a group of 271 stocks with 10+ years of consecutive dividend increases. You can see the full Dividend Achievers List here. However, it does ha...
Another quiet trading session for Asia resulting in mixed signals with little headway made. All core markets closed within 0.10% of their previous close. China Industrial production rose (6.3% while estimate were 6.2%) for the first couple of this year but were disappointed as Retail Sales released at 9.5% against an expected 10.5%. The BOJ will be highlighted again later this week when we are hoping to hear more details surrounding their bond-buying plan and the official Y80tln a year figure. One of the problems they have is that maturing existing holdings are off-setting fresh buying, but also that they hold purchasing rate at zero. Given ...
I’ve been thinking about the current Fed Funds rate hike cycle, which is logically gaining forward momentum now that the Fed can stand down from its 8-year, ultra-lenient monetary policy cycle. That is because the Obama administration’s goals required a compliant Federal Reserve to continually re-liquefy the economy as its fiscal policies drained it. With the coming of Trump mania and its very different fiscal policy goals, we will witness the end of much of what I considered to be the “evil genius” employed by the Federal Reserve, mostly under Ben Bernanke. When he oversaw the brilliant and completely maniacal painting of the mac...
Here’s a chart that Business Insider put together after Friday’s rig count showed yet another build that took us to September 2015 levels. Source: Business Insider The only time I remember seeing a parabolic move like this followed by a dramatic bust was during market manias. Question: Was the shale oil capital expenditure explosion simply a bubble? What trendline does this chart follow going forward and what does it mean for price? These are some fundamental questions that need to be answered. The skeptic in me says that we have just witnessed a mania that will not repeat. That means that even the uptick in rig count we have seen since...
Summary 4 new highs and up 9.02% in the last month Wall Street analysts predict increased sales and earnings 96% technical buy signals The Chart of the Day belongs to Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) I found the health care stock by using Barchart to sort today’s Top Stocks to Own list first for the highest number of new highs in the last month, then again for technical buy signals of 80% or more. Since the Trend Spotter signaled a buy on 2/14 the stock gained 9.05%. Johnson & Johnson is engaged in the research and development, manufacture and sale of a range of products in the healthcare field. The Company operates in three segm...
The best large cap sector is industrials. The top scoring industry is healthcare plans. The average large cap score is 67.78 and the average score over the past four weeks is 69.16. The average large cap in our universe is trading -10.89% below its 52 week high, 4.25% above its 200 dma, has 4.19 days to cover short, and is expected to grow EPS by 12.8% in the coming year. The best large cap sector is industrial goods. Technology, healthcare, and financials are also high scoring. Services score in line with the average universe score. Consumer, utilities and basic materials score below average. The following stocks score best and worst in larg...
Written by Preqin Returns of 1.18% take 12-month performance to the highest level recorded since May 2013 2016 Hedge Fund Letters The Preqin All-Strategies Hedge Fund benchmark recorded returns of 1.18% in February, building on the 1.43% gains seen the previous month. This contrasts with the losses that hedge funds incurred in February 2016: the industry has now recorded 11 months of positive gains in the past year, and 12-month performance has consequently risen to 13.63%, the highest level since May 2013 (+13.76%). Most leading hedge fund strategies returned positive figures in February, with event driven strategies (+1.46%) and equity st...
Gary Antonacci may not be happy to learn that his “Dual Momentum” label has been pirated by a team of academics (Huang, Zhang, and Zhou)(1)(2) in a new paper that explores the combination of price and fundamental momentum stock-picking strategies. The authors also investigate the common rebuttal that transaction costs destroy stock momentum strategies. The authors perform a variety of robustness tests and their results are strong and significant. The author’s describe their results best (regarding stock-selection momentum): Dual momentum is not attributable to transaction costs. Can a stock-picking focused dual momentum approach det...
While Fed Funds futures imply a 100% probability that the Fed hikes rate by 25bps tomorrow, it appears questions over Trump’s policy timeline combined with the collapse in GDP expectations has dragged expectations for another rate hike in June back to its lowest since the election… As GDP growth expectations have plunged so April Fed Funds futures have tumbled – completely against the common sense that the Fed hikes into strength, not weakness… But the lower chart shows the July futures not following the collapse and fading that disappointment. For some context, if the current Atlanta Fed GDPNow forecast is correct a...
Technical analysis of S&P 500 Futures, major support and major resistance, trading in a channel, watch the VIX to get confirmation: Video Length: 00:03:00...