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Warm Up
- OMG - Did you see that?
- Fear - blood in the streets
- Looking for someone to blame for the selloff
- Boeing news....Finally

Market Update
- RISK off - all risk assets (aside from bonds) down in August
- Bitcoin - CRUSHED - as with other cryptos - so much for safe-haven
- 13:1 Day Decliners to Advancers (that is pretty significant.
- Records broken - Worst day in 50 years for one stock

Where is the PPP?
- Now we are hearing about an emergency cut - looking for a 0.75% cut (Jeremy Seigel)
- Investors looking for a save - Plunge Protection Team!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Seems like Tuesday in Japan - PPP to the rescue - +10%

Bitcoin and ETH
- Seriously - takes it on the chin down 15% with global market sell-off
- What happened to it being a safe-haven - all but discounted at this point....

Japan's first increase in decades
- Actually, last increase was 2017 - so 17 YEARS OF LOW RATES
- The Widowmaker trade is finally working - but for how long?
- Japan's major stock market - YEN Up 11% since 7/11/2024 and  the Nikkei is down  23% (28% at low on Monday) since 7/11/2024
- Carry-Trade (borrow Yen at low rate and reinvest) BLOWING UP
- WORST day for Japan's markets since Black Monday in 1987
--- The loss of 4,451.28 points on the index was also the largest in terms of points in its entire history.
-=-=-=-= This is not the first time Japan's central bank has caused this type of situation. Their entire investing and monetary process is very dangerous.
-=-=-=-=- - Japan's Nikkei had the best day since 2008 on Tuesday

Repercussions
- Stocks around the world got hammered - worrying about YEN unwind as well as the earnings and outlook from Tech
- Kospi -8% down Monday
- World stocks off by 3%+
- UGLY moves and lots of trading opportunities
- $1 Trillion in market cap erased from Mega-Caps Monday (Mag7)

AND
- A sharp drop in U.S. stocks is provoking selling from volatility-sensitive funds, exacerbating a selloff
- Volatility control funds - systematic investment strategies that typically buy equities when markets are calm and sell when they grow turbulent  have gorged on stocks as indexes soared to record highs in 2024
- More recently, they have begun selling, as worries over the economy and tech earnings rattle investors: volatility control funds have dumped about $83.6 billion of U.S. equity futures over the last two weeks

VIX
- SPIKES to 65 on Monday morning.... (Then comes down to about 36 on the close)
- Historical spike like that  are  interesting signs that it may be end of route (or getting close)
- - 80's for Pandemic and peak of Financial Crisis
---- Unbelievable move in 3 days that seems that most people were unprepared for

Economic Issues
- Nonfarm payrolls grew by just 114,000 in July, below the downwardly revised 179,000 in June and the Dow Jones estimate for 185,000.
- The unemployment rate edged higher to 4.3%, its highest since October 2021, triggering an economic rule on recessions.
- Health care again led, adding 55,000 to payrolls. Other notable gainers included construction (25,000), government (17,000), and transportation and warehousing (14,000).
- Average hourly earnings increased 0.2% for the month and 3.6% from a year ago. Both figures were below respective forecasts for 0.3% and 3.7%.

Google loses Anti-Trust
- Google’s payments to make its search engine the default on smartphone web browsers violates US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice Department.
- Judge Amit Mehta in Washington said that the Alphabet Inc. unit’s $26 billion in payments effectively blocked any other competitor from succeeding in the market.
- Surely there will be an appeal

More Pain
- NVDA delaying
- Design flaws could cause a delay of three months or more in the launch of chip giant Nvidia's upcoming artificial-intelligence chips, tech-focused publication the Information said on Friday.
-- WAIT - What design flaws? Company already paid billions for this chip - what design flaws???????

Buffet Selling Too!
- Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway dumped nearly half of its gigantic Apple stake last quarter in a surprising move for the famously long-term-focused investor.
- After this and BAC sales - plenty of cash on hand for Berkshire...

Olympic Paydays
- Pretty impressive for some - embarrassing for others

Olympic Bonus

Intel
- We sniffed this out - with that big job cut
--- Added to that - now 15% of workforce
- WORST day in 50 years! (1974 down 31%)
- Price down to levels not  seen since 2013
- -26% after a miserable quarter - pretty much nothing good to say
- The company swung to a $1.61 billion net loss after reporting net income of $1.48 billion in the year-earlier period. Adjusted earnings per share of 2 cents fell way short of the average analyst estimate of 10 cents
- CUT DIVIDEND

Amazon
- Shares tumble 12%  after earnings outlook disappoints
- Revenue in the second quarter rose 10% from a year earlier to $147.98 billion, falling just short of $148.56 billion projected
- Net income at Amazon doubled from a year earlier to $1.26 a share, topping analysts estimates of $1.03 per share
- Cost cutting is helping
- Revenue outlook came at mid-point of the range
- Consumers are  trading down to lower cost alternatives
- NOW THIS: What's more, a chaotic news cycle means that consumers are more distracted than usual, and may wait to make a purchase or abandon their cart altogether - according to Amazon CFO

Boeing
- Boeing named aerospace industry veteran Kelly Ortberg as its CEO to turn around the planemaker beset by legal and regulatory problems after a quarter in which it lost more than $1 billion.
- Ortberg will start on Aug. 8 with the monumental task of rebuilding trust with regulators, the industry and the public
- The planemaker posted a loss of $1.4 billion on revenue of $16.9 billion, short of the consensus among analysts for $17.2 billion, according to LSEG data. It lost $2.90 a share, worse than of expectations for a loss of $1.97 a share.
- Anywhere to go from here? Is all bad news out there ?????

Lawsuits coming
- Delta says the Crowdstrike data outage cost the company $500 million
- More than 4,000 flight canccelled
-- Now that they are putting a number on it - lawsuit is not too far off...

On a BETTER note...
- Economic activity in the U.S. was considerably stronger than expected during the second quarter
- Real gross domestic product, a measure of all the goods and services produced during the April-through-June period, increased at a 2.8% annualized pace adjusted for seasonality and inflation.
- Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for growth of 2.1% following a 1.4% increase in the first quarter.

Follow Up
- All doses of Eli Lilly's weight-loss drug Zepbound and diabetes drug Mounjaro are now available, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's updated shortage list showed on Friday.
- However, the regulator has not yet removed the drugs off its shortage list.
- Lilly's Mounjaro has been on the U.S. FDA's shortage list since late 2022, while Zepbound was added to the list in April this year.
- The FDA continues to actively monitor drug availability and work with the company to ensure a stable supply of safe and effective drugs, the agency stated in an email.
- This impacts HIMS (and other companies like WW) as they may not be able to get compounded versions if comes off of the FDA shortage list.

Inflation
- Headline inflation in the euro zone unexpectedly rose to 2.6% in July, the European Union's statistics agency said last week.
- Seeing other areas also showing a tick up in inflation readings.
- How is that going to work with the idea that cuts are coming?
---- US Fed Funds pricing in several cuts by end of year. markets getting ahead of themselves again...

Spending
- Change on where money is coming from...
- Collectively, Americans owe a record $1.14 trillion on their credit cards, according to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
- As credit card debt mounts, young adults, who are likely renters with less of a financial cushion than their elders, are increasingly falling behind.
- Credit card balances rose by $27 billion in the second quarter of 2024, a 5.8% jump from a year ago.

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