DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar.

---

Love the Show? Then how about a Donation?

---

Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter

Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter

DONATIONS ? Thank you for all who gave to the Thanksgiving Holiday Campaign...

Warm-Up
- Kissing Ass is good for the wallet
- Fed is about to meet and make a rate decision
- Person of the Year!
- Whistleblower found dead

- Markets
- Odd - DJIA down for 7 days, NASDAQ can't be stopped (TSLA pushing this time - once again a reason to look at market cap weightings)
- Fanning the flames - A new name into NASDAQ 100
- Earnings - A few interesting data points
- Social Security benefits increase
- Yes and No, Inflation and No Inflation
- Not since... 2018 or 1978?

Reminder -  the CTP Contestants for 2024 CTP Cup

Michael Bowling
Kirk Saathoff
Eric Harvey
Chad Laajala
Tim Dewey
Paul Kinder
Anson Brady (2023 CTP Cup Winner)
---Emails have gone out...

Fed Meeting Dec 18th
- 89% probability of a 0.25% rate cut
- Fed has its back to the wall - markets are dictating
- No reason to believe that they need a cut, although the would not want to worry markets or surprise them in any way
- All reporting shows that they will do the cut, back off a little as to the amount of potential cuts coming in recognition of the fact that the economy is still running well

DJIA - Records?
- The DJIA has been down for 8 days in a row and that has not happened since 2018.
- If the DJIA declines today, that would take us back to the 1970's, 1978 to be exact when there was a 9 day decline.
- But, that is the DJIA, the NASDAQ an SP500 have been holding up.
- Moreover, the fall for the DJIA this month is less that 3%, so not much damage done to the index itself.

Another Sinkhole Warning
- SP500 equal weighted is down more than 3% for the MTD.
- SP500 up slightly MTD
- NASDAQ 100 up moer than 5%
- Small-caps down 3%

BUT - Wait....
- A measure of wholesale price rose more than expected in November, adding fuel to the belief that progress in bringing down inflation has slowed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.
- On an annual basis, PPI rose 3%, the biggest advance since February 2023.
- This is after an inline CPI number.
- Rates are on the rise for bonds, as expected
--- Mark this date - inflation could make a comeback in 2025 and totally offside the fed (And they are fanning the flames )

AND Consumers are Spending
- November Retail Sales 0.7% vs. 0.5% consensus; prior revised to 0.5% from 0.4%

But - ISM Composite - Rolling Over

ISM Composite

CHIPS
- Shares of Broadcom popped more than 21% Friday morning, pushing the company’s market cap beyond $1 trillion for the first time. It will be Broadcom’s best trading day on record if the move holds until the closing bell.
The move comes after the company reported fourth-quarter results that beat Wall Street’s expectations for earnings and showed strong artificial intelligence revenue growth.
- Broadcom reported $14.05 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter, up 51% year over year but shy of the $14.09 billion expected by analysts according to LSEG. In Broadcom’s semiconductor solutions group, which includes its AI chips, revenue increased 12% to $8.23 billion from $8.03 billion a year ago.

More Chips
- US planning on restricting AI  Chips around the world
- Planning on closing China's backdoor access
-Washington plans rules limiting semiconductor shipments to some countries accused of supplying Beijing
- NVDA, MSFT, GOOG, GOOGL, AMD, INTC, SMH

Nuclear - getting some traction
- SMRs - Small Nuclear Reactors
- Small modular reactors, with a power capacity of 300 megawatts or less, are about a third the size of the average reactors in the current U.S. fleet. The goal is to build them in a process similar to an assembly line, with plants rolling out of factories in just a handful of pieces that are then put together at the site.
- Only three SMRs are operational in the world (China and Russia)
- Keep an eye on the news for utilities that will be moving into nuclear - demand is high - theme for 2025

EVEN More Nukes
- GE Vernova is aiming to deploy small nuclear reactors across the developed world over the next decade, staking out a leadership position in a budding technology that could play a central role in meeting surging electricity demand and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
- GE Vernova is the spinoff of General Electric's former energy business. The company's stock has more than doubled since listing on the New York Stock Exchange last April
- The U.S. government wants to triple nuclear power by 2050 to shore up an electric grid that is under growing pressure from surging power demand. But large nuclear projects, in the U.S. at least, are notoriously plagued by multi-billion dollar budgets, cost overruns, delayed construction timelines and, sometimes, cancellations.

Tech Wars
- Geopolitical tensions are brewing globally over the cutting of subsea cables — critical infrastructure powering cross-border internet connectivity — in the Baltic Sea.
- The severing (a week or so ago) of the cables prompted warnings of "sabotage" and potential "hybrid" warfare targeting key infrastructure in the West amid further escalations in the ongoing war in Ukraine.
-  Last week, two undersea cables were severed in the Baltic Sea, raising suspicions that subsea communication systems may be the latest target of sabotage against the West, as it clashes with Russia over the country's invasion of Ukraine.
-One of the cables disrupted was C-Lion1, which links Finland and Germany and is owned by Cinia, a Finnish state-controlled IT firm. Spanning nearly 1,200 kilometers (730 miles), it is the only direct connection of its kind between Finland and Central Europe.
-The other cable damaged was one connecting Lithuania and Sweden, BCS East West Interlink.
--- Both are either mostly or fully repaired already and had alternative routes to move data when was cut....

Musk - SpaceX
- Valuation rockets higher
- SpaceX is in discussions to sell insider shares that could boost the value of Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company to around $350 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
- That would be a significant premium to a previously mulled valuation of $255 billion as reported by Bloomberg News and other media outlets just last month. It would also cement SpaceX’s status as the most valuable private US company.
- Earlier this year SpaceX did a tender at a valuation of ~ $211 billion

Kissing Ass
- We have seen this before - and now it is a smart move as a little brown nose goes a long way
- Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son will announce a $100 billion investment in the U.S. over the next four years during a Monday visit to President-elect Donald Trump's residence Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.
- Tim Cook had dinner with Presedent-Elect Trump

Person of the Year!
- Time Magazine has named Donald Trump as their person of the year for the second time.
- Trump was first named person of the year in 2016 after winning the US presidential election.
- Last Thursday, The Republican president-elect is rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to commemorate the honor alongside several of his family members.

NASDAQ 100 In and Out
- MicroStrategy is in! Talk about fanning the flames
--- MicroStrategy is a money-losing software company that is largely a leveraged bitcoin play. It's sold stock and debt to buy up more and more of the cryptocurrency. Its market cap is at $82 billion.
- On the way out? Moderna and Super Micro Computer are among the smallest Nasdaq 100 members.
- Palatir is also a name that is in the mix to be added to NAZ100

Whistleblower found Dead
- A 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher, Suchir Balaji, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment in recent weeks, CNBC has confirmed.
- Balaji left OpenAI earlier this year and raised concerns publicly that the company had allegedly violated U.S. copyright law while developing its popular ChatGPT chatbot."
- "The manner of death has been determined to be suicide,"
- The San Francisco Police Department said in an e-mail that on the afternoon of Nov. 26, officers were called to an apartment on Buchanan Street to conduct a "wellbeing check." They found a deceased adult male, and discovered "no evidence of foul play" in their initial investigation, the department said.

Earnings
- Adobe shares fell 13% on Thursday and headed for their steepest drop since March after the software vendor issued disappointing revenue guidance.
- Sales in the fiscal first quarter will be between $5.63 billion and $5.68 billion, Adobe said in its fourth-quarter earnings report late Wednesday. Analysts on average were expecting revenue of $5.73 billion
- Analysts at TD Cowen downgraded the stock to hold from buy, while Wells Fargo kept its buy rating following what it called a "frustrating '24" for the company. The stock is now down 20% for the year
- AI hype/hope unrealized

Social Security Benefits Benefit?
- Last month, the House of Representatives on Nov. 12 passed the Social Security Fairness Act by an overwhelming 327 to 75 majority.
- The proposal would eliminate rules that reduce Social Security benefits for those who also receive income from public pensions, roughly around 2.8 million people.
- Senate needs to vote - but this would be adding to the deficit and that is not a popular side right now.
- Needs to rush this along so that Biden can pass it

Interesting
- The U.K. is drawing up measures to regulate the use of copyrighted content by tech companies to train their artificial intelligence models.
- The British government on Tuesday kicked off a consultation which aims to increase clarity for both the creative industries and AI developers when it comes to both how intellectual property is obtained and then used by AI firms for training purposes.

 

---

Love the Show? Then how about a Donation?

2024 - DH Closest to The Pin Cup - Up and Running

Winners will be getting great stuff like the new DHUnplugged Shirts (Designed by Jimbo) -
PLUS a one-of-a-kind DHUnplugged CTP Winner's certificate..

 

---

FED AND CRYPTO LIMERICKS