December 2024 DDD

Full:https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/...a?st=BtHRk4&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink








But never say never. The bulls have bought every dip and to date are laughing all the way to the bank.

Crypto:






So if you have watched Mike Green's videos (posted above) you will understand the tremendous impact of the rise in passive.

With MSTR going into the QQQ's:



And Mr Saylor continuing his pursuit of the Holy Grail via btc + his copycats, you would expect btc to have a huge year next year. Price is set at the margin and with the dominant strategy of 'hodl' very few coins will be available to satisfy the MSTR monster. Price must skyrocket.

Increasingly as fewer and fewer players actually hold btc, its actual value will diminish, eventually by virtue of being held in such a concentrated manner, to zero.

This is the failure of an absolute finite supply. You actually need an ongoing supply of say 1% inflation of coins per year.

Of course, if the MSTR monster decides to sell: to whom will they sell?

Ultimately small 'hodl's' will need to sell out to lock in their profits. Trouble is their greed (to date) has been good. Eventually it will be bad. With visions of $1M, $10M, $100M a coin, when will that critical threshold be crossed?

The other issue is the correlation with QQQ



Now correlations are not written in stone, so they can evolve, change, etc.

Pretty quiet day overall:







jog on
duc

Employment numbers are manipulated numbers.

jog on
duc

Santa rally sucking balls currently:



Oil News:

Oil prices were rising toward the end of the week, with WTI breaking back above $70 and Brent trading at $73.72. Optimism surrounding China's economic growth after Beijing agreed to issue special treasury bonds worth roughly $411 billion helped to spark bullish sentiment in markets this week. Prices then rose even further on expectations of a crude draw in the U.S., with the EIA set to report at 13:00 EST due to a Christmas holiday delay.

Finland Seizes Suspicious Russian Tanker. Finland’s coast guard has boarded and seized the Eagle S tanker carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea on suspicion of having caused an outage of an undersea electricity cable connecting Finland and Estonia, investigating potential sabotage.

China to Build World’s Largest Hydro Dam. China approved the construction of the world’s largest hydropower dam, thrice as big as the currently largest Three Gorges Dam in central China, aiming to produce some 300 billion KWh of electricity annually in the lower reaches of Tibet’s Yarlung Zangbo River.

Under Pressure, Iraq to Cut Gas Flaring. Amidst reports that Donald Trump might sanction Iraq’s imports of Iranian natural gas, Baghdad promised to cut flaring volumes by around 20% next year to meet rising demand, expecting to capture more than 85% of associated natural gas production.

Plaquemines LNG Exports First Cargo. Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG terminal exported its first official cargo from the Louisiana facility this week, with the Venture Bayou LNG carrier indicating Germany’s Brunsbuttel as its destination, marking the first export from the 8th export terminal of the US.

Beijing Issues 2025 Product Export Quotas. China’s Ministry of Commerce issued the first batch of refined product quotas for next year totaling 19 million tonnes, unchanged year-over-year, with recent changes to the country’s 13% export tax rebate making gasoline and diesel exports sub-commercial.

Houthi Warfare Drains Egypt Suez Revenue. Egypt reported that its Suez Canal revenues have plunged by 60% year-over-year in 2024 as Houthi maritime warfare cost the North African country at least $7 billion, worsening Cairo’s plight as the Egyptian pound slid to a record low over the past month.

Libya’s Two Governments to End Fuel Subsidies. Libya’s Benghazi government agreed to a proposal from the rival Tripoli government to end fuel subsidies in the war-torn country, with gasoline prices remaining artificially low at $0.11 per gallon, the second-cheapest in the world.

Shell Shuts Singapore Refinery After Leak. UK-based energy major Shell (LON:SHEL) shut down one of its oil processing units at the 237,000 b/d Pulau Bukom refinery in Singapore after the nation’s Port Authority reported a leak of oil products together with the cooling water discharge.

Mongolia Walks Back France Uranium Deal. The government of Mongolia has retracted the announcement of reaching a $1.6 billion deal with France’s uranium mining giant Orano, marking another odd roadblock on the way towards launching the Zuuvch Ovoo mine, in development since 2013.

Turkey Eyes Maritime Delimitation with Syria. The Turkish government is readying to start negotiations with the new al-Julani government of Syria to delineate maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean Sea, a move that would allow Ankara to ‘increase its area of influence’ in energy exploration.

US to Finance Guyana’s Gas Power Buildout. The US Export-Import Bank approved a $526 million loan to Guyana for the construction of a 300 MW natural gas-fired power plant that would use ExxonMobil’s associated gas production from the Stabroek block, staving off intense Chinese competition.

France Launches First Reactor of 21st Century. 12 years overdue and four times the originally planned budget with a price tag of €13 billion, the Flamanville 3 nuclear reactor was finally connected to France’s power grid this week, marking the first addition of new nuclear capacity since Civaux-2 in 1999.

India Doubles Down on Refining Expansion. India’s state-controlled refiner Bharat Petroleum (NSE:BPCL) announced its plans to invest $11 billion in a new refinery in southern Andhra Pradesh state, adding 180,000 b/d of capacity and an integrated petrochemical plant to meet domestic demand.



Why are the top end jobs falling in the 'strongest economy'?



Adding to USD strength.



Consequences of a too strong USD are dire.



Foreigners hold plenty of US assets (stocks/bonds) that they can sell to obtain USD.

If USD liquidity is not added by the Fed or by a weaker USD, bad things will happen.



Market looked very weak into December and vol. has jumped up significantly. Santa was ambushed and shot in the head, his sleigh stolen.

jog on
duc

So USD



At this level, it is a problem.

Bond market still complacent.



Why?



Liquidity still flowing from RRP.

But this has drawn down.

It has drawn down by pretty much:



As the Fed's Balance Sheet.

But as this RRP gift ends, the USD will move higher unless another source of liquidity is found. With $7 Trillion in rollovers added to the already stretched bond market, bad things will happen.

On another note an experiment:

Scan: https://stockcharts.com/def/servlet/ScanUI?act=RUN&clauses=[type = stock] AND [country is US] AND [[exchange is NYSE] OR [exchange is NASDAQ]] AND [market cap > 100] AND [Price Relative(SPY) > yesterdays Daily MAX(126,Price Relative(SPY))]

So the above scan should take you to charts meeting the scan's code (whatever that is).

One for the bears (in a different format)

Scan:https://stockcharts.com/def/servlet/ScanUI?act=RUN&clauses=[type = stock] AND [country is US] AND [[exchange is NYSE] OR [exchange is NASDAQ]] AND [market cap > 100] AND [Price Relative(SPY) < yesterdays Daily MIN(126,Price Relative(SPY))]

Probably the second one is more useful speed wise and can drill down to individual names faster.

These are taken from:



Not sure how many trade the US, but with expanded hours likely to occur, possibly some will shift over.

jog on
duc

*Note

So the scans take you to the list. Simply click on *Candle glance for a whole page of mini charts or *Sharp Charts for larger charts.

I'll be updating in this thread or if enough interest, perhaps its own dedicated thread.

So December not quite over, we still have 1.5 trading days:

So for next week:








So taking into consideration the 'January Effect' where leaders are weak and laggards are strong(er) while Funds rebalance etc., (take a look at the rotation chart) it may behoove being less aggressive in positions.

So I have put on 2 positions last week:

1. XLF (short)
2. FCX (long)



jog on
duc

Summary of 2024





jog on
duc

Definitely no Santa rally:



I'm off to work.

It's not interest rates, although that is and will be an issue, it's the USD



And





Happy New Year!

jog on
duc

Please note US Credit Card Defaults Surge to Highest Level Since 2008

Defaults on US credit card loans have hit the highest level since the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, in a sign that lower-income consumers’ financial health is waning after years of high inflation. Credit card lenders wrote-off $46bn in seriously delinquent loan balances in the first nine months of 2024, up 50 per cent from the same period in the year prior and the highest level in 14 years, according to industry data collated by BankRegData.

Click to expand...

Write-offs, which occur when lenders decide it is unlikely a borrower will make good on their debts, are a closely watched measure of significant loan distress. “High-income households are fine, but the bottom third of US consumers are tapped out,” said Mark Zandi, the head of Moody’s Analytics. “Their savings rate right now is zero.”

Click to expand...

The sharp rise in defaults is a sign of how consumers’ personal finances are becoming increasingly stretched after years of high inflation, and as the Federal Reserve has left borrowing costs at elevated levels. Banks have yet to report their fourth-quarter numbers but the early signs are that more consumers are falling significantly behind on what they owe. Capital One, the US’s third-largest credit card lender, after JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, recently said that as of November its annualized credit card write-off rate, which is the percentage of its overall loans that are marked as unrecoverable, hit 6.1 per cent, up from 5.2 per cent a year ago. “Consumer spending power has been diminished,” said Odysseas Papadimitriou, head of consumer credit research firm WalletHub.

Click to expand...

Not a good sign.

jog on
duc