Investors have had a whirlwind couple of weeks, starting with the Saudi oil attack and rolling into a formal presidential impeachment inquiry.
Add reports of strain in the credit market, a high-stakes Fed meeting, overheated tech stocks and persistent gloom about Treasury yields and the economy, and you’d think the world was ending.
But replace Saudi Arabia with Iraq and I could have described 1998. The same factors were in play. Business conditions looked fragile and politics were breaking down.
It looked like a global recession was brewing. Instead, the economy kept expanding all the way into 2001, at which point the longest boom in history finally ended.
And investors who sold their stocks when the president was impeached missed out on a 17-month rally that took the S&P 500 from a lowly 970 to what was then a stratospheric 1,500, generating 54 percent profit in the meantime.
Impeachment clearly didn’t trigger an immediate crash then. From what I’m seeing on Wall Street now, the recent events are a stronger buy signal than anything else. At worst, those who hold on here will ultimately see their tenacity rewarded.
From Curve to Congress
While 1998 is practically ancient history, the parallels are worth a trip down memory lane. When President Bill Clinton finally got served his impeachment articles, the market had good reasons to be unsettled.
The Treasury yield curve was a mess, with six-month bills paying higher interest rates than 10-year bonds. People were worried that this fact meant a recession was coming.
After all, with once-legendary hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management imploding, global markets were in unknown territory. The odds of a total meltdown were high.
That’s why the Fed was busy guiding interest rates lower to cushion any shock to the system. Back then, it was Alan Greenspan who got ahead of inflation, raising the funds rate to 5.5 percent in 1997 before taking back 0.75 percent in 1998.
He wasn’t afraid of a recession. While gross domestic product growth actually accelerated to 4.5 percent, with inflation at 1.7 percent (almost uncannily close to where it is now), there was simply no compelling reason to keep interest rates high.
It worked. By the end of 1998, the inversions in the yield curve had flattened out. Credit markets got back to work.
And while the impeachment hearings dragged on into February, Wall Street barely noticed. I already see something similar playing out now.
Over the last two weeks, the S&P 500 has barely budged beyond a 2 percent trading band. The Fed has been supportive and trade talks are scheduled to start soon, which balances out all the anxiety elsewhere.
Keep Your Eye on the Ball
Congress can keep talking. Wall Street doesn’t mind. We’re more about business than buzz. Anyone who gets consumed in the noise is thinking like a passive media consumer and not an investor.
Remember when James Comey was fired? I was at an investment conference and trying to prepare a presentation in my hotel room that morning. At the same time, I was watching the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge when the market opened.
The world didn’t end. That 373-point decline didn’t even take 2 percent off the market. According to the recent standards of volatility, it barely qualifies as a speed bump.
Years of unnatural quiet had unhinged our expectations. Now that we’re back in the real world, the Dow can lose 373 points in the normal course of business and nobody even tries to come up with an explanation.
It’s just part of the usual give and take. Markets go up, markets go down.
Besides, the chatter is good for Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR), especially as we look toward an extremely noisy 2020 electoral season.
And when the mood is unsettled, the best money around is what we can squeeze out of markets that don’t know which way to go. Not surprisingly, my new 2-Day Trader service is doing extremely well.
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CANNABIS CORNER: Almost Time to Buy MJ
It’s been a gruesome summer for Big Cannabis. We’ve discussed the paradoxical drag on the stocks from multiple angles, but their pain essentially revolves around a mismatch between supply and demand.
Demand is not the problem. Deregulation has opened up vast legal consumer markets for cannabis growers who previously had to skulk around state lines in order to sell their products.
The problem isn’t even the number of growers chasing a slice of that market. Barriers to entry are relatively high and consolidation keeps independent growers from getting a lot of traction.
But there’s a lot of money sloshing around in these stocks, which is the real oversupply threat I’m seeing. The companies are great. The stocks have simply gotten too crowded to reward investors in the immediate future.
When those investors demand instant gratification, that’s a problem. Because when those investors give up and take their money out, stocks that soared can deflate unnervingly fast.
No single investment demonstrates this principle better than the ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF (NYSEARCA:MJ), the so-called “Cannabis Fund” which mirrors the industry as a whole.
A year ago, MJ shareholders felt good. The fund had doubled since its 2015 launch and looked poised to keep rallying for years to come. Instead, those who bought the peak have now lost a harrowing 50 percent of their starting stake.
It’s not the fund managers’ fault. MJ is built on an index that weights all the big cannabis-linked stocks according to their market footprint, so its performance accurately reflects what’s going on in the industry.
But these stocks tend to travel in a tight correlation anyway. This means that when one falters, they all end up moving in the same direction. Let’s start with the fund’s top holding GW Pharmaceuticals PLC (NASDAQ:GWPH).
I love this company’s efforts to develop true prescription therapies out of the molecules that can be found in the cannabis plant. Sales shot up from near-zero to $300 million over the past year.
By 2021, the run rate will easily be in the $1 billion range and growing fast. I’m looking for profitability in a year. GWPH would be reasonably priced here at roughly 11X revenue as an early-stage drug company with FDA-approved products on the market.
After all, it doesn’t grow cannabis. It isn’t subject to the commodity laws that drive the price of raw agricultural crops down as supply increases.
Nonetheless, the stock is down 40 percent from its peak. And as 8 percent of the MJ portfolio, that slide has been a big weight.
Admittedly, GWPH has been relatively defensive compared to other key MJ holdings. Canopy Growth Corp. (NYSE:CGC) is down a full 60 percent from its peak.
Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NYSE:ACB) was a $12 stock a year ago. Here below $5, shareholders aren’t thrilled. And since CGC and ACB add up to 15 percent of MJ, investors who bought the ETF have felt the pain as well.
I’m starting to suspect that MJ is oversold now. When it turns around, we’ll grab it. But until it turns around, there’s no urgency. We don’t want to catch any falling knives.
My Turbo Trader Marijuana Millionaire Portfolio has plenty of other holdings that aren’t heavily weighted on MJ at all. They’re insulated from the contagion that’s plaguing the big cultivators.
We’ve booked several wins over the summer while waiting for MJ to rally. That’s all it takes.