Monday Morning Edge Report - December 11, 2023

Fed Decision Week After A Hotter Than Expected Jobs Report

Author

Mark Roussin
December 11, 2023

If this is your first time reading, welcome to The Investor’s Edge where we are a thriving community of more than 10,000 subscribers striving to be better and more well informed investors. Each Monday we publish a “Monday Morning Edge Report” to keep investors informed and in the know.

If you enjoy the newsletter, hit that LIKE button to show your appreciation and help us grow.

This month I will be holding a 2-Day Workshop focused on Options. If you are new to options investing, join me for the 2-Day workshop as we introduce various option strategies, going through the exact strategies I utilize to generate $5,000+ per month.
LAST CHANCE to join!. Click HERE for more info.

Market Talk ⏪

The Monday Morning Edge Report is designed to help investors of all different levels breakdown important stories/topics within the stock market. In this weekly report we will help you understand what is going on to help give you, the investor, an edge in the market.

The stock market has largely been trading sideways now for a few weeks, but I still think we are going to have an end of the year rally. However, we may get a little selling pressure before that with some larger investors doing some tax loss harvesting.

5 Stories Moving The Market:

  1. Jamie Dimon Sees Bitcoin as a threat ⏩ Rips the cryptocurrency

  2. Solid November Jobs Report ⏩ Jobs added surpassed expectations last month

  3. AMD making a run at Nvidia ⏩ Unveils its latest AI chip

  4. Google announces new AI model ⏩ Gemini is a new level of AI

  5. Amazon kicks Venmo to the curb ⏩ Ends partnership immediately

1. Jamie Dimon Sees Bitcoin as a threat

Jamie Dimon, CEO of the largest US bank JPMorgan, was interviewed last week and was asked about crypto. If you follow Jamie Dimon to any degree, well then you likely know that he is not a fan of crypto as he things it is a scam, the government should shut it down, and its a currency used by criminals.

The question I ask is, is Mr. Dimon really not a fan for those reasons or does he see it as a threat to traditional banks and the dollar.

The value of Bitcoin has increased 15% over the past month alone.

Last week the November jobs report was released, beating expectations. The US economy added 199,000 jobs during the month when the expectation was 190,000. The unemployment rate decreased to 3.7% compared to an estimate of 3.9%.

Average hourly earnings increased by 0.4% during the month and it was up 4% year over year.

Nvidia has been the cream de la creme in 2023 with the stock up 230% so far in 2023. AMD on the other hand is up 100% on the year, lagging in stock performance, however, just last week the company unveiled a rival chip.

No one has been able to replicate the powerful chip created by Nvidia, hence the strong demand the company has been seeing. However, AMD is not quite there but certainly closing the gap. The company did announce that Meta Platforms and Microsoft will be using their latest chip.

AMD shares had a great week, up nearly 10% over the past 5 days.

Artificial Intelligence continues to get all the attention in the technology space these days, as such, Google launched their latest AI model, coined “Gemini.” Gemini is the company’s largest and most advanced AI model built to date by the company.

They also launched a video showing some of its capabilities, to which the video came under scrutiny a little. Gemini Pro outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 but dodged questions about how it stacks up against GPT-4.

Alphabet trails in the AI race, currently, but they also weren’t the first to search and now look at them.

Last week, Amazon abruptly ended their partnership with Venmo. Previously, when making a purchase on the Amazon platform, users could utilize Venmo to check out, but that is no longer. The Venmo option will remain until January 10th, 2024.

There was no real commentary as to the reasoning, but Paypal shares fell on the news, as that company owns the likes of Venmo.

📰 Go Deeper, Go Premium

Join today because PREMIUM just got better! Become a PREMIUM subscriber today for LESS than $1 per day and take your investing to the next level. Premium subscribers receive the following:

  • Monthly Portfolio Updates

  • 2 Individual Stock Deep Dives Per Month

  • Earnings Recaps

  • Valuation Dashboard

  • Subscriber only content

Premium subscribers will get a Deep DIve AND my Monthly Portfolio Update sent to them this week.

Earnings on Deck 💰

Earnings season is largely behind us, but there are still a few notable companies reporting this week, including Oracle on Monday, Adobe on Wednesday and Costco Wholesale on Thursday.

Here are the companies reporting earnings this week:

Analyst Upgrades/Downgrades 📝

In this section we will highlight any recent notable analyst upgrades or downgrades.

  • Goldman Sachs initiates Vici Properties as buy

  • UBS names Boeing a top 2024 pick

  • TD Cowen names O’Reilly a top 2024 pick

  • Bank of America names Amazon a top pick in 2024

  • Piper Sandler downgrades Albemarle and Livent to underweight from neutral

  • Mizuho downgrades Prologis to neutral from buy

  • Wells Fargo upgrades Crown Castle to equal weight from underweight

  • Deutsche Bank downgrades Anheuser Busch InBev to hold from buy

  • Wells Fargo downgrades Lululemon to equal weight from overweight

  • Barclays upgrades 3M to equal weight from underweight

Poll of the Week 📊

Economic Data This Week 📆

Monday

  • None

Tuesday

  • Consumer Price Index

  • Core CPI

  • CPI YoY

  • Core CPI YoY

  • Monthly US Federal Budget

Wednesday

  • Producer Price Index

  • Core PPI

  • PPI YoY

  • Core PPI YoY

  • FOMC Interest Rate Decision

  • Fed CHair Jerome Powell Press Conference

Thursday

  • Initial Jobless Claims

  • Import Price Index

  • US retail sales

  • Retail sales minus autos

  • Business inventories

Friday

  • Empire State manufacturing survey

  • Industrial production

  • Capacity utilization

Other Resources 📺

If you have not done so yet, check out my growing YouTube community of ~40,000 like-minded investors where I publish weekly videos focused on building wealth through investing.

Here is the latest video I released: 5 Stocks That Recently INCREASED Their Dividend | One Increasing 25%

Here is another video I put out last week: 3 Dividend Stocks Trading At 52-Week Lows:

Here are a few others of my latest videos:

If you enjoyed the newsletter, leave a LIKE and COMMENT down below. Also, if there is someone that could benefit from this newsletter, consider sharing it.

Have questions? You can email me directly at [email protected].

Happy Investing!

Mark

Reply

or to participate.