US CORPORATE INSIDERS BUYING HAS RARELY BEEN SO LOW
US executives' buys of their companies stocks dropped to near the lowest on record. This coincides with insiders selling the most stocks ever. Are they saying that stocks are expensive? Source: Sentimentrader and Bloomberg data thru Global Markets Investor
An unexpected behavior by oil...
As the red line shows, WTI is at its highest price since October. The green annotation shows that it has increased by 8% in the last few weeks. The rise of oil prices took place despite Trump win (and the subsequent "Drill, baby drill") and Scott Bessent being nominated Treasury Secretary nominee (and says the US should add 3 million barrels/day of production). So why isn't crude oil slumping and now on the verge of breaking out? Source: James Bianco, Bloomberg
USDollar is now the most overvalued in history according to Bank of America.
Bank of America uses a "behavioral equilibrium exchange model (BEER)", an economic concept used to estimate the equilibrium exchange rate of a currency based on fundamental macroeconomic factors and behavioral relationships. BEER models derive the equilibrium exchange rate from observable economic fundamentals such as Terms of trade, Productivity differentials, Net foreign assets, Interest rate differentials and Trade balances Source: Barchart
A new risk seems to be rising as we start 2025: terrorism on US soil
• NEW ORLEANS TERROR ATTACK: At least 10 people were killed and 35 injured when a driver rammed a pickup truck into a crowd during New Year’s celebrations on Bourbon Street in New Orleans early on Wednesday morning. The FBI is investigating it as an “act of terrorism.” • TESLA CYBERTRUCK EXPLOSION OUTSIDE TRUMP LAS VEGAS HOTEL: Government officials told ABC News that the Tesla Cybertruck explosion on Wednesday outside the Trump Las Vegas hotel in Nevada is being investigated as a "possible act of terror." Source: CNN, ABC, Mario Nawfal on X
An era came to a close in Europe on the first day of 2025 >>>
Russian gas exports via Soviet-era pipelines running through Ukraine came to a halt on New Year's Day, marking the end of five decades of Moscow's dominance over Europe's energy markets, as well as cheap gas that kept Germany's economy humming. The gas had kept flowing despite nearly three years of war, but Russia's gas firm Gazprom said it had stopped at 0500 GMT after Ukraine refused to renew a transit agreement. European natural gas prices have been rising all year and closed 2024 more than doubling from their February lows. There is a risk they will only keep rising now. The European Commission said the EU had prepared for the cut-off. Indeed, the EU has slashed its dependence on Russian energy since the start of the war in Ukraine by buying more piped gas from Norway and LNG from Qatar and the United States. "The European gas infrastructure is flexible enough to provide gas of non-Russian origin," a spokesperson for the Commission said. "It has been reinforced with significant new LNG (liquefied natural gas) import capacities since 2022." The biggest beneficiary of said LNG imports is, of course, the US which has seen its LNG exports to Europe soar since the Ukraine war and since the US blew up the Nordstream pipeline, making (expensive) US sourced LNG one of the few realistic alternatives for Europe. In other words, Europe has gone from relying entirely on cheap Russian gas to relying entirely on expensive US LNG. Source: zerohedge
Europe has gone from relying entirely on cheap Russian gas to relying entirely on expensive US LNG
Source: zerohedge
Warren Buffett did it again! Berkshire Hathaway outperformed the S&P 500 in 2024.
Source: Barchart
The last time just 10 stocks accounted for 38% of total market cap was just before the Great Depression
Source: Goldman, zerohedge
