It's Only (Your?) Money

[pdub]

It's ( much ) cheaper than employing a full time employee.

[Shirley]

I think the number of tasks and jobs that will really be replaced by AI and automation is vastly overestimated.

We'll see.
I very much disagree.
Money over everything.

With money comes liability. The liability issues will be complicated.

Why bring autonomous driving into this?

Is it your LDS?

Leon derangement syndrome?

[Shirley]

The time to be afraid, very, very afraid, appears nigh.

The general public has never been this confident in stock prices, June 1987-November 2024.

[Shirley]

An attitude that applies way beyond the game of tennis:

Perfection is impossible.

"In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches.

But what percentage of points did I win?

54%

In other words, even top ranked tennis players win barely more than half the points they play.
When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.

You teach yourself to think:'Okay, I double faulted...it's only a point.''Okay, I came to the net and I got passed again...it's only a point.'

Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN's top 10 playlist – that too is just a point.

Here's why I'm telling you this.

When you're playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world. And it is.
But when it's behind you, it's behind you.

This mindset is crucial – because it frees you to fully commit to the next point with intensity, clarity, and focus."

Source: Roger Federer

[Shirley]

It would be much better if the current stock market rise involved a larger number of corporations. The market is suffering from an acute lack of breadth:

(And that's why the current admin's efforts to break up monopolistic companies was, imo, a good idea.)

[TDub]

should I move to gold ahead of this transition?

[Shirley]

should I move to gold ahead of this transition?

That's a goooooooooooood question. And according to this chart, it looks like to a lot of people, the answer is "yes".

But, I like to buy things when they're on sale, not when they're at all time highs. Not that gold couldn't go higher, like it has for most of the last ~ 25 years. One only needs to look at how Gold responded to the Great Financial Crisis beginning around 2008, to see the hedge it provided against the stock market, which lost ~ half its value, like many are predicting will happen to the current stock market, the biggest/only question being, when.

[Sparko]

The market should reflect an underlying value. Say, competent economic policy along with sound corporate strategy and productivity. Gold looks pretty good to me.

[Shirley]

I wouldn't necessarily bore you with this, but to see "the nonstore retailers category" stagnate like it did this month/year, is big. Potentially, really big. But only time will tell... Furniture?

Winners and losers from the December Retail Sales Report

The December Retail Sales report on Thursday showed sales were up solidly, but came in below expectations, with the headline print of +0.4% trailing both the consensus mark of +0.6% and November's growth of +0.8%.

In a surprise, the nonstore retailers category was only up 0.2% month-over-month and 6.0% higher year-over-year after a long stretch of regularly outperforming broad retail. While a quirk of Thanksgiving falling on the calendar as late as possible may have impacted sales, the slow growth could be something to watch for e-commerce pure plays such as Amazon (AMZN), Wayfair (W), Chewy (CHWY), Etsy (ETSY), Qurate Retail (QRTEA), eBay (EBAY), Beyond (BYON) , and Newegg (NEGG) that typically see big December growth marks.

Home improvement retailers Home Depot (HD) and Lowe's (LOW) should also be on alert after the building materials & garden equipment category saw negative month-over-month and year-over-year growth.

Restaurant sales growth also ran below the broad retail sales marks, as consumers may have reacted to the elevated level of menu prices. Typically, that impacts dine-in companies such as Bloomin' Brands (BLMN) to a higher degree than fast-food chains such as McDonald's (MCD) and Taco Bell (YUM).

On the flip side, the furniture & home furnishings category topped expectations, with a 2.3% month-over-month and 8.4% year-over-year jump. That bodes well for Williams-Sonoma (WSM), RH (RH), Arhaus (ARHS), Ethan Allen (ETD), La-Z-Boy (LZB), and TJX Companies (TJX) into earnings season.