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The bomb the market didn’t have to have!

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Are we looking at the pullback we had to have, as the selling prone May looms, the bomb craziness around North Korea threatens and the combined effect of Syria, Russia and Donald Trump pushes up the greenback, the yen and gold? And it comes as valuations are at elevated levels and quotable types like Bill Gross, the founder of PIMCO and now the main man at Janus, warn that we better get used to low growth economies!

Regular readers know I’ve been wondering where the sell off has been and I’m slightly conflicted, as someone who listed SWTZ (the Switzer Dividend Growth Fund) on February 24.

For the record, we are up 2.8% since we listed and have gone ex-dividend, while the S&P/ASX 200 is up 2.6% over the same time.

The depth of this sell off will be a crucial reading as the Trump effect, until recently, has made me think the pullbacks will be reasonably shallow. However, if this geopolitical spooky stuff intermixes with Trump looking inept and unable to deliver the promises he excited markets with, then we could see deeper dumpings.

I’m betting the geopolitical stuff will be managed and the overall strength of the global economy will ensure that stocks head higher over the course of the year. I’m hoping somehow Donald grows in stature in the job, despite Gross’s claim that the stock market is “priced for too much hope.”

Matters weren’t helped by the USA dropping the so-called ‘mother of all bombs’ on ISIS inhabited caves and tunnels in Afghanistan.

The Dow did drop 138.61 points (or 0.67%) post-bomb, but I was happy to see that US bank stocks reported better-than-expected strong earnings, with JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup impressing.

Amongst the madness, you have to look to see what real life sanity is delivering. This US earnings season, which will amp up over the next two weeks, has to keep telling the market that despite the craziness out there, the US economy is getting stronger and company good health says stocks can also go higher.

On the local front, the slide in iron ore prices and TPG’s big billion bet on becoming a mobile phone network player, explained index weakness over the week. Fortunately, we can bank on the banks so the S&P/ASX 200 index was up 0.5% for the week.

But the big news was iron ore, with an 8.5% slump on Wednesday night, hitting our star miners on Thursday. BHP lost 4%, Rio 4.4% and the always volatile to iron prices – Fortescue (FMG) – bashed down 6.8%.

But it wasn’t just the price thing. FMG did report lower iron ore shipments for the fiscal third-quarter, with its cash costs also rising for the first time in 13 quarters, due to the impact of wet weather.

And while this iron ore price slump has been significant and is technically a bear market, I’d like you to keep this all in perspective. This chart shows the full story:

swos-20170415-001

The latest price is $73. It was around $90 but in early 2016, it was $47! So from a near 100% gain, it has dropped 30%. It explains a lower BHP share price but not any talk about Armageddon. What’s the opposite of Armageddon when the price surged? Iron investors’ heaven?

What I liked

What I didn’t like

On Telstra

The TPG grab for spectrum has hit Telstra’s share price and it comes when every fund manager and their dog has been tipping me that the dividend will be cut sooner than many think. This TPG move could make these tips on the money but, as many of the tipsters have observed, when ANZ and BHP cut their dividend, the stock price actually headed up.

I think Telstra’s CEO, Andy Penn, has to cut the dividend but at the same time come up with a strategy that screams capital growth is coming.

If this doesn’t happen, shareholders will hang up on the huge telco, which should be able to wipe the floor with its opponents. Go Andy!

The week in review

Top stocks – how they fared

20170413-topstocks

What moved the market?

Calls of the week

The week ahead

Australia

Overseas

Food for thought

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

– Albert Schweitzer

Last week’s TV roundup

Stocks shorted

ASIC releases data daily on the major short positions in the market. These are the stocks with the highest proportion of their ordinary shares that have been sold short, which could suggest investors are expecting the price to come down. The table shows how this has changed compared to the week before.

This week the biggest mover was WorleyParsons with a 3.58 percentage point increase in the amount of its shares sold short to 8.52%. Harvey Norman’s short position increased by 1.02 percentage points to 9.13%.

20170413-shortstocks

Source: ASIC

Chart of the week

jobs

According to CommSec, about three times as many jobs expected by economists turned up in March. 60,900 jobs were added, compared to a 2,800 rise in February. Full-time jobs rose by 74,500 and part–time jobs fell by 13,600. As shown in the chart above, it was the largest back-to-back gain in full-time jobs (113,200) in 29 years!

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