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Morning News: January 7, 2025
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 7th, 2025 at 7:03 amEurozone Inflation Climbs Further Above ECB Target
French Banks Face Crucial Year After Falling Behind Peers
Canada Tilts Right: Inflation Claims Trudeau as Its Latest Victim
Why Would Trump Buy Greenland When He Can Rent It?
Fed Vice Chair Says He’s Leaving Role Early to Avoid Fight With Trump
Trump’s SEC Pick Likely to Give Wall Street Easier Enforcement Ride
Unable to Protect Consumers, the CFPB Scapegoats the Banks
Medical Debt Soon Will Be Banned on Credit Reports
Credit Markets Signal Warning for a Relentless Equity Rally
Markets Better Get Used to Trump’s Manic Mondays
Bitcoin Is Not a Nothing, But Not a Something Either
This Fund Manager Forecast a 20% S&P 500 Gain Last Year. Now He Says Cash Is King.
Robots Fill Workforce Gap in Korea’s Aging Society
Google’s Most Serious Rival Isn’t Microsoft. It’s a Startup.
Apple Faces Tough January as China Weakness, Tariff Risks Weigh
Meta Moves to End Fact-Checking Program
The Next Chapter in the Amazon-Trump Reset
Pentagon Adds Chinese Social Media Giant to Military Blacklist
What Happens When TikTok’s Trend Machine Shuts Down?
Nvidia Unveils Gaming Chips, Desktop PC to Protect AI Lead
U.S. Steel and Nippon Sue Biden Over Decision to Block Merger
Musk’s Massive Tesla Lithium Plant Hunts for Water in Drought-Hit Texas
These EV ‘Battery Belt’ Towns Are Betting Trump Won’t Ditch Them
Getty Images to Acquire Shutterstock to Create $3.7 Billion Firm
Whirlpool’s Answer to Inflation: Charging More for Fewer Parts and Less Paint
Cintas Makes $5.1 Billion Takeover Offer for Uniform Supplier UniFirst
Luxury Brands Need to Get Over Their Youth Fixation to Offset Drag From Trump’s Tariffs
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Morning News: January 6, 2025
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 6th, 2025 at 7:04 amChina Services Activity Gauge Signals Pickup in Growth
Xi Says China Must Win ‘Tough, Protracted’ Fight Against Graft
Trump’s Trash Talk Revives the Worst of World Politics
Prospects for Global Rate Cuts in the Shadow of Trump
Euro Zone Investor Morale Falls in January to Lowest in More than a Year
Your Happy New Year Depends on Trump and Inflation
Gold Extends Drop After Fed Officials Express Inflation Concern
Dollar Falls Most in Two Months on Report Trump to Limit Tariffs
Is This Bitcoin’s Golden Moment? These Are 3 Key Things to Watch for Cryptos in 2025
US Yields Hit 14-Month High Before $119 Billion of Debt Sales
Three Ways the Fed’s Message Falls Short – and How to Fix Them
Citadel Extends Non-Compete to 21 Months to Retain Talent
In 2025, Accounting Rulemaker to Explore Non-GAAP and R&D Spending
Nippon Steel, US Steel File Lawsuits After Biden Blocks Deal
Value of CES Is Found Far From the Exhibits on Convention Floor
Nvidia Investors Look to Huang CES Speech to Spark Next Breakout
Sam Altman on ChatGPT’s First Two Years, Elon Musk and AI Under Trump
Global Chip Stocks Climb as Foxconn’s Bumper Results Show a Continuation of the AI Boom
Exodus by Wall Street Banks from Climate Group Worries Advocates
Data Centers Need to Look Beyond Green Energy, Siemens Executive Says
Unemployed Office Workers Are Having a Harder Time Finding New Jobs
Health Care Is UPS’ $20 Billion Lifeline to Offset Shipping Slowdown
The Challenge for Made-in-America Bikes? Made-in-China Parts
Volkswagen and Xpeng to Build Super-Fast Charging Network in China for EVs
Disney Nears Deal to Merge Hulu + Live into Fubo
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Morning News: January 3, 2025
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 3rd, 2025 at 7:03 amAre Russian Sanctions Working? Debate Gains New Urgency With Trump.
China Lets Yuan Weaken After Defending 7.3 Per Dollar for Weeks
China Will Sharply Increase Funding from Treasury Bonds to Spur Growth in 2025
Emerging Markets Diverge in 2025 on Growth, Rate Expectations
Norway Sovereign Wealth Fund Makes $1.07 Billion US Real Estate Transaction
Trump Says Britain is ‘Making a Very Big Mistake’ with Windfall Tax on North Sea Oil Producers
America Still Leads the World in All the Ways That Matter
Economy in Counties Trump Won Points to Governing Challenges
Reserves at Fed Sink Below $3 Trillion to the Lowest Since 2020
Don’t Fear the Froth. Stay Invested Even If Stocks Are Overvalued.
BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF Posts Record Outflow After Banner Year
Biden Blocks Sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel
The Fallout From the End of the U.S. Steel Deal
Richard A. Easterlin, ‘Father of Happiness Economics,’ Dies at 98
A $20 Billion Fund Puts Its Religious Stamp on Corporate America
Tesla’s Car Business Isn’t Really in the Driver’s Seat
Why Mark Zuckerberg No Longer Needs Nick Clegg
Foreign Phone Sales Plunge 47% in China Spelling Trouble for Apple
Apple to Pay $95 Million to Settle Lawsuit Accusing Siri of Eavesdropping
A Year After Boeing’s Blowout, Quality Remains Work in Progress
Boeing Adds More Surprise Quality Checks in Its Factories
Super-Hybrids Are Automakers’ Bridge for EV Skeptics and Curious
Zyn’s Online Hype Risks Leading to the Nicotine Pouches’ Downfall
US Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warnings on Alcohol Labels
Hollywood’s Sequel-Led Comeback Projected to Extend Into 2025
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Morning News: January 2, 2025
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 2nd, 2025 at 7:05 amAsia’s Manufacturing Expands Despite Export Woes, Waning Confidence
China’s Growth in 2025 Depends on Battling Storms on Many Fronts
Chinese Stocks Tumble in Worst Start to a Year Since 2016
China Hits Dozens of U.S. Companies With Trade Controls
U.S. Companies Vouched for China During Trump’s First Term. Not Anymore.
European Gas Pares Gains After Loss of Russian Flows Via Ukraine
Are Russian Sanctions Working? Debate Takes New Urgency With Trump.
Politics, Economics and Markets Create a 2025 Three-Body Problem
Businesses Preparing for Another Year of Geopolitical Tumult
The Bull and Bear Case for 2025
The Case For Paranoid Optimism Under Trump 2.0
US Stocks Set for Bounce After Four-Day Losing Run
Here’s (Almost) Everything Wall Street Expects in 2025
Stock Bears Are Going Extinct. Time to Worry?
D.E. Shaw to Return Billions After Flagship Hedge Fund Gains 18%
Morgan Stanley to Leave Sector Climate Coalition
The Top Climate Tech Investing Trends to Watch
Why Credit Suisse Was a Magnet for Scandals
Nvidia’s Market Value Gets $2 Trillion Boost in 2024 on AI Rally
US Dockworkers, Port Employers Set to Restart Talks Next Week
Big Retail Gets Bigger as Smaller Players Struggle
How Saffron, a Precious Import, Became an American Cash Crop
TikTok, Trump Sure to Spark a Year of Social Media Chaos
China’s Late-Year EV Sales Boom Gives Way to Rocky 2025 View
Why the Obesity Drug Revolution Is a Work in Progress
Rolex Hikes Watch Prices by as Much as 8% After Gold Surges
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Morning News: January 1, 2025
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 1st, 2025 at 7:08 amChina’s Economy Is Burdened by Years of Excess. Here’s How Bad It Really Is.
China’s Leader Nods to Economic Challenges
Russia and Ukraine End Five Decades of Gas Transit to Europe
Green-Energy Firms’ Pitch to Trump: You’re Going to Need a Lot of Power
The Biggest S&P 500 Winners and Losers of 2024
Wall St. Sees More Gains Ahead After Another Bumper Year for Stocks
Treasuries See Hoped-For Rally Fizzle Into Another Lagging Year
The Best Predictions for 2025 Are Actually About 2024
‘This Will Be Priceless’—Elon Musk Just Quietly Blew Up The Price Of This Bitcoin Rival
Crypto’s $205 Billion Stablecoin Market Set to Go Mainstream
Democrats’ Problem With Big Cities, in Three Charts
Swiss Central Bank Faces Call to Hold Bitcoin in Reserves
A Top Climate Group for Banks and Asset Managers Is Making Changes
Citi and Bank of America Say They’re Leaving Global Climate-Banking Alliance
Alibaba to Sell Sun Art to Buyout Firm DCP for $1.6 Billion
The Visas Dividing MAGA World Help Power the U.S. Tech Industry
US Steel Jumps Most in a Year on Nippon Steel Offer to Biden
Is Living on Top of a Costco the Answer to Affordable-Housing Crisis?
Why Breakfast Is Busting Your Food Budget
What Happens When a Whole Generation Never Grows Up?
Advertisers Keep Avoiding News Sites, and Publishers Have Had Enough of It
Moviegoers Dealt Originality a Setback in 2024
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The 2025 Buy List
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on December 31st, 2024 at 9:35 pmHere are the 25 stocks for the 2025 Buy List. It’s locked and sealed, and I can’t make any changes for 12 months.
For tracking purposes, I assume the Buy List is a $1 million portfolio that’s equally divided among 25 stocks. Below are all 25 positions with the number of shares for each and the closing price for 2024. Whenever I discuss how the Buy List is doing, the list below is what I’m referring to.
Here are the five new buys with their starting Buy Below prices:
Adobe ($480)
Allison Transmission ($115)
Henry Schein ($75)
IES Holdings ($220)
Mueller Industries ($85)The five sells are:
AFLAC
Celanese
Farmer Mac
Hershey
PolarisHere are the corporate descriptions from Dun & Bradstreet of our five new stocks:
Adobe is one of the largest and most diversified software companies in the world. It has been known for brands such as Acrobat, Photoshop, and Adobe Document Cloud. Adobe serves customers such as content creators and web application developers with its digital media products, and marketers, advertisers, publishers, and others with its digital marketing business. Its creative cloud offering is a cloud-based subscription offering that enables creative professionals and enthusiasts alike to express themselves with apps and services for video, design, photography and the web that connect across devices, platforms and geographies. The Americas account for about 60% of revenue. The company was founded in 1982.
Allison Transmission is the world’s largest manufacturer of fully-automatic transmissions for medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles and medium- and heavy-tactical US defense vehicles and a leader in electrified propulsion systems. Its products are used in vehicles such as on-highway trucks, transit buses, motorhomes, off-highway vehicles and equipment, and defense vehicles. In addition to the sale of propulsion solutions, it also sells branded replacement parts, support equipment, and aluminum die-cast components, among others. The company also makes electric drives for transit buses and shuttles and its ReTran remanufactured transmissions for aftermarket customers. The US accounts for most of the company’s revenue, but Allison also serves customers in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions. The company traces its historical roots back to 1915.
Henry Schein is the world’s largest provider of health care products and services primarily to office-based dental and medical practitioners, as well as alternate sites of care. It provides everything from infection-control products, hand-pieces, preventatives, impression materials, composites, anesthetics, and dental implants to vaccines, surgical products, diagnostic tests, infection-control products, and X-ray products. Other offerings include practice management, business analytics, patient engagement, and patient demand software, repair services, and financial services. The company stocks a comprehensive selection of more than 300,000 branded products and Henry Schein corporate brand products through its main distribution centers. The US accounts for about 70% of its revenue. Founded in 1932 by Henry and Esther Schein as a storefront pharmacy, Henry Schein became a public company in 1995.
IES designs and installs integrated electrical and technology systems and provides infrastructure products and services to a variety of end markets, including data centers, residential housing, and commercial and industrial facilities. Our more than 9,000 employees serve clients in the United States.
Mueller Industries is a leading manufacturer of copper, brass, aluminum, and plastic products. The range of products it manufactures is broad copper tube and fittings, line sets, steel nipples, brass rod, bar, and shapes, aluminum and brass forgings, compressed gas valves, refrigeration valves and fittings, and insulated flexible duct systems, to name a few. It also resells a myriad of products, including brass and plastic plumbing valves, plastic fittings, malleable iron fittings, faucets, and plumbing specialty products. Its operations are divided among three segments: Piping Systems, Industrial Metals, and Climate. The company’s products are used in a wide range of applications including transportation, automotive, and industrial applications, among others. With operations in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Muller Industries generates most of its revenue in the US.
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The 2024 Buy List
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on December 31st, 2024 at 2:56 pmThe 2024 investing year is on the books!
This was another good year for Wall Street. In fact, this was the best two-year run the market has had since the 1990s, and it happened despite a lot of scary headlines.
Investors didn’t seem to mind. The S&P 500 notched 57 record closes this year. Not too long ago, many of the smart minds on Wall Street assumed that we’d have a recession. Not so!
In September, the Federal Reserve decided to cut interest rates for the first time in more than four years. Now the Fed seems to be having second thoughts about the pace of those rate cuts.
Higher-risk areas of the market did especially well in 2024. Bitcoin doubled, and gold had its best year since 2010.
This century is one-quarter over. The S&P 500 Total Return index is up 538.76% over the last 25 years, which works out to 7.7% per year (not including inflation), but it’s been a hit-or-miss century. Since the March 2009 low, the S&P 500 Total Return is up over 1,000%. As late as 2011, the market was underwater for the century.
I’m pleased to say that the 2025 Buy List performed well, although we didn’t do as well as the overall market. Much of this can explained by the sharp turn towards risk.
For the year, the S&P 500 gained 23.31%, and with dividends it was up 25.02%. Our Buy List was up 10.36% for the year, and with dividends, the gain was 11.61%. Much of our underperformance came during the last month of the year.
In 2024, the Buy List had a “beta” of 0.7255. That’s unusually low for us. I think this shows us how much risk the rest of the market was absorbing.
For the 19 years of the Buy List, the S&P 500 with dividends is up 583.91%, while our Buy List is up 656.85%.
Here’s a look at our Buy List versus the S&P 500 throughout the year (this doesn’t include dividends).
FICO was our biggest winner this year, with a gain of 71%. Last year, it was our second-biggest winner, and the year before that it was our biggest winner.
Fiserv and Miller Industries did well for us this year. Both gained 54%.
Celanese was our biggest loser this year, but that came after a 52% gain in 2023. Polar and Hershey were also down for us in 2024. Hershey was our biggest loser in 2023.
A year ago, we decided to sell TREX after it gained 95% for us in in 2023. Trex fell 16% this year.
McGrath RentCorp may have had the most dramatic year in 2024. It soared in January after it announced it was being bought out, but the deal dragged on for months as the government took a closer look. Finally, both companies decided to ditch the merger.
I always strive to be as transparent as possible when discussing our track record. Here’s a breakdown of how our Buy List performed in 2024. For tracking purposes, I assume the Buy List is a $1 million portfolio and that all 25 stocks are equally weighted at the start of the year.
Note that Amphenol split 2-for-1 on June 12.
Here’s the data behind the dividend-adjusted returns. I’ve listed each stock’s beginning price, ending price and dividend-adjusted starting price.
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Every Buy List Stock
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on December 31st, 2024 at 2:22 pmHere are all 111 Buy List stocks and when they made the cut.
Eddy Elfenbein is a Washington, DC-based speaker, portfolio manager and editor of the blog Crossing Wall Street. His 