Yesterday the BLS Jobs report was, once again, totally bogus. This past Wed. ADP reported new jobs
of 107,000 while the BLS reported 353,000 and the unemployment rate steady at 3.7%. If you look at
the unemployment rate reported by the states about 80% of them said that their unemployment rate
went up. The executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that lay-offs went
up substantially in Jan. and are expected to go higher in 2024. I think the unemployment rate will go up
to about 6% or so this year. In the 4th Q GDP report there was a big red flag. Inventories increased
by a miniscule .07% because businesses believe a recession is coming and don't want to get caught
holding unsold inventories. World economies are beginning to have serious problems. The Chinese
economy is falling apart and last week Germany reported that it's in a recession. Oil prices have
been declining since late Sept. and are continuing to decline because worldwide demand is falling.
Aozora Bank and NY Community Bank announced last week $700 million of write-offs with their
U.S. commercial mortgages. I think we'll see more of this in 2024. Business bankruptcies increased
40% in the 4th Q and I think we'll also see more of this in 2024. The bi-weekly CivicScience Economic
Sentiment Index dropped sharply in Jan. which is not good news for consumer spending which accounts
for about 70% of GDP. As the rate of CPI & PPi decline it will cause profit margin problems for businesses
resulting in reported earnings coming in below estimates. Nassim Taleb who wrote the book The Black Swan
said last week that he thinks that the U.S. debt will become a White Swan which is more predictable than a
Black Swan event.
With those of you who are into The Dow Theory stuff you're seeing that the Transports are not confirming the move
up in the Dow. The ITBMNYA has been in a downtrend since Dec. 29th and was down yesterday in a big mkt
move to the upside. The SPXA50 has been in a downtrend since Dec. 29th and was down yesterday. The
BPSPX has been in a downtrend since Dec. 29th and was up only .80 yesterday. Last week the $BANK
Index(Bank Index-Nasdaq) fell sharply so I'm not the only who thinks the commercial real estate mkt is
going to implode this year. I think the AI stocks are in a classic example of a bubble which at some point
is going to burst but I don't know when. I wonder how much longer the tech stocks(mostly AI) can carry this
mkt on their backs to higher ground. I don't know, but I do know that it's hard to slay a Bull. I love to fly my
airplane and this mkt reminds me of when you fly a plane straight up to get it to stall like you see at an
airshow and then it goes straight down. I wish all of you the very best.