Plenty of stocks are working in this market — just look beyond tech
We’re in one of those markets where it seems like nothing is working. The pain starts early with the evening S & P and Nasdaq futures giving you a double dose of crimson. But the trusty S & P Short Range Oscillator isn’t oversold enough to hold your nose and buy something. So you just feel like sitting on your hands. The relevant word in my first sentence, however, is “seems,” because there are actually many things working — so many that it calls into question what’s actually wrong with this market. Consider the case of Wells Fargo , a stock with a price-to-earnings ratio of 12 that had a quarter that was roundly disliked by the analyst community, despite some perfunctory price target increases. When I talked to CEO Charlie Scharf, I was so excited that he was going for broke, using his franchise strength to expand into mergers and acquisitions, as well as initial public offerings. Why not? In 2008, Wells Fargo bought Wachovia, which had previously merged with Prudential, A.G. Edwards, and First Union; the latter had actually bought Wachovia but kept its name, as it was considered a better brand. These brokerages were all very good and did a great deal of business. But they disappeared with the Great Recession and the consolidation of all of them under the roof of Wells Fargo, which would soon be dealing with so many regulatory issues. Even as the bank had a national footprint, it did little M & A to speak of, arguably less than outfits like Centerview Partners and Lazard, and you don’t think of Wells as much as an underwriter, either. That’s unacceptable to Scharf, who knows everyone in the business and recognizes that there is poachable talent at rival banks. JPMorgan , for one, has lots of executive talent that was passed over because CEO Jamie Dimon — with whom Scharf worked for 24 years — decided to stay at the helm far longer than anyone thought he would (20 years and counting). Charlie knows that in the new world of artificial intelligence, you can do far more with less. He has eliminated roughly 23% of the workforce, has become far more efficient, and has recognized the limited value of brick and mortar even as his bank has a more local feel to it. So what he has been doing is putting together a team of very senior bankers who could have run JPMorgan or any firm if there were an opportunity, and telling them to build out M & A and underwriting, which have much better margins and lower risk than lending. It’s working. He’s getting deals, and he’s moving up in the global mergers and acquisitions league table. I bring all of this up because Wells Fargo’s stock went down on the analyst commentary and then went up when smart people who talked to Charlie directly, not through the filter of the NIM-NII obsessed analysts, recognized that he is going to give Bank of America and Citigroup at least a run for the money. In two years, we will laugh at how wrong the analysts were. In a bad market, this kind of resurrection doesn’t occur. And yet, nobody’s focusing on what’s going on at Wells Fargo. J.B. Hunt is a similar story. We have been monitoring the trucking and logistics recession, both its depth and its length, and marveling at the group’s lack of resilience. But over time, the cycle played out as it usually does, with weaker players going under and then pricing firming to the point where J.B. Hunt reported a terrific upside surprise this week. Even as the stock anticipated the blowout, you still made money. That’s a big reason why we have been emphasizing FedEx Freight and added to our position earlier this month. The company, spun off from FedEx on June 1, has the cyclical wind at its back. Or consider the biotechs, a group that almost never fails to disappoint. Not this time. The best biotech ETF, SPDR S & P Biotech , is up more than 27% this year, even as most pros say inflation is accelerating. There is a very large wave of biotech acquisitions underway, and not all of them involve companies being bought by Eli Lilly . This is a bull market group, and while it is nowhere nearly as important as the chipmakers, it is important to recognize that a biotech rally is the hallmark of a very positive trend in stocks. Or consider something seminal that’s been totally overlooked amid the multi-tech wreck: Stripe’s offer to acquire PayPal . We always hear about how great Stripe is doing, so I have no idea why it feels the need to buy PayPal, which is in some sort of morbid spiral. But consolidation in that fintech space could be incredible for a market that has way too many players: Fiserv , Global Payments , Toast , Fair Isaac , Block , Affirm , and the like. We get that M & A activity going, and we can sop up at least some of the new stock that’s been coming to the market. Finally, if you have an even half-decent story to tell in retail, as with Target , or in the rails, as with Union Pacific , or with the airlines, as with Delta and United , you are going to get a good percentage gain to help out your overall performance for the year. Which brings me to the real issue of what’s going on in this tape right now. The fact that I can reel off a half dozen positives occurring right now, compared to what’s going on in tech, tells me the market is trying hard to exert some discipline on tech companies. Think of it like this: right now, with seven days’ worth of earnings under our belt, if you report a good number, your stock goes higher, and if you report a number initially not perceived as good, your stock can still go higher; think of Wells Fargo or even — egads — PepsiCo . But anything you touch in tech could doom you. Consider the hyperscalers. It seemed, for a moment, that we were going to see a trade where hyperscalers would start to go up because component stocks were peaking. It seemed too good to be true, and it was. We had a couple of good days that suckered you back into Microsoft , Amazon , and Google . They then started their journey down again and could continue to go down — something I discussed during our July Monthly Meeting on Thursday. I had debated going with this very thesis for the meeting, but when I saw how much money was made in that sweetheart SK Hynix trade, I thought I might be wrong, and there was still quick money to be made in IPOs even after the SpaceX and Cerebras deals. But it turned out that SK Hynix was one off — others can call it fixed — and anything related to data centers will still have a tough run. Some of the pain comes from the huge amount of leverage that is being used right now to be in anything involving memory, including Seagate , which was curiously up on Friday, along with Western Digital , Sandisk , SK Hynix, Micron , Arm , AMD , and Intel . This trade is being unwound at such a furious pace that we had to back away from trying to be disciplined buyers of Intel because the sellers are endless and forced, and I can’t tell when they will finish. Believe me, Intel is a terrific buy here, but if the hedge fund community is trying to bust those borrowing to buy these stocks, it can still fall. We added to our position twice last week. As confident as I am that Intel will work, I don’t like being down that fast on a trade. I would actually rather buy it on the way up. I know I am not alone on this. The unwind is a form of discipline. If you look at what has happened to SpaceX, for example, you can just be grateful that the underwriters did their best to make everyone money. They priced it as requested and put it in good hands, as requested, but then it was hijacked by memesters that actually thought they could manipulate one of the Top 10 largest stocks through overnight buying. Welcome to the real world, fellas! SpaceX in itself speaks to some discipline. Usually, when you have a brand new security, it can’t or shouldn’t be shorted. Often, brokers will tell you they can’t locate stock to lend you to sell short. But that doesn’t seem to be the case this time. If anything, it looks as if the underwriters have a good handle on where all the soon-to-be-unlocked stock is and are allowing short sellers to pair their shorts with shares that will be unlocked over time. So it’s not technically a short sale then, so it is legal, or at least OK with this government. The decline in SpaceX’s stock, amazingly, seems orderly, like some of Tesla’s earlier sell-offs, where true believers relished the opportunity to buy more at better prices. It has not led to some much larger sell-off involving space, energy, or self-driving cars. The big unanswered question is how long there can be such terrific opportunities outside tech before it dawns on those who are overweight in tech that they aren’t making enough money and that it simply isn’t worth the risk. There is no bubble in tech. The possibility of a 2027 breakout for those with extra memory, like Amazon or Meta, could explain what we are seeing. But I understand if we continue to see easy money made in other sectors during this earnings season, money will leave the tech sector. If you are a bull on tech right now, you have to be concerned that each day seems so perilous. It seems like tech is tied to the railroad tracks and somehow gets free right before the locomotive hits, only to be tied up again the next day. Eventually, you realize you’d rather be on the train than trying to avoid getting hit by it. To which I say: all aboard. 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