Now is your chance to put your money into something totally unique. Steve Jobs autograph on a 1984 Macintosh System Disk Version 1.0.
This outstanding item is being offered by the Paris, France auction house, Pierre Bergé & Associés.
This is a floppy disk of the very first Macintosh software operating system from 1984 and dedicated by Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs – Credit: Pierre Bergé & Associés
It is inscribed as “To André Steve Jobs”.
In addition, included in the lot is a 1984 floppy disk, unsigned, for MacWrite and MacPaint.
This auction lot as an estimate of €10,000 to €20,000, with a starting bid of €8,000.
The original Macintosh was the first successful mass-market all-in-one desktop personal computer to have featured a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse.
Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) first started selling the Mac in January of 1984.
If you are into technology and autographs, this rare item is for you.
AXS Investments Launches First-Ever U.S. Suite of Single-Stock Leveraged Bull and Bear ETFs
by Fred Fuld III
Recently I wrote an article called 10 Ways to Make Money in a Bear Market. Well, now there is an additional way. You can now buy a single stock bearish ETF for certain stocks.
AXS Investments, a leading asset manager providing access to alternative investments for growth, income and diversification, today, July 14, 2022, launched a suite of eight ETFs that seek to provide leveraged long or inverse exposure to the daily performance of some of the most actively traded stocks across a variety of sectors.
“We are thrilled to be the first firm to bring single-stock leveraged and inverse ETFs to U.S. investors,” said Greg Bassuk, CEO of AXS Investments. “With the launch of this highly innovative family of ETFs, AXS has once again opened new access for traders and sophisticated investors, namely to express their high-conviction views on some of the most actively traded single stocks, regardless of whether their sentiment is bullish or bearish. AXS is excited to continue our aggressive build-out of highly differentiated ETFs designed to provide investors with unique, first-of-their-kind investments to achieve their varying objectives.”
The initial suite of AXS single-stock ETFs provides investors with leveraged long (“Bull”) and short (“Bear”) daily exposure to the following stocks:
As you can see, some of these ETFs have a leveraged bearish goal, such as Pfizer, which has a goal of providing two times the inverse of the daily performance of the price of the stock.
AXS Continues to Expand Fund Lineup with Fast-Growing Suite of First-of-Their-Kind Strategies.
Today’s rollout of these new ETFs is just one of many major strategic growth initiatives successfully achieved by AXS.
“Whether it is powerful inflation fighting tools, ways to express views on innovation, or a host of other novel investments that previously were unavailable to investors, our goal remains to be the leader in providing investors with access to the tools needed to build portfolios and to trade effectively in today’s volatile markets,” continued Bassuk. “We’re very excited about today’s news, and all that we still have in our product pipeline for 2022 and beyond.”
Have you considered moving out of stocks and into bonds to protect your investment portfolio? Think twice before you do.
Unless you are investing in Series I Bonds, you might want to avoid bonds at this time.
Remember, when interest rates go up, bonds drop in value. As a very simplistic example, If you have a bond paying 5%, and interest rates in general rise to 10%, a 30 year bond would drop to almost half its value.
Swift 25 Year Bond
Of course, you could sweat it out and hold on for 30 years to get your original investment back.
Even short term bonds can drop significantly, far exceeding what interest you have earned on the bond for the year.
You never know what the Federal Reserve Board will do with interest rates. Currently it looks like much higher rate hikes are in the cards due to rising inflation.
It looks like Fed Chairs are pushing for a 75 basis point (3/4%) interest rate increase for their upcoming meeting near the end of July hoping to help offset inflation.
So if rates continue to rise, how will it affect the value of your bonds?
The following shows what will happen to a 3% 30 Year Bond:
Value of a 30 year bond
If interest rates increase
30 year bond
Interest rates
3% bond
Drop in value
3%
$1,000.00
4%
$827.08
17%
5%
$692.55
31%
6%
$587.06
41%
7%
$503.64
50%
8%
$437.11
56%
9%
$383.58
62%
The following shows what will happen to a 3% 5 Year Bond:
Value of a 5 year bond
If interest rates increase
5 year bond
Interest rates
3% bond
Drop in value
3%
$1,000.00
4%
$955.48
4%
5%
$913.41
9%
6%
$873.63
13%
7%
$835.99
16%
8%
$800.36
20%
9%
$766.62
23%
The following shows what will happen to a 4% 30 Year Bond:
If interest rates increase
30 year bond
Interest rates
4% bond
Drop in value
4%
$1,000.00
5%
$846.28
15%
6%
$724.70
28%
7%
$627.73
37%
8%
$549.69
45%
9%
$486.32
51%
10%
$434.39
57%
The following shows what will happen to a 4% 5 Year Bond:
If interest rates increase
5 year bond
Interest rates
4% bond
Drop in value
4%
$1,000.00
5%
$956.71
4%
6%
$915.75
8%
7%
$876.99
12%
8%
$840.29
16%
9%
$805.52
19%
10%
$772.55
23%
Why Bond Mutual Funds are Bad
The worst possible bond investment during rising interest rates is a bond mutual fund. The reason?
There is no yield to maturity.
What that means is, if rates rise after you invest and never drop to that level again, then it doesn’t matter how long you hold onto the fund, even 50 years. You won’t get your principal back.
What can make it worse for the funds is if there are a lot of redemptions as interest rates rise and drop in value.
The fund is then forced to liquidate bonds at losses, thereby locking in losses for the whole portfolio.
Summary About Bonds
So if you have bonds in your portfolio, or you are consider buying bonds for your portfolio, make sure that you are aware of the downside.
Elon Musk is involved in a lot of businesses, including Tesla (TSLA), the Boring Company, SpaceX, and Neuralink, and almost became the head of Twitter (TWTR).
Elon Musk
However, many investors don’t realize that Musk has been on the Board of Directors of a company called Endeavor Group Holdings, Inc. (EDR).
In addition, Elon Musk owns 7,583 shares of Endeavor Group Holdings, according to a recent SEC Form 4 filing.
Endeavor, formerly named William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, is located on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills.
It is an entertainment conglomerate. It owns such businesses as UFC, the talent management company IMG, Professional Bull Riders, Miss Universe, and nine Minor League Baseball Teams.
The company has a market cap of $6.2 billion, and a sky high price to earnings ratio of 730. However, it does have a reasonable price sales ratio of 1.10.
Revenues year-over-year have gone from $3.48 billion in 2020 to $5.08 billion in 2021.
The Endeavor Talent Agency launched in 1995. In 2009, WMA and the Endeavor Talent Agency merged to form William Morris Endeavor, or WME.
Endeavor executives Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell became co-CEOs.
On April 28, 2021, Endeavor Group went public on the New York Stock Exchange.
Disclosure: Author has a short option position in TSLA.
By now, you should have heard the news. Elon Musk, the head of Tesla (TSLA), has decided to cancel his acquisition of Twitter (TWTR).
Musk is claiming that Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of the agreement, and has also claimed that the company has more bot accounts than what Twitter claims it has.
Musk originally agreed to buy the company at $54.20 a share. Twitter stock is now down to 35.04 in after-market trading as of last Friday, July 8, 2022.
Do you want to see the actual letter dated July 8 that Elon Musk sent to Twitter’s chief legal officer through Musk’s attorney? Here is the link:
A couple weeks ago, I reported on a Scottish island that is for sale. If you a little warmer island life, now you have your chance.
St. Andrew’s Island, also known as Little Ragged Island, is the largest private island for sale in the Bahamas. The size is 712 acres and it is located at the southern end of the country.
Little Ragged Island – Credit: Sotheby’s
There are many private beaches and large ships have deep water access on the eastern side.
The island is being auctioned by Sotheby’s with a current listing of $12.5 million with no reserve. There is a 12% buyers premium; however, there is a starting bid incentive [SBI] of 6%. A SBI is a credit to reduce the buyer’s premium by 50% related to the starting bid amount. The Sotheby’s web site has a video that shows how the SBI works.
Little Ragged Island – Credit: Sotheby’s
The island, suitable for developing, has its own private airstrip. What a great opportunity.
Many investors, along with money managers, and hedge funds, take into consideration many factors when looking for stocks to invest in over the long term.
These can include such things as the trailing and future price to earnings ratio, the price to earnings brother ratio, and even if the stock pays a dividend.
One feature that some investors like to see is a strong estimated earnings per share growth rate over the next five years.
The following is a list of stocks that have all of those characteristics and even more.Here is what the stocks have in common:
Market cap of over $10 billion
Trailing P/E ratio less than 15
Forward P/E ratio less than 15
PEG ratio less than 1
Earnings per share growth over the next 5 years over 25%
Pay a dividend
US based companies
Here is the list of all the companies that meet the above requirements:
Company
Symbol
Market Cap
P/E
Ally Financial Inc.
ALLY
10.81B
4.16
Ameriprise Financial, Inc.
AMP
25.64B
8.97
APA Corporation
APA
10.69B
4.56
Discover Financial Svcs
DFS
26.57B
5.76
Ford Motor Company
F
43.71B
3.89
LKQ Corporation
LKQ
14.02B
13.44
Nucor Corporation
NUE
27.85B
3.78
Ovintiv Inc.
OVV
10.19B
12.22
Steel Dynamics, Inc.
STLD
12.14B
3.32
Synchrony Financial
SYF
13.84B
3.87
Westlake Corporation
WLK
12.11B
4.87
Ten stocks were promised, but an additional one is included.
Anyone who watches the online financial network TastyTrade, which was founded by Tom Sosnoff, knows who Tim Knight is.
Tim Knight is the stock chartist who appears every day on TastyTrade’s Trading the Charts with Tim Knight for only 15 minutes, at 12:15 p.m. Pacific, 2:15 p.m. Central, and 3:15 p.m. Eastern time.
In addition, he is the founder of the SlopeOfHope website, which covers stocks, options, oil gold, the economy, the Fed, and many other topics.
Knight is also an author of many books. In his show today, he mentioned several books that he recommends, including a few that he wrote himself. Here they are:
The World Connection was Knight’s first book, written when he was 16, and predicted such things as talking to people through computers, online banking, and ordering tickets online.
Technical Analysis of Stock Trends by Robert D. Edwards, John Magee, and W. H. C. Bassetti provides information on making profitable trading decisions by utilizing proven long- and short-term stock trend analysis.
Do you like collecting old stuff? Do you have any interest in putting your money into alternative exotic investments? Then how about investing in a 76 million-year-old dinosaur skeleton?
Now is your chance. The auction house Sotheby’s will be auctioning off the skeleton of a Gorgosaurus dinosaur on July 28, 2022 in New York City.
This 22 feet long and 10 feet high skeleton is estimated to be hammered at between $5 million and $8 million.
