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WEEKLY ISSUE: Uncertainty is back, but we’re thematically prepared

WEEKLY ISSUE: Uncertainty is back, but we’re thematically prepared

Key points inside this issue:

  • The Fed, Trump, tariffs and the data bring uncertainty back to the market
  • What it means for investors
  • We will continue to hold Disney (DIS), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and AT&T (T) shares.
  • What to watch this week

The Fed, Trump, tariffs and the data bring uncertainty back to the market

Between the number of S&P 500 companies reporting last week to the Fed’s FOMC meeting and the pieces of economic data coming at us, we knew it was going to be a busy and potentially volatile week. What few saw coming was the attempt by Fed Chairman Powell to give the market the 25 basis point rate cut it was expecting and regain the position of the market not knowing exactly what the Fed’s next move might be. But then we received the July ISM Manufacturing Index and the July IHS PMI data for the four global economic horsemen (China, Japan, the eurozone and the US). In aggregate those data points signaled the continued slowdown in the global manufacturing economy.  

Granted, the sequential pick up in the July ADP Employment Report fostered the view the domestic economy hasn’t frozen over just yet, but Friday’s July Employment Report reveled slower job creation month over month. 

Normally, economic data like we’ve received in the back half of last week would be enough to ignite the market doves and stoke the view that another rate cut by the Fed was more likely before we exit 2019. And it was that view that led the major market indices higher on Thursday, that was until President Trump did something that arguably next to no one saw coming – announced another layer of tariffs on China that would go into effect on September 1. The implications of that move, which would likely lead to yet another trimming of forecasts for both the economy and earnings, pulled the market lower on Thursday afternoon. 

And on Friday morning, China responded by saying while it does not want a trade war, its not afraid to fight one. Soon thereafter, President Trump is “open to delaying or halting the 10% tariff on September 1” if China were to take action between now and then. Remember, we shared our concern that trade talks could devolve into playground taunting and fighting. Well, we are there and sticking with the analogy, it’s likely going to keep the stock market on the uncertainty teeter totter for the next few weeks. 

If some were hoping for a more normal August for stocks following this week’s Fed meeting, we’re sorry to say that’s not likely to happen. In the past we’ve shared several analogies about investing – it’s not crock pot cooking, you can’t fix it and forget it or investing is not a like a photo, i.e. snapshot in time, but much like a good film it’s an evolving story. As this latest chapter begins to unfold, it will be mean assessing and re-assessing expectations as new developments are had and their ripple effects determined.

What it means for investors

Odds are this will uncertainty will result in the usual back and forth for the market in the coming weeks, which will also see the usual end of summer low trading volumes. While a good chunk of Wall Street is at the beach, I’ll remain vigilant and continue to leverage our thematic lens.

More than likely, we will see the herd once again focus on domestically focused as well as inelastic business models as it looks for ports of safety. We’ve have a number of these among the Thematic Leaders and the Tematica Select List – Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG), Dycom Industries (DY), Costco Wholesale (COST), Axon Enterprises (AAXN), AT&T (T), and USA Technologies (USAT). Unlike the shoot from the hip go to choice of the herd that tends to zero in on electric utilities that group of six have the added benefit of thematic tailwinds propelling their respective businesses.

As August drips by, I’ll continue to look for thematically well positioned companies that offer favorable risk to reward tradeoffs in terms of share prices as I look to position us for what lies ahead. In the meantime, I would recommend subscribers catch the August 5, 2019 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek as the cover story focuses the coming streaming video war that I’ve talked about both here and on the Thematic Signals podcast. The author likens it to “The Hunger Games”, and in many respects I can see why that is a good comparison.

While we were recently stopped out of Netflix (NFLX), I’ll remind you that among the Thematic Leaders and Tematica Select List we have several companies — Disney (DIS), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and AT&T in particular – that are focusing on this market. Each brings their own particular set of strengths ranging from content to addressable customer base, but all three have other businesses besides streaming video to drive profits and cash flow that can fund their respective streaming businesses.

  • We will continue to hold Disney (DIS), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and AT&T (T) shares.

What to watch this week

After all the happenings for last week that I described above, this week looks to be yet another frenetic one for corporate earnings with more than 1,100 reports to be had, but the pace of June quarter earnings begins to slow and we face a lighter economic data schedule as well. And to be clear, even though we will face a plethora of June quarter reports, let’s remember that exiting this week roughly 78% of the S&P 500 has reported and next week another 13% of that group will be doing so. What this means is the vast majority of reports next will have far less of an impact on the market. This doesn’t diminish them from an ownership of data and information perspective, but rather a smaller impact is likely on earnings revisions and trading ranges. 

Corporate earnings to watch

In terms of which reports I’ll be focusing on this week, it should come as little surprise that they are the ones touching our various investment themes. Here’s my short list:

  • Monday, August 5: Tyson Foods (TSN), International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), Insulet (PODD) and ShakeShak (SHAK). 
  • Tuesday, August 6: Tenneco (TEN), ADT (ADT), AMN Healthcare (AMN), Comscore (SCOR), LendingClub (LC), Disney (DIS), 
  • Wednesday, August 7: CVS Health (CVS:NYSE), CyberArk (CYBR), Physicians Realty Trust (DOC), Darling Ingredients (DAR), Skyworks (SWKS), Tivity Health (TVTY), 
  • Thursday, August 8: Activision-Blizzard (ATVI:), Alarm.com (ARLM), Dropbox (DBX), Synaptics (SYNA:Nasdaq), Uber (UBER) 
  • Friday, August 9: US Concrete (USCR)

Economic data to watch

Before we tackle the coming week’s economic data, I’ll mention GDP expectations from the Atlanta Fed and New York Fed started last week off between 2.0%-2.2% and as we exited the week those expectations sat at 1.6%-1.9%. As I touched on above, the employment data we received last week pointed to a still growing economy but the take on the manufacturing economy per the July ISM Manufacturing Index and the July US IHS Markit PMI data pointed to a slowing domestic manufacturing one. 

We have only a handful of meaningful economic data coming at us this week in the form of the July inflation reports and ISM’s July reading on the US service economy. Given our pension for looking at other data set in addition to the formal economic data, we here at Tematica will be on the lookout for the last Cass Freight Index and other truck tonnage figures as well as the weekly railcar loading data. Those have been signaling the slowdown we’ve seen in the government produced economic data, and as such we’ll keep a close watch on them in order to stay one step ahead of the herd. 

Should the coming economic data be continue to disappoint relative to expectations and signal the vector and velocity of the domestic economy is down and even slower than recent revisions suggest, odds are the market will increasingly expect another Fed rate cut sooner than later. Our concern, however, is the intended effect of this week’s rate cut and another one should it come to pass on business investment could be muted by the continued trade uncertainty and weakening global economy. As we’ve seen with falling mortgage rates that didn’t stimulate demand earlier this year, in the near-term businesses may stay on the sidelines given the trade and economic uncertainties despite more favorable interest rates.


With 2017 Poised to be the Year of Ransomware, More Cyber Spending is on the Way

With 2017 Poised to be the Year of Ransomware, More Cyber Spending is on the Way

With headlines swirling following the WannaCry attack that hit more than 230,000 computers across more than 150 countries in just 48 hours, on this episode of Cocktail investing we spoke with Yong-Gon Chon, CEO of cyber security company Focal Point to get his insights on that attack, and why ransomware will be the cyber threat in 2017. Before we get into that Safety & Security conversation, Tematica’s investing mixologists, Chris Versace and Lenore Hawkins broke down last week’s economic and market data as well as the latest relevant political events. With all the controversy in D.C., there was a lot to discuss concerning the likelihood that the Trump Bump, which was based on assumptions around tax reform, regulatory roll-back, and infrastructure spending is evolving into the Trump Slump as investors realize the anticipated timeline for such was decidedly too aggressive. With mid-term elections looming, we expect the Trump opposition will be emboldened by the controversy surrounding the administration and will put in best efforts to appeal to their constituents. For the market, it’s another reason to see the Trump agenda likely slipping into late 2017-early 2018, and that realization is likely to weigh on robust GDP and earnings expectations for the balance of 2017.

The markets on May 17th suffered their biggest losses in 2017, with the Nasdaq taking the biggest one-day hit since Brexit, as the turmoil in Washington dampens investors’ appetite for risk while raising questions over GDP and earnings growth. While some Fed banks are calling for 2Q 2017 GDP as high as 4.1 percent (quite a jump from 1Q 2017’s 0.7 percent!), the data we’re seeing suggests something far slower. We continue to think there is more downside risk to be had in GDP expectations for the balance of 2017, and the latest Trump snafu is only likely to push out team Trump’s reforms and other stimulative efforts into 2018. If 2Q growth is driven in large part by inventory build, which is what the data is telling us, expect the second half to be significantly weaker than the mainstream financial media would lead you to believe.

While the global financial impact of the WannaCry ransomware attack may have been lower than some other high profile attacks such as ILOVEYOU and MyDoom, the speed at which it moved was profound. We spoke with Yong-Gon Chon, CEO of Focal Point Data Risk about the incident to get some of the perspective and insight the company shares with its c-suite and Board level customers. While many are focusing on WannaCry, Yong-Gon shares that as evidenced by recent content hijackings of Disney (DIS) and Netflix (NFLX), ransomware is poised to be the cyber threat of 2017. Those most likely to be targeted are those organizations that prioritize uptime and whose businesses tend to operate around the clock, making backups and software updates extremely challenging.

While in the past IP addresses may have been scanned once every four to five hours, in today’s increasingly Connected Society, IP addresses are scanned one to ten times every second. As consumers and businesses in the developed and emerging economies increasingly adopt the cloud and other aspects of Connected Society investing theme, we are seeing an explosion in the amount of data as more and more of our lives are evolving into data-generating activities. From wearables to appliances to autos, our homes, offices, clothing and accessories are becoming sources of data that goes into the cloud. With the Rise of the New Middle Class in emerging markets, we are seeing the number of households participating in this datafication grow dramatically, exposing new vulnerabilities along the way. That increasingly global pain point is fodder particularly for cyber security companies, such as Fortinet (FTNT), Splunk (SPLK) and Cisco Systems (CSCO) that are a part of our Safety & Security investing theme.

During our conversation with Yong Gon we learned that companies need to understand that breaches must be viewed as inevitable in today’s Connected Society, network boundaries are essentially a thing of the past. Security can no longer about preventing nefarious actors from gaining entrance, but rather is now about managing what happens once a company’s network has been invaded. From a sector perspective, with all the regulation and reporting requirements in financial services, many of these firms are leading the way in how to best deal with such breached.Uber

For investors who want to understand the potential impact of cybercrime, Yong-Gon Chon suggests looking at how much data a company is generating and how the company is managing the growth of that data, with companies such as Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Uber examples of heavy generators. Investors need to look at a company’s cyber risk as a function of the magnitude of its data generation and the company’s level of maturity in addressing that risk. By comparison, companies not affected by attacks such as WannaCry need to be asking themselves why didn’t they get hit? Was it luck or did we do something right? If so, what did we do right and what is the scope of protection we have given what we’ve learned about the latest attack strategies?

We also learned about the new efforts underway globally to develop attribution of cyber threats so as to differentiate between those threats from professional cyber criminals versus the capricious tech savant engaging in ill-advised boundary exploration. Along with this shift is also a change in the boardroom, where cybersecurity is viewed in the context of its potential impact on the business, rather than as a function of a company’s IT department.

One thing we can be assured of is that hackers are watching each other and the good ones are learning what makes attacks fail and where organizations are weakest. As the Connected Society permeates more and more of our lives, these risks become more pernicious and their prevention more relevant to our everyday lives. The bottom line is we are likely to see greater cyber security spending in preventative measures as well cyber consulting as those responsibilities become a growing focus of both the c-suite and board room.

Companies mentioned on the Podcast

  • Amazon.com (AMZN)
  • Apple (AAPL)
  • CVS Health (CVS)
  • Disney (DIS)
  • Facebook (FB)
  • Focal Point
  • JC Penny Co (JCP)
  • Kohl’s (KSS)
  • Macy’s (M)
  • Microsoft (MSFT)
  • Netflix (NFLX)
  • Nordstrom (JWN)
  • TJX Companies (TJX)
  • Twitter (TWTR)
  • Uber
  • United Parcel Service (UPS)
  • Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA)

Resources for this podcast: