Note: This video is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice in any way.
The week has come to an end.
Things that went down this week.
It was a pretty quiet week in terms of earnings. Not much to report on. Some things that jumped out to me this week were...
UK Housebuilders
UK housebuilders popped about 15% earlier in the week and that was driven by a change coming through in policy for buy to lead for first time buyers. So that’s trying to spur some activity in In the housing industry in the UK, which has been pretty stagnant for several years.
Source: UK Government Housing Statistics & Westminster White Papers on Housing Supply vs Demand
Companies themselves are pretty nice companies. Great balance sheets, well run, long established, but just a very, very...
They have a high beta to sentiment. So sentiment improves. They tend to follow more so. Sentiment declines. They tend to fall more so than the actual what’s going on. So they popped about 15%.
JAPAN
Elsewhere, Japan jumped, I noticed, about 5%, which ordinarily mightn’t be cause for reflection or looking at it. But this was of interest because most of the... Other markets and sectors fell during the week. So this was kind of an anomaly and stood out.
Source: google finance
The reasons were unclear. Tech was the sector that jumped most. The drivers behind it were unclear. I saw some reports that said it was.
Good earnings from AI companies in the US, but equally interest rates in Japan got up recently. Although the tech companies are doing well and the earnings are strong, those companies weren’t rewarded in the U.S. So it’s a bit strange.
Source: google finance
I’m not quite sure what’s happening. I think maybe they’re getting some fallout from so recently Korean stocks and Taiwanese stocks are doing very well, in particular chip stocks. So maybe some of those people invested in those. The first one, I’m not sure. But one to watch, and that’s Japan.
CARNIVAL CRUISES
So other things that jumped out, Carnival Cruises did very well, jumped about 15%. Their earnings report was very strong.
They raised their forward guidance, so they expect demand to remain strong. I think the interesting point here, I can’t tell you if Carnival is an investment or not or worthwhile, but what’s interesting to take away from this is that experiential... Investments, experiences still are getting a lot of demand and cruises in particular.
And I don’t think post-COVID is the only reason for that. You know, in the industry, people said, OK, you’ve been locked up. Now you want to have experiences. You want to go. You want to travel. You want to fly. You want to go on cruises. You want to do the shows. You want to whatever.
But that’s, you know, that time is now gone. We can do that. We’ve been able to do that for a long time. So I think it’s probably actually linked to the house builders in a way in that People are struggling, this middle layer is struggling to get on the housing ladder. They have disposable income, not enough maybe.
To get on a housing ladder, but enough to say, well, okay, I still have to live my life and I want... And, you know, this new world of technology and social media means people go to these places and they put it on their Instagrams and they spend a bit more money on that
than they would have, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago. I think that’s... That base level of demand is here to stay. Um... What else?
NIKE - JUST NOT DOING IT
Nike is reporting. I’m recording this on Thursday. So Nike haven’t yet reported, but Nike’s been a bit of a dog for the last five years.
During COVID, they came out with a strategy to be entirely digital online. They burned a lot of their relationships with their retail base. And that has deeply affected them. Other brands have come in, the Hokas and the Ons. And so they’ve lost a lot of luster. But then part of me questions, has it gone too far?
You know, they’re still an incredible brand. It’s still probably the go-to for many, for a lot of things. So something I’m going to look at, look into is, yeah, well, has this gone too far? Let’s see what the report is like tonight.
US <> China Meeting
And then the only other thing for this week was the Trump-Xi Jinping meeting.
And that was a bit of a damp squib. One commentator called it Diplotainment, which is quite funny. Yeah, nothing really came out of that. They’re going to open an AI dialogue, but what that means is not clear. So not much from that.
