Author: Tim McPartland

I trust everyone had too much food and too much football yesterday. Hopefully everyone had time to reflect on what they had to be thankful for—I know my wife and I talked about it as we have done in recent years. We can find plenty to complain about, but in reality we have way more to be thankful for–in particular family, health and to a smaller degree wealth. Our wealth isn’t such that we can toss money away on non important items continuously, but adequate to provide the basics in life that are important to us.

I am also thankful for the readers and commentor’s on this website. Certainly this website provides pleasure to me or I wouldn’t work on it so much—honestly if I didn’t have this to work on I would be a bit lost after 16 years. This past Wednesday I received a Thanksgiving card and ‘donation’ from a long time reader–with it a bit of his personal ‘story’. Items like this make working on the website worthwhile (not the donation, but the story).

Ok so today futures are up a bit and historically today should be in the green by around 1/2% or so. Interest rates are up 1 basis point at 3.71%.

As has been typical in recent weeks and months I will do little or nothing today market wise. I could nibble a small amount adding to current positions, but it will be very small. November has been a good month for me with reasonable gains as we approach the end of the month–I always love the end of the month with dividends and interest payments pouring into our accounts on the last day of the month or 1st of December – helping to fund some nibbling next month.

Next week on Monday we have no real economic data being released–Thursday and Friday will bring the real news with the PCE price index on Thursday and then November employment numbers on Friday. These will be contributing data points for the December FOMC meeting decision of either a 50 or 75 basis point rate hike so they will be closely watched.

Finally we see a jump in jobless claims with numbers up 17,000 for last week–to 240,000 and continuing claims up to 1.55 million from 1.5 million. Honestly not a giant jump on a historical basis, but directionally softer. On the other hand the durable goods orders and capital equipment orders were stronger than expected—overall mixed signals.

Equities are dead flat–yesterday at this time markets were flat and I though we would see a quiet day–boy was that incorrect with equities up over 1%. Guess we will have to wait and see–won’t change my plans.

Interest rates are at 3.77% on the 10 year treasury—Flat!

We have some other economic numbers today, but the FOMC minutes at 1 pm (central) could be market moving–volume will be light this afternoon and minor volume could mean big moves.

Last night we saw a tender offer from PS Business Parks for their outstanding preferreds—criminals and thieves is how some describe the tender. Shares will be delisted soon.

Today my goal is to purchase a baby bond issue from WR Berkley–no sure which issue yet, but I need to ‘eat my own cooking’ since I wrote the Seeking Alpha article last week.

Yesterday was fairly quiet all around – stocks and bonds – tight trading ranges and I love it. Preferred stock and baby bond pricing can/will move up penny by penny in a flat interest rate environment. The nervous nellies who bought high and sold low eventually make their way back into the market–slowly. Of course it is way too early to declare victory over inflation–so who knows if this is a flattish interest rate environment–2-3 days is not a ‘trend’.

I took the opportunity, on a quiet day, to add to my very small position in the new Lincoln National Corp (LNC) 9% non-cumulative preferred at $26.50. My commitment remains small to this one, but am likely to add again soon.

I’m looking to do more nibbling–nibbling which over the course of months turns small positions into full positions–but like the Fed I am ‘data dependent’ and want to see inflation data for November before making any large commitments to buying.. I do have some 3 month t-bills maturing in December so will need to make the decision as to what do do with that cash.

Today we have no economic news of real interest so the quiet day may persist all day long—but tomorrow we could see some movement—even being Thanksgiving Eve. Below is the economic calendar for Wednesday–lots of data–none which is probably (who knows) highly market moving, but the FOMC meeting minutes in the afternoon could provide additional ‘color’ relative to the Fed rate hike in December (i.e. 50 versus 75 basis points).

Source:Marketwatch