While equity markets are kind of soft today the movements have been relatively orderly–no massive ‘tweet moves’–yet. I don’t mind down movements nearly as much when they take place in an orderly fashion–it is those ‘baby out with the bath water’ moves that I hate so much.
Today’s social media posts by DJT (as of 11 am central time) are all border patrol notes and that is the one area that doesn’t move the markets much. Let’s keep it that way–yea sure.
Our accounts are green again today for the 3rd day in a row which is nice to see, but really not too meaningful because we all know there is lots more tariff news to come. These days—relatively calm for preferreds and baby bonds — are good times to make sure you are ‘positioned’ the way you want to be. Do you have some ‘dogs’ that have bounced that maybe you want to unload and deploy the cash elsewhere?
We had retail sales news today with data coming in decent–not moving the 10 year treasury as it is dead flat at this moment at 4.32%. I am not taking this retail sales number too seriously–I know some folks were trying to get ahead of tariff price increases. For me most of the tariffs are easy to deal with–I have no intention of buying a car or any other giant ticket item. For groceries, we will buy whatever we want–2 old folks don’t consume too much food. I realize that folks with 3-4 kids will take a hit and in some cases they will have to choose between video games or food, but we have all lived through tough times and folks will have to make choices.
I have done nothing in the way of buy or sell today, but I did put a good til cancelled order in for some Hennessy Advisors 4.875% baby bonds (HNNAZ) at $24.30—we’ll see if someone wants to give me some shares. This one trades with a big spread–when I placed the order the bid was $24.22 and the ask was $24.75. WHOOPS I just looked and it executed and shares are at $24.22 right now. This issue matures on 12/31/2026 so the yield to maturity is somewhere north of 6.7%–not the greatest, but over 2% more than CDs.
