In his podcast addressing the markets today, Louis Navellier offered the following commentary.
If you wish to listen to this commentary, please click here.
A catalyst for the stock market will be Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) statement. I am anticipating that in the wake of the 2-year Treasury collapsing from 5.06% to 4.16%, the Fed will hike key interest rates 0.25% and then issue a “dovish” FOMC statement.
Q4 2022 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
Some dovish words that I am looking for are “data dependent, lower market rates and inflation cooling.” It will also be interesting if the Fed cites any stress in the U.S. banking system. Overall, Wednesday’s FOMC statement is anticipated to be a big deal.
Happy Springtime
Springtime is a happy time of year – people get out and about a lot. The velocity of money, which is how fast money changes hands, picks up and prosperity tends to rise. March is a seasonally strong month, due somewhat to continued strong pension funding as well as improving spring weather.
My bullish outlook on crude oil is merely based on the fact that demand rises in the spring. So when Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day arrive, there should be much higher crude oil demand, which is why crude oil prices are historically higher in the summer months.
One factor putting pressure on crude oil prices is that Russian seaborne crude oil shipments this month so far have only fallen by 90,000 barrels a day to 3.23 million barrels a day through March 17th. The 500,000 crude oil output cut that Russia announced for March has yet to materialize.
However, a drop in production from Russia’s Siberian oil fields does take time to show up in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. Interestingly, Russia’s crude oil exports to Europe have collapsed, with just Bulgaria on the Black Sea still receiving a reduced amount of Russian crude oil.
Earthquake For Farmers
The war in Ukraine disrupted worldwide food production last year, but thanks to a 55% increase in Canadian wheat production, Canada helps prevent mass starvation in the third world.
However, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been gearing up to tell Canadian farmers to switch from chemical to organic fertilizers to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which would dramatically reduce Canada’s wheat production. Essentially, Justin Trudeau has been trying to follow Netherlands’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s agriculture reforms.
There was a political earthquake last week in the Netherlands when the Dutch Pro-Farmer Party swept provincial elections to become the biggest party in the Senate.
Amazingly, the Pro-Farmer Party did not exist four years ago, but Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s agriculture reforms, which included ceasing up to 30% farmland to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, caused outrage among Dutch farmers, which are the most productive per acre in the world.
As a result, Prime Minister Rutte’s goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 50% by 2030 is now in jeopardy.
Obviously, the European Union and Canada’s goals of reducing carbon dioxide emissions have severe consequences. Although Canada is blessed with tremendous hydroelectric output and can more easily reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, as soon as Justin Trudeau tries to tell farmers how to fertilize their fields, the potential blowback is expected to be much more severe than the Canadian trucker strike.
Although Justin Trudeau ceased trucker bank accounts as well as seized guns throughout Canada, messing with the Canadian farmers in the vast prairie provinces is destined to fail.
As a result, I suspect that chemical fertilizer companies, like CF Industries (NYSE:CF), will fare much better than expected this growing season despite the fact that the green police are trying to get farmers to switch to less productive organic fertilizer.
Fleecing Investors
Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) investment policies remain under scrutiny since Congress passed the Congressional Review Act to overturn a Labor Department rule protecting pension funds that invest based on ESG criteria.
This rule protects retirement-fund managers from fiduciary duty lawsuits if their investment choices cause lower returns or losses because the funds indulge in climate change or social-justice causes. Under traditional fiduciary standards, funds are obliged to maximize returns.
However, President Biden on Monday vetoed the Congressional Review Act, so ESG investments can continue to fleece investors since they no longer have a fiduciary duty. Obviously, the change the Labor Department implanted on February 1st to exempt ESG investments from fiduciary duties is changing the investment landscape.
Coffee Beans
Finland leads the ranking of the world's happiest countries for the sixth year in a row with a score of 7.8 in 2023. A sizeable chunk of the top ten roundup are also Nordic. Slightly further down the ranking stand the United States in 15th place and the United Kingdom in 19th. Source: Statista. See the full story here.
