Week in Review

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Week in Review

01/04/2025

For the week 12/30-1/3

[Posted 4:30 PM ET, Friday]

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Special thanks to Bob C. for his long-time support.

Edition 1,341

Congratulations to all of us.  We made it through 2024.  But I’m not sure we’ll make it through 2025.

2024 Market Returns

Dow Jones... +12.9%
S&P 500... +23.3%
Nasdaq... +28.6%

[Foreign indices in local currencies]

Stoxx Europe 600... +6.0%
FTSE 100 [London]... +5.7%
DAX [Frankfurt]... +18.85%
CAC 40 [Paris]... -2.15%

Tokyo Nikkei... +19.2%
Shanghai Composite... +12.7%

The S&P capped its best two years since 1997-98, having risen 24.2% in 2023.

The collective market value of companies in the trillion-dollar club nearly doubled in 2024 to $19 trillion from $10 trillion at the end of 2023.

The trillion-dollar club includes the eight companies with market values of $1 trillion or more, a group that swelled from five at the end of 2023.

Apple remained the largest U.S. company with a market cap of $3.8 trillion at year end.  Microsoft and Nvidia are the other two over $3 trillion.

I failed miserably a second year in my market prognosticating, far too negative, writing a year ago that the Dow and S&P would be down 9%, “Nasdaq unchanged due to the ‘Magnificent Seven’ et al hanging in there on the AI story.”

I’ll go with essentially the same forecast because inflation is going to be sticky, if not outright rising anew, and the Federal Reserve will not be lowering its benchmark funds rate more than another time or two, max.

So for 2025, S&P and Dow down 8%, Nasdaq down 6%.

Here’s what we know about the year ahead.  Donald Trump comes in promising a lot, but with a mere 219-215 margin in the House, soon to be 217-215, at least for a few months, once Elise Stefanik and Michael Waltz take their spots in the new administration.  Special elections for their two seats, as well as the seat Matt Gaetz abandoned, won’t be held until late spring.

And as I note below, the margin was immediately exemplified by Speaker Mike Johnson’s narrow re-election, just two hours ago.

I see a period of major volatility in the financial markets the first 4-6 weeks of Donald Trump’s second term.  Trump himself has said, starting on day one, he is promising a slew of executive orders, many of which, I grant you, will clearly be...in order.

But the world is waiting to see what he does his first few days on the tariff front, Ukraine will be looking to see what he says on military aid, many of us hope he doesn’t carelessly pull U.S. troops out of Syria, and that’s to mention just three of what are a myriad of serious issues on President-elect Trump’s plate.

And it all comes against a backdrop of a national debt of $36 trillion...and growing...

In just 17 days, Jan. 20, Donald Trump will be inaugurated, and the fun and games will begin anew.  Hopefully it devolves to the benefit of all Americans.  I’ll be here reporting on it. 

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Investigators on Thursday said they now believe the U.S. Army veteran who plowed a rented pickup into New Year’s revelers in New Orleans acted alone, after previously saying they were looking into whether other people might have helped him plant explosives in coolers in the French Quarter.

Based on hundreds of interviews and reviews of the attacker’s calls, social media accounts and electronic devices, “We’re confident, at this point, that there are no accomplices,” Christopher Raia of the FBI’s counterterrorism division said in a news conference.

With no further apparent threat, New Orleans officials said they were moving to reopen Bourbon Street and were confident in the security precautions they had taken for the Sugar Bowl, which was postponed for a day, from Wednesday to Thursday.  [The game then went off without a hitch.]

At least 14 people were killed, as well as the deceased suspect, who was killed in a shootout with police.  Scores were injured, many seriously.  The pickup driver was identified as Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, 42, of Beaumont, Texas.

The attacker, who served eight years in the military and deployed to Afghanistan, said in a video posted online that he had joined ISIS, Mr. Raia said.  He had originally planned to hurt his relatives and friends, but worried about how that would be interpreted by the news media, Mr. Raia added.  “He was 100 percent inspired by ISIS.”

Officials said that security bollards along a section of Bourbon Street had been removed for repairs in preparation for the Super Bowl in February.  Patrol cars and barriers had been set up to block access to the street, but the attacker drove around them and was traveling at a high speed as he mowed down victims on the sidewalk and in the street before the gunfight.

Investigators have found no link between the New Orleans attack and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas that killed one person outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas.

An active-duty soldier, Master Sgt. Matthew Alan Livelsberger, was driving the Cybertruck, shooting himself in the head before it exploded.

Livelsberger “entered the active duty Army in December 2012 and was a U.S. Army Special Operations Soldier,” the Army confirmed.  He was on approved leave at the time of his death.

“Firework mortars and camp fuel canisters were found stuffed into the back of the truck,” AP first reported.

“The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience,” said Kenny Cooper, a special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

President-elect Trump on Thursday ripped the U.S. as a “disaster” and global “laughing stock” in the wake of the New Orleans terror attack and Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside his Vegas hotel.

In a Truth Social post:

“Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!  This is what happens when you have OPEN BORDERS, with weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership. The DOJ, FBI, and Democrat state and local prosecutors have not done their job. They are incompetent and corrupt, having spent all of their waking hours unlawfully attacking their political opponent, ME, rather than focusing on protecting Americans from the outside and inside violent SCUM that has infiltrated all aspects of our government, and our Nation itself. Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen to our Country. The CIA must get involved, NOW, before it is too late.  The USA is breaking down – A violent erosion of Safety, National Security, and Democracy is taking place all across our Nation.  Only strength and powerful leadership will stop it.  See you on January 20th.  MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Donald Trump Jr. posted on the New Orleans attack, essentially saying the perpetrator was a migrant, and of course others then echoed it:

“Biden’s parting gift to America – migrant terrorists.

[retweeting]

“Insider Paper @TheInsiderPaper...

“BREAKING Federal law enforcement sources tell Fox, the New Orleans attack suspect came through Eagle Pass, Texas two days ago.  The suspect’s citizenship status is not yet confirmed – Fox News.”

What do I always say?  “Wait 24 hours”

Get ready for a fusillade of such garbage the next few months, at least.

But the concerns over the resurgence of ISIS are very real.

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“One obvious message [from the New Orleans attack] is that the forces of Islamic radicalism haven’t gone away.  They are still looking for security weaknesses to exploit for mass murder, and the U.S. homeland isn’t safe from foreign-influenced or -planned attacks.

“Christopher Wray, the FBI director until Donald Trump takes office, has been saying for months that the bureau is on high alert for another attack.  ‘We’ve seen the threat from terrorists rise to a whole ‘nother level’ since the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, Mr. Wray told a House committee in April.  ‘Looking back over my career in law enforcement, I’d be hard pressed to think of a time where so many threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once.  But that is the case as I sit here today.’

“A particular concern is the porous U.S. border with Mexico that we know people on the U.S. terror watch list have passed through in recent years.  What about others we don’t know?

“Another lesson is that it’s still vital to stay on offense against jihadist groups abroad, lest they be able to establish sanctuaries from which they can plan attacks on the West as they did on 9/11.  The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has meant the U.S. has lost its ability to monitor ISIS or related terror enclaves in that country.

“This is a good reason from Mr. Trump to retain the current U.S. base in Syria whose mission has been to deter the revival of an ISIS or al Qaeda safe haven.  Mr. Trump has said Syria’s civil war isn’t America’s concern, but it surely is if the country becomes a jihadist state or allows new terror camps to form.  The Kurds are holding thousands of ISIS fighters as prisoners in the area they control in eastern Syria.

“The possible return of jihadist terror to the homeland isn’t a message anyone wanted to hear in 2025, but it is a reality that the next Administration will have to deter and defeat.”

Russia-Ukraine....

--European gas prices advanced on the first trading day of the year as the region braced for freezing winter temperatures without a key source of supply.

Russian gas deliveries across Ukraine halted on New Year’s Day after a transit contract between the two nations expired, with no alternative in place.

Traders are watching to see whether the loss of Russian flows – an important source of supply for several central European nations – will trigger faster withdrawals from storage.  Inventories across the continent are already falling at the fastest pace since 2021, when the gas crisis was just starting to brew, right before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s Gazprom halted supplies on New Year’s Day after a five-year transit deal expired, citing a lack of “technical and legal opportunities” for shipments amid “repeated and explicit refusal of the Ukrainian side to extend these agreements.”

The end of the deal highlighted the European Union’s continued reliance on Russia piped gas and shipments of liquefied fuel, despite a plan to wean itself off supplies from Moscow.  Several countries have sought an alternative arrangement, but months of political wrangling have failed to produce an agreement.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has set a political objective to phase out Russian fossil fuels by 2027, and has said the end of transit will have little impact on regional energy markets. Still, countries such as Slovakia and Hungary have waged an increasingly bitter campaign to keep the fuel flowing.

President Zelensky has rejected any arrangement that would ultimately send money to Russian coffers while the war continues.  Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Galushchenko, said, “This is a historic event.  Russia is losing markets, it will suffer financial losses.”

Meanwhile, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose country is most impacted (along with Moldova), has threatened Ukraine with a possible electricity cutoff.

[Moldova relies on the Russian gas through Ukraine for its main source of electricity, a gas-fueled power plant in the breakaway Russian-speaking region of Transnistria.]

The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, has been working with member states for more than a year to prepare for the stoppage, with the bloc diversifying its supplies since 2022, turning increasingly to imports of liquefied natural gas, notably from the U.S.  There are “various options” for regulating gas transit to central and eastern Europe, including through another pipeline route and LNG terminals, the German Economy Ministry said Tuesday.

On Friday, Fico threatened to cut off financial support for more than 130,000 Ukrainian refugees amid the dispute over Russian gas supplies, aside from cutting off electricity exports. He added that Zelensky’s decision to turn off the taps would deprive Slovakia of 500m euro ($518 million) in transit fees from other countries.

Fico – who in December made a surprise visit to Moscow for talks with President Putin – described Kyiv’s move as “sabotage.”

Zelensky has accused Fico of helping Putin to “fund the war and weaken Ukraine.”

--Russian forces have been gaining ground in eastern Ukraine, but they have yet to achieve a big breakthrough that would alter the course of the war, even with Ukraine undermanned as it is.

That said, on Wednesday, Russia’s forces continued to close a pocket of resistance around the Ukrainian town of Kurakhove in the southern Donbas region, advancing to an industrial plan on the far edge of the strategic town.

Russian soldiers released videos showing themselves holding flags at the facility and claiming control of the town, but Ukrainian officials said that pitched battles were still being fought at the plant and that the struggle for control was still playing out.

In his New Year’s address, Zelensky acknowledged the many challenges Ukraine is facing but said that national unity remained its most potent asset.

“We overcame everything 2024 brought together,” he said.  “Victories and setbacks.  Joys and challenges.  Tears of happiness when we succeeded. And tears of pain when our hearts were wounded.”

--Ukraine’s intelligence service said a naval drone had struck down a Russian military helicopter for the first time and forced another one to return to an airfield after being hit.

Russia launched several waves of missile and drone attacks against Ukraine, starting Monday night and continuing into the morning, according to the Ukrainian Air Force’s Telegram channel. The barrage included six Iskander ballistic missiles, one Kinzhal ballistic missile, 14 cruise missiles, and 40 Shahed drones.

Air defense systems were able to intercept six of the projectiles and 16 unmanned aerial vehicles, but lost track of 24 other drones, it said.

--After a surprise offensive earlier this year, Ukraine’s forces have lost about half the territory seized in Russia’s Kursk region and may lose the rest in a matter of months, according to U.S. officials, potentially depriving Kyiv of important leverage for any ceasefire talks.

The Associated Press had an extensive report from Kursk:

“Battles are so intense that some Ukrainian commanders can’t evacuate the dead.  Communication lags and poorly timed tactics have cost lives, and troops have little way to counterattack, seven front-line soldiers and commanders told (the AP) on condition of anonymity so they could discuss sensitive operations.

“Since being caught unaware by the lightning Ukrainian incursion, Russia has amassed more than 50,000 troops in the region, including some from its ally North Korea.  Precise numbers are hard to obtain, but Moscow’s counterattack has killed and wounded thousands and the overstretched Ukrainians have lost more than 40% of the 984 square kilometers (380 square miles) of Kursk they seized in August.

--President Biden said Monday that the United States will send nearly $2.5 billion more in weapons to Ukraine as his administration works quickly to spend all the money it has available to help Kyiv fight off Russia before President-elect Trump takes office.

“I’ve directed my administration to continue surging as much assistance to Ukraine as quickly as possible,” Biden said in a statement.  “At my direction, the United States will continue to work relentlessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in this war over the remainder of my time in office.”

--Russia and Ukraine exchanged hundreds of prisoners of war in a deal brokered by the UAE, 150+ from each side.

--Vladimir Putin gave his annual New Year’s Eve speech, which marks the 25th anniversary of his rule, and he told Russians that their country was overcoming every challenge and moving forward.

But as Anatoly Kurmanaev of the New York Times noted:

“(Putin) did not say where Russia was going, even as it takes huge casualties in its war in Ukraine, struggles with rising inflation and absorbs diplomatic blows abroad.

“Much of his short speech was characterized by omissions. While Mr. Putin on Tuesday honored the country’s ‘fighters and commanders,’ invoked Russians’ pride in defeating Nazism and declared 2025 ‘the year of the Defender of the Motherland,’ he did not say who the country was fighting or why.

“It was a conspicuous omission nearly three years after he decided to invade neighboring Ukraine.  The war has claimed the lives of an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Russian soldiers, reshaped Russia’s economy and upended its place in the world.

“Nor did Mr. Putin address inflation, the main concern of most ordinary Russians, or a host of other economic challenges. And while the speech was notable for marking 25 years since he took power in 1999 – an era in which he cemented his rule over Russia – it contained no hint of Mr. Putin’s vision for the country beyond the broadest platitudes.

“ ‘We are certain that everything will be fine,’ he said.”

--President Putin last Saturday apologized for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane last week, breaking the Kremlin’s three-day silence on the accident that claimed the lives of 38 people.  He did not explicitly acknowledge Russia’s responsibility for the crash.

Putin “offered his apologies” for the crash in a phone call to his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, the Kremlin said in a statement.  Mr. Putin told Mr. Aliyev “that the tragic incident took place in Russian airspace,” according to the statement.

Aliyev’s office confirmed that Putin had offered apologies to Aliyev, but suggested that the blame laid with Russian air defenses.

“President Ilham Aliyev emphasized that the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane encountered external physical and technical interference while in Russian airspace, resulting in a complete loss of control,” Azerbaijan’s presidential office said in a statement.  The plane “was able to make an emergency landing solely due to the courage and professionalism of the pilots,” the statement added.

Aliyev called for a thorough investigation and for “ensuring those responsible are held accountable.”

The theory that a Russian missile caused the crash has also received support from aviation experts and U.S. officials.

Sunday, Aliyev, in an interview with Azerbaijan’s national broadcaster, said that the apology issued by Putin a day earlier would not suffice to preserve friendly relations between the two former Soviet states.

“We can clearly say today that the plane was shot down by Russia,” Aliyev said in the interview.  “First, the Russian side must apologize to Azerbaijan.  Second, it must acknowledge its guilt. Third, those responsible must be punished.”

Aliyev added that Moscow had met only the first condition thus far.

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Wall Street and the Economy

We did have some important economic data this week.  The ISM manufacturing PMI for December was 49.3, 50 the dividing line between growth and contraction, and below the 50 mark 25 of the past 26 months. 

The Chicago PMI was a putrid 36.9, well below consensus of 42.7.

The Case-Shiller home price index for October was up 0.3% for the 20-city index, 4.2% year-over-year, the latter down steadily from 5.9% in July.

November construction spending was unchanged, less than projected.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer for fourth-quarter growth is down to 2.4%.

Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose another six basis points to 6.91%, up from the 6.08% low of 9/26/24.

Next week we have a key jobs report for December.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the U.S. will hit its borrowing limit in the middle of January, triggering the use of “extraordinary measures” to keep the federal government from defaulting on its obligations.

Congress would then have several months to pass legislation to raise the debt ceiling before the special measures run out.

Yellen is expected to leave office on Jan. 20 and be succeeded by Trump’s pick for Treasury, Scott Bessent, when he is confirmed.

Europe and Asia

We had the December manufacturing PMIs for the eurozone this week, courtesy of S&P Global and Hamburg Commercial Bank, with the overall EA20 figure at 45.1, fractionally down from 45.2 in November.

Germany 42.5
France 41.9 (55-month low)
Italy 46.2
Spain 53.3
Ireland 49.1
Netherlands 48.6
Greece 53.2

UK 47.0 (11-mo. low)

Dr. Cyrus de la Rubia, Chief Economist at HCB:

“Even in December, the manufacturing sector is not delivering any holiday cheer.  It is the same old story – downward.  New orders have dropped even more than in the previous two months, crushing any hopes for a quick recovery.  This view is backed by the accelerated decline in order backlogs.

“A sign of the industry’s recovery will be when companies start rebuilding their inventories of intermediate goods, but December showed no signs of this happening.  Instead, inventories were reduced at a very fast rate again.”

Turning to Asia...China’s official government data showed the manufacturing PMI for December was 50.1 vs. 50.3 prior, with the services index at 52.2 vs. 50.0 last month and well above expectations.

The private Caixin manufacturing reading for last month was 50.5, down from 51.5 in November.

President Xi Jinping said at a New Year event on Tuesday that China’s GDP is expected to expand around 5% for the full year of 2024, signaling the world’s second-largest economy is on track to meet its official target.

China’s economy was “overall stable and progressing amid stability,” Xi said.  Risks in key areas were effectively addressed, while employment and prices remained steady, he said.  The official figure will be released later in the month.

So look for 4.9%, sports fans, because with Xi commenting, it ain’t gonna be 4.2%, if you know what I’m sayin’.  There would be a few officials who would end up in prison on “corruption” charges were such a figure released.

[The Chinese equity market was underwhelmed by Xi’s address, with the Shanghai Composite falling a whopping 4.2% the first two trading days of the year.]

Japan’s December manufacturing PMI was 49.6 vs. 49.0 prior.

Taiwan’s mfg. PMI for the month was a solid 52.7, up from 51.5 prior. 

South Korea’s was 49.0 down from 50.6 in November.  The Finance Ministry cut its economic growth forecast for this year to 1.8% from 2.1% last year, reflecting the fallout from impeached President Yoon’s martial law debacle (more below on this) and risks on the trade-reliant nation from Donald Trump’s tariff plans.

Street Bytes

--The “Santa Claus rally,” the last five trading days of the year through the first two of the next, was a bust, until today’s rally, but down for the period.

Overall, this week the major indices fell...the Dow Jones losing 0.6% to 42732, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq falling 0.5%.  But small and midcap stocks rose, the Russell 2000 up 1.0%.

Earnings period commences next week with a few of the big banks.

I’m a little surprised the equity markets are closed next Thursday, Jan. 9, in accordance with the national day of mourning for former President Carter.  I forgot it’s tradition and that the NYSE closed in December 2018 for the death of George Herbert Walker Bush. 

The tradition started in 1885, when the Big Board closed to honor former President Ulysses S. Grant.  Along with honoring former presidents, the exchange also closed trading in 1968 following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

The bond market is open next Thurs. until 2 p.m. ET.

--Among the best performing stocks in 2024:

Nvidia +171%; Walmart +72%; Tesla +63%; United Airlines +135%; Palantir Technologies +340%; MicroStrategy +359%.

Among the worst performing stocks in 2024:

Boeing -32%; Nike -30%; Intel -60%; Walgreens Boots Alliance -64%.

--U.S. Treasury Bonds

1/3/25

6-mo. 4.27%  2-yr. 4.27%  10-yr. 4.60%  30-yr. 4.82%

12/31/24

6-mo. 4.27%  2-yr. 4.24%  10-yr. 4.57%  30-yr. 4.78%

12/31/23

6-mo. 5.25%  2-yr. 4.25%  10-yr. 3.88%  30-yr. 4.03%

12/31/22

6-mo. 4.75%  2-yr. 4.43%  10-yr. 3.87%  30-yr. 3.96%

Across the pond, the yield on the German 10-year rose from 2.02% to 2.42% over the course of 2024, while the Italian 10-year yield fell from 3.68% to 3.52%.

--There are four new voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee, so get used to seeing their names frequently as their opinions matter a little more than the non-voting members.

Richmond’s Thomas Barkin, Atlanta’s Raphael Bostic, San Francisco’s Mary Daly, and Cleveland’s Beth Hammack rotate off the voting list in 2025.

Joining the permanent FOMC voters this year will be Boston’s Susan Collins, Chicago’s Austan Goolsbee, St. Louis’ Alberto Musalem, and Kansas City’s Jeffrey Schmid.

Goolsbee has been among the more dovish FOMC members over the past year, while Musalem and Schmid have sounded more hawkish.

--The Treasury Department has told lawmakers that a China-backed actor hacked several of its employee workstations and accessed unspecified unclassified documents after stealing a key from a third-party software service provider.

The agency notified leaders of the Senate Banking Committee, saying that “there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury systems or information.”

BeyondTrust notified Treasury that on Dec. 8, the threat actor “gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support” for Treasury Department offices, and used the stolen key to remotely access an unspecified number of workstations and to access “certain unclassified documents maintained by those users,” according to reports.

Treasury officials contacted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and worked with the FBI, the intelligence community, and third-party forensic investigators to determine the scope of the incident.

“Based on available indicators, the incident has been attributed to a China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat actor,” the agency told Senate committee leaders.  “The compromised BeyondTrust service has been taken offline and at this time there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information.”

Beijing said claims a Chinese state-sponsored actor was behind the breach are “groundless” and “lack evidence.”

--U.S. natural gas demand from LNG plants hit a record on Tuesday, the last day of the year, climbing to 15.2 billion cubic feet (bcf) in a sign of a strong year ahead from the startup of two new gas-processing plants, according to preliminary data from financial firm LSEG.

U.S. natural gas demand for LNG plants is forecast to rise to 17.8 bcfd this year with the commissioning of the two plants.

Demand for natural gas by LNG export plants could spur higher production in the U.S. and increase prices at the country’s main gas exchange in Louisiana, called Henry Hub, according to analysts.

The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of the superchilled gas and a major supplier to Europe and Asia.  And now with the above-mentioned story of the pipeline shutdown in Ukraine, demand from Europe will only increase further.

Nat Gas prices soared to over $4.00 on Monday due largely to a colder than normal weather forecast for the next few weeks.  But then the price cratered the rest of the week, largely because of a smaller-than-expected storage draw, as per the EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration).

Crude oil rose on optimism about growing demand following Chinese President Xi’s New Year address, in which he expressed confidence on economic growth there.  Additionally, IEA (International Energy Agency) data showed U.S. crude inventories dropped for a sixth consecutive week.

--U.S. Steel shares rose 9.5% on Tuesday after the Washington Post first reported that Nippon Steel Corp. offered to give the U.S. government a veto over any reduction in U.S. Steel Corp.’s production capacity in a proposal that marks a last-ditch effort to win President Biden’s approval for its takeover.

The proposal is aimed at addressing concerns raised by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS, which said last week that the Japanese company’s takeover of U.S. Steel would lead to a decline in American steel output. 

The White House referred to an earlier statement, saying it was reviewing the CFIUS report and declined further comment, though the president is said to still be planning on blocking it, even as the White House has never flatly said that he would.  Biden has about another week to make his call.

President-elect Trump said he would block the acquisition, but the timeline means it will be resolved before he takes office.

President Biden on Friday then decided to block the takeover, an extraordinary use of executive power, and a departure from America’s long-established culture of open investment.

If you are a foreign investor, knowing that a Trump administration is unlikely to change policy, why would you want to acquire an American firm in a sensitive industry, especially one in a politically important state?

Japan is our ally, people!  We need them more than ever these days, in our battle to contain China.  This is nuts.  Both Biden and Trump are flat out idiots when it comes to this matter. 

U.S. Steel shares fell 7% in response.

There will be plant closures and layoffs, and then I’ll get a kick out of seeing how then-President Trump tries to spin it.

--Boeing shares fell on Monday, a day after the deadly crash of a 737-800, a widely used model that is a staple of low-cost airlines, at an airport in South Korea. The passenger plane, operated by Jeju Air, was carrying 181 people, and all but two were killed.

South Korea’s transportation ministry said Monday that it would conduct inspections of the 101 Boeing 737-800 planes used by airlines in the country, including Jeju Air, with particular attention paid to the maintenance records of major systems, including engines and landing gear.

The black boxes were flown to the U.S. for analysis.  [More below.]

--The U.S. Department of Transportation has imposed a $2 million penalty on JetBlue Airways for operating multiple chronically delayed flights, marking the first-ever DOT enforcement action against an airline for unrealistic scheduling.

The fine addresses flights that consistently arrived more than 30 minutes late over several consecutive months, a practice that DOT says misleads passengers and distorts competition in the airline industry.

--TSA checkpoint numbers vs. 2023/2024 (for Jan. 1 and 2)

1/2/25...102 percent of 2024 levels
1/1/25...100
12/31/24...103 percent of 2023 levels
12/30...120
12/29...132
12/28...107
12/27...108
12/26...103

--Electric-vehicle sales could be in for a tough 2025, as President-elect Trump is widely expected to eliminate EV purchase tax credits for as much as $7,500 per vehicle.  If that happens, it amounts to a big price increase for most electric cars.  Higher prices, and higher prices relative to other vehicles, will drive down demand.

As Al Root of Barron’s notes, for an example of what the elimination of subsidies can have on demand, look to Germany.

“Through November, Germans bought 347,048 all-electric vehicles, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.  That’s down about 26% year over year.  Overall car sales are essentially flat compared with 2024.

“And through November, all-electric vehicles accounted for about 13% of all new car sales in Germany, down from 18% in 2023....

“What changed is pricing... Germany once had purchase subsidies that lowered the price of a car by about $5,000 to roughly $42,000. But the government cut the subsidies, so the $42,000 car effectively became a $47,000, up about 12%. That drove demand down 26%.  Applying similar math to the U.S. means investors should expect EV sales to fall by about a similar amount.”

The average EV in the U.S., before subsidies, costs about $55,000.

Americans are on pace to buy about 1.3 million all-electric cars in 2024, and perhaps about 1 million in 2025, according to Cox Automotive, up 12% in the fourth quarter.  President-elect Trump’s threats to eliminate tax credits a major reason for the season-end boost.

A strong fourth quarter also helped push total car sales up from the year prior.  The annualized rate for 2024 rose to 15.9 million cars, based on the average forecast of four researchers, up from 15.5 million a year ago.

--With the above in mind, Tesla Inc.’s annual vehicle sales dropped for the first time in more than a decade despite a year-end push that sent deliveries to a record in the fourth quarter.

Tesla sold 1.79 million vehicles last year, it said Thursday, which was slightly less than what it delivered in 2023 and was below consensus.

Even as hype around driverless cars and Musk’s closeness with President-elect Trump have sent Tesla’s stock soaring (until recently), ditto Elon’s net worth, lukewarm consumer demand is weighing on sales of EVs.

For the quarter ending Dec. 31, Tesla delivered 495,570 vehicles, missing the 512,277 analysts had projected.  It needed to sell nearly 515,000 vehicles in the quarter to meet its goal for “slight” growth in the full year.

Tesla said as recently as October that it expected to achieve modest growth in its deliveries for all of 2024.  The EV maker had pushed a myriad of deals related to financing, charging and leases to end-of-year buyers.

Musk told investors on Tesla’s latest earnings call that he sees 20% to 30% growth this year, 2025, fueled in part by a more affordable vehicle expected to be unveiled in the first half and on the company’s autonomous technology.  The EV maker has said little about what that new vehicle will look like or what its price will be.

Now there is already doubt over the company’s ability to achieve Musk’s 2025 growth objective, particularly if EV tax credits are rolled back under Trump.

Meanwhile, Chinese competitor BYD Co. sold 4.25 million passenger EV and plug-in gas-electric hybrid models last year, narrowing its gap with Tesla as the top electric-vehicle maker.

It sold 207,734 EVs in December, taking its annual total to 1.76 million, just shy of Tesla’s figure.

BYD sells 90% of its cars in China, where it’s been extending its lead over foreign brands like Volkswagen and Toyota.

--And we had further sales data this afternoon that I’m attempting to plug in....

GM’s sales for the fourth quarter rose 21%, helped by strong demand for the Chevrolet Suburban and other large SUVs.  Ford’s F Series pickups drove the automaker to a 9% gain for the quarter.  Both automakers posted a 4% gain for the full year, GM at about 2.7 million vehicles for the year, Ford 2.079 million.

Toyota Motor, the leader in hybrid vehicles, said U.S. sales of hybrids and EVs rose more than 50% last year, accounting for 43% of its total sales.  For the year, Toyota’s overall sales were 2.33 million, up 3.7% for the year.

Korea’s Hyundai Motor reported a 10% increase in fourth quarter U.S. sales, helped by solid results for its electric and hybrid models.

Stellantis, the parent of Jeep and Ram, was the U.S. market’s underperformer in 2024, with sales sinking 15%.

--President-elect Trump has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to pause implementation of a law that would ban popular social media app TikTok or force its sale, arguing he should have time after taking office to pursue a “political resolution” to the issue.

The court is set to hear arguments in the case on Jan. 10.

The law would require TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the platform to an American company or face a ban. The U.S. Congress voted in April to ban it unless ByteDance sells the app by Jan. 19.

TikTok, which has over 170 million U.S. users, and its parent have sought to have the law struck down.  But if the court does not rule in their favor and no divestment occurs, the app could be effectively banned in the United States on Jan. 19, one day before Trump takes office.

Trump’s support for TikTok is a reversal from 2020, when he tried to block the app in the United States and force its sale to American companies because of its Chinese ownership.

But the company has been making inroads with Trump and his team during the presidential campaign.

“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute,” said D. John Sauer, Trump’s lawyer who is also the president-elect’s pick for U.S. solicitor general.

“Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thus permitting President Trump’s incoming administration the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case,” he added.

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“The drafters of the U.S. Constitution debated whether one or more chief executives was the best form of government. They settled on one at a time, which has worked out well enough for 235 years.  But enter Donald Trump, who now wants the Supreme Court to treat him like a second President with Joe Biden so he can save TikTok.

“That’s the essence of Mr. Trump’s amicus brief filed Friday in TikTok v. Garland, which the Supreme Court will hear on Jan. 10....

“The brief is extraordinary in several ways, none of them good.  The law bans TikTok in the U.S. if it doesn’t divest from its Chinese owner ByteDance by 270 days from its enactment.  The deadline happens to fall on Jan. 19. Mr. Trump wants the Court to treat him as if he’s already President before he’s inaugurated.

“Yet until he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, Mr. Trump is for legal purposes a private citizen.  The Court has already denied the request by TikTok and ByteDance for a stay of the law, choosing instead to rule on the merits.  To grant Mr. Trump’s request for a stay now would set a bad precedent that invites future incoming Presidents to interfere in pending Court cases.

“Mr. Trump is also in essence asking the Justices to let him rewrite a law he doesn’t like.  But Congress debated TikTok for years before it finally acted in bipartisan fashion.  The law carefully balances national security and First Amendment concerns and passed the House 360-58 and Senate 79-18.

“The President-elect nonetheless argues that ‘whether Congress may dictate a particular outcome by the Executive Branch on such a significant, fact-intensive question of national security raises a significant question under Article II.’  But the law doesn’t handicap the President’s power to respond to national-security threats. It strengthens it....

“The law does allow for the sitting President – in this case Mr. Biden – to grant a 90-day delay on divestiture.  But that is only if the President certifies that ‘significant progress’ has been made on divestiture and more time is needed to complete it. The law doesn’t contemplate that a new President could come in and stop divestiture on his command.

“Yet Mr. Trump instructs the Court that he deserves this power because he won the election and is a wizard on social media.  Really, that’s his claim.  His brief says he has special standing to represent the interests of some 170 million American TikTok users because he founded the ‘resoundingly successful social-media platform, Truth Social’ and is ‘one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history.’

“The brief adds with trademark puffery that ‘President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government – concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged.’

“At least that last point is right.  Mr. Trump tried to force TikTok’s divestiture in his first term but was blocked by the courts.  Why has he changed now?  The brief implies that it’s because TikTok helped him win.  He and his aides have been touting his success on TikTok since the election.  Mr. Trump’s last-minute intervention to save TikTok will no doubt be received well in Beijing, which by the way bans U.S. social-media platforms.

“One last legal point: Mr. Trump’s brief is signed by John Sauer, his nominee to be Solicitor General. But the SG isn’t supposed to be Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, and Mr. Sauer’s brief won’t help his credibility with the Justices if he is confirmed by the Senate.  We trust the Justices will ignore his amicus sophistry.”

--New York City’s office market had a strong finish to 2024, providing reasons for optimism.

Firms leased about 10.2 million square feet of space during the fourth quarter in Manhattan for its strongest fourth quarter since 2019, as reported by Crain’s New York Business.

Bloomberg and Citadel both signed big leases, Bloomberg’s an expansion at its 919 Third Ave. headquarters.

--Hollywood is a huge economic force in the Los Angeles, Calif., area, and film and television projects delayed by the Hollywood strikes of 2023 will finally hit screens over the next 12 months.  Cinema-goers can look forward to installments of “Avatar,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Captain America.”  Television viewers will get new series of “The White Lotus” and “Stranger Things.”  But at the same time, studios are tightening their belts.

As for the 2024 box office, a late surge helped, with projected ticket sales for the year closer to 2023’s total, with full-year box office sales now projected to reach $8.75 billion, just 3.3% shy of last year’s haul, according to Comscore. Through Sunday, the year’s total domestic sales were $8.66 billion.

Back in June, sales were tracking 27.5% below 2023 sales.  That was before the $154.2 million domestic debut of Disney Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” on June 14, which together with other releases helped pull Hollywood out of its slump.

Domestic ticket sales are still far below the record $11.9 billion in 2018, according to Comscore.

More than 680 million movie tickets have been sold this year through Dec. 15, compared with an average of more than one billion tickets sold annually from 2005 to 2019, according to EntTelligence, a moviegoing data analytics firm.

--In 2023, 93 of the 100 most-watched television broadcasts in America were National Football League games.  Abroad, the Super Bowl is popular, and the NFL wants their product to be more than a niche sport in much of the world.

So...in 2025, the league will play eight games abroad – more than in any previous season.  Teams are focusing on building fan bases overseas.

--Finally, we note the passing of cable-television pioneer, Charles Dolan, 98.

Dolan was the founder of Cablevision Systems, which over four decades grew into a leading pay-TV operator in the New York metropolitan area.  Over the course of his career, his holdings in media included AMC Networks, whose namesake channel aired “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad”; Madison Square Garden Co., including the famous venue and ownership of the New York Knicks and New York Rangers; Radio City Music Hall; and the newspaper Newsday.

In 1964, Dolan made a deal with New York to wire some Manhattan buildings with cable and a few years later, hoping to attract viewers, he made a deal to show the Knicks and Rangers playoffs on cable, according to Variety.

He then went on to create Home Box Office for movies, and then sold both his cable service and HBO to build up Cablevision, which ended up providing television and internet to households across the northeastern U.S.

Dolan was one of the first industry executives to argue that consumers should be able to buy cable channels a la carte instead of being forced to buy large bundles, an idea that is still resisted by entertainment giants.

In 2015, the Dolan family sold Cablevision to European company Altice for nearly $18 billion.

By then Dolan’s son James was running the family’s empire.

Charles Dolan was worth $5.4 billion at the time of his death, according to Forbes.

Foreign Affairs, Part II

China / Taiwan: Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te vowed to boost the island’s defenses and improve economic resilience in a New Year’s Day speech, as he faces a serious challenge from the opposition-controlled legislature.

Noting that the Ukraine war is still going on, Lai said, “authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran” continue to converge, threatening the “rules-based international order” and seriously affecting the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific and the world.

He said peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait was essential for world security and prosperity, and that “Taiwan must be prepared for danger in times of peace, increase the defense budget, strengthen defense capabilities” and show that it is determined to protect itself.

Lai’s speech on Wednesday followed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s address on New Year’s Eve, which included a message for Taiwan.

In the televised speech, Xi said Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait belonged to one family, that no one could sever the bond of kinship between them, and “no one can ever stop China’s reunification – a trend of the times.”

Lai on Wednesday urged Taiwanese to gather “every bit of strength” to improve the island’s defenses and “build the capacity to respond to large-scale disasters and deter threats and invasions.”

He said Taiwan would step up efforts to counter information and cognitive warfare, and reject threats and inducements, to prevent “malicious infiltration by foreign forces.”

But Lai is facing stiff opposition for his goals, with the opposition-controlled legislature passing a series of bills on December 20 to sharply curtail the powers of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.  Among them is a funding bill that could reduce defense spending by 28 percent.

In answering questions from the press, Lai also commented that Beijing was to blame for blocking people-to-people exchanges by restricting mainland Chinese tourists and students from visiting Taiwan.

He said more than 2 million Taiwanese visited the mainland from January to November, but only 285,000 mainlanders travelled to Taiwan in that time.

South Korea: A court cleared the way for officials to detain President Yoon Suk Yeol for questioning on Tuesday, as the authorities investigated whether his declaration of martial law last month, which plunged the country into political crisis, amounted to an insurrection.

The court order stops short of a formal arrest warrant. The warrant issued on Tuesday only allowed investigators to detain him for questioning for a limited period of time; they need a separate warrant from a court to formally arrest him.

Officials have grown impatient with Yoon’s refusal to answer questions about his actions, which could still lead to his arrest and indictment.

Yoon was impeached by parliament on Dec. 14, becoming the first sitting president of South Korea to face a criminal investigation.

But Thursday, in a message to conservative supporters rallying outside his Seoul residence, Yoon vowed to “fight to the end” against “anti-state forces,” while his legal team warned that police officers attempting to detain him could face arrest by his presidential security services or even civilians.

Then today, Friday, South Korean investigators failed to arrest Yoon, thwarted by his armed Secret Service bodyguards and members of the military in another tense showdown.

There was a roughly six-hour standoff at the presidential residence in central Seoul.  Hundreds of Yoon’s supporters had packed onto the adjacent sidewalks, waving South Korean and U.S. flags and holding signs that read: “Nullify impeachment” and “Stop the Steal.” [Sound familiar?]

It took hours for investigators to get near the residence, amidst constant scuffling with the security forces.  Finally, three prosecutors were allowed to approach the door, where they handed the arrest warrant to Yoon’s lawyers.  A defense attorney said, “We will not comply with an illegal warrant.”

By law, the mission of the presidential security detail is to protect the country’s leader – and while Yoon was impeached, he was not removed from office, yet, and he remains the elected head of the country pending a Constitutional Court review.  The court has until mid-June to do so, though it is expected to move more quickly than that.

This is a really dangerous time for the nation.  President Yoon has an 11% approval rating.  But he’s putting the country through this turmoil, which comes at a time of the worst plane crash in South Korea in decades.

Regarding the crash of the Jeju Air flight last Sunday morning that killed 179 people, with just two survivors, among the many facets of the investigation is why a concrete barrier was at the end of the runway.  Had it not been there, everyone likely survives.  A pilot who uses the airport told the local press that he always thought the wall was a mound of dirt.

One of the passengers aboard the jet, which flew from Thailand to Muan International Airport, texted a relative that a bird was stuck in the plane’s wing, according to News1 agency.

“Should I say my last words?” the passenger texted their relative, according to the outlet.

The plane had attempted one landing before the crash but was forced to “go around” and try again when the landing gear failed to lower.

Transport Ministry officials said the airport control tower issued a bird strike warning to the plane shortly before it intended to land and gave its pilot permission to land in a different area.

The pilot then sent out a distress signal just before the plane overshot the end of the runway and skidded across a buffer zone before hitting the wall.

I asked an old-time friend, with decades of experience flying for the Navy and then commercial airlines, what he thought happened and he sent me a thread from an internal message board he is part if and of course no one definitively knows what happened yet...why the landing gear didn’t come down, why the plane was running hot on touchdown, whether or not there was total chaos in the cockpit and simple moves that weren’t made....

But one thing I learned from the message board was that all of Bob C.’s fellow pilots, and Bob, agreed...it’s important to spend a lot of time in the ‘sim,’ the flight simulators, and practice handling such emergencies.

One other thing...as I noted above, the pilots in the Azerbaijan Airlines tragedy would seem to be real heroes, and from all I read, they were very experienced.   The pilots of the Jeju aircraft?  We’ll see what the black boxes reveal.

Israel: The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that talks between Israel and Hamas had hit an impasse, according to Arab mediators.

The mediators said that a hostage-Gaza ceasefire deal is unlikely to be completed by the time President Biden leaves office.

Hamas reportedly waived the possibility of discussions for a complete end to the war the terror group started until the later stages of a deal, instead focusing on a temporary ceasefire, the release of security prisoners from Israeli prisons, and an increase of aid entering Gaza.

The discussions centered around a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for the release of 30 hostages which meet certain conditions, according to the Journal.  The Arab mediators also claimed Israel had refused to release some of the detainees requested by Hamas.

While the mediators did not specify which prisoners Israel had refused to release, reports throughout the war have suggested Hamas desires the release of Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti, former leader of the Tanzim, a militant faction of the Palestinian Fatah movement, was sentenced in 2004 by an Israeli court to five cumulative life sentences and 40 years in prison for terrorist acts in which five Israelis were murdered and many were injured.

On Tuesday, it was reported that Hamas had rejected 12 of the 34 hostages requested for release by Israel – instead Hamas reportedly offered the release of 22 living hostages and 12 bodies.

Egyptian sources previously reported that Hamas refused 11 of the 34 called for by Israel, considering them to be soldiers.

--Israeli soldiers ordered some 350 patients and staff to evacuate from Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza before torching sections of the medical facility. 

Last Friday, an estimated 50 people, including medical staff were killed in Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital, the health ministry said.

Israel’s army said that the hospital had served as a “Hamas terrorist stronghold.”  In a statement on Saturday, the IDF said it apprehended 240 combatants.

--Palestinian officials say an Israeli airstrike has killed 11 people in the Gaza Strip, including three children and two high-ranking officers in the Hamas-run police force, one of whom was the director general of the force, Mahmoud Salah.

The strike early Thursday hit a tent in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone known as Muwasi, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are sheltering in tents during the cold and rainy winter.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Further strikes Thursday on the Gaza Strip killed at least another 40 individuals. [I’ve seen total death tolls ranging from 54 to 68.]

Syria: Former President Bashar Assad’s ruling Baath party announced it was freezing its activities, days after insurgents overthrew the government, with many members of the party’s leadership going into hiding and some fleeing the country.

So in a symbolic move, Syria’s new rulers have turned the former party headquarters in Damascus into a center where former members of the army and security forces line up to register their names and hand over their weapons.

Calls are rising for the new leaders to officially dissolve the Arab Socialist Baath Party that ruled Syria since 1963.  Many are saying its rule damaged relations with other Arab countries and aided in the spread of corruption that brought the war-torn nation to its knees.

Meanwhile, the new rulers elevated a woman to run the country’s central bank, as the U.S. and other Western governments watch how the Islamist rebels who toppled the Assad regime treat women as well as Syria’s many religious and ethnic minorities.

Maysaa Sabrine, who served as first deputy governor at the central bank under the fallen regime, will take the top job at the institution.  She will be the first woman to run the bank and one of the few women named to a senior role by the former rebels now in control.

Sabrine has a tremendous challenge ahead in stabilizing the currency and foreign exchange reserves while setting policies to enable growth.  Inflation has forced Syrians to carry wads of cash to pay for basic necessities, and nearly one-third of Syrians are estimated to suffer from extreme poverty.

Her appointment is viewed as a positive step toward more inclusive governance.

But on the negative side...there is growing concern that the new Islamist-led authorities have already decided on changes to the school curriculum, without the input of the rest of society.

The Facebook page of the transitional government’s education ministry has posted the new curriculum for all age groups, which will take on a more Islamic slant, as well as dropping any reference to the Assad era across all subjects.

The phrase “Defending the nation” has been replaced by “Defending Allah,” among other changes.

Other proposed changes include Evolution and the Big Bang theory being dropped from science teaching.

The education minister downplayed the move, saying the curriculum is essentially unchanged and will remain so until specialized committees have been set up to review and revise it.

Georgia: The U.S. imposed sanctions on Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder of Georgia’s governing Georgian Dream party, for jeopardizing his country’s “democratic and Euro-Atlantic future.”  The pro-Russia party recently suspended efforts for the country to join the European Union, prompting protests and violent repression.

Salome Zourabichvili, Georgia’s departing and pro-EU president, accuses her successor of being illegitimately elected and had refused to step down.

But the new president, Mikheil Kavelashvili, was sworn in and Zourabichvili said she would leave the presidential palace but branded her successor illegitimate.

“This building was a symbol only as long as a legitimate president was sitting here,” she said.

Georgia’s four main opposition groups have rejected Kavelashvili and boycotted parliament.

Georgian Dream has become increasingly authoritarian in recent years, passing Russian-style laws targeting media and non-government groups who receive foreign funding, and the LGBT community.

It refused to join Western sanctions on Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and called the West the “global war party,” making a mockery of its stated aim of joining the EU and NATO.

An overwhelming majority of Georgians back the country’s path to the EU and it is part of the constitution.

But in November, the country’s ruling party said the government would not seek EU accession talks until 2028.

Afghanistan: Airstrikes by Pakistani warplanes inside Afghanistan have intensified tensions in recent days in an already volatile region. Once-close ties between Pakistan’s leaders and the Afghan Taliban have frayed, and violent cross-border exchanges have become alarmingly frequent.

While the Pakistani government has said little about the airstrikes, the military reportedly has been targeting hideouts of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a militant group known as the T.T.P. or the Pakistani Taliban that has carried out a series of terrorist attacks inside Pakistan.

Security officials said that several top militants from the T.T.P. had died in the airstrikes, which came days after 19 Pakistani military personnel were ambushed and killed in a border district.

The Taliban regime in Afghanistan said the strikes were a blatant violation of Afghan sovereignty and said it had retaliated by conducting attacks on “several points” inside Pakistan.

Separately, the Taliban said they will close all national and foreign nongovernmental groups in Afghanistan employing women, the latest crackdown on women’s rights since they took power in August 2021.

The announcement comes two years after they told NGOs to suspend the employment of Afghan women, allegedly because they didn’t wear the Islamic headscarf correctly.

The United Nations said the space for women in Afghanistan has shrunk dramatically in the last two years and reiterated its call for the Taliban to reverse the restrictions.

“This really impacts how we can provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance to all the people in Afghanistan,” UN associate spokesperson Florencia Soto Nino-Martinez said.  “And obviously we are very concerned by the fact that we are talking about a country where half the population’s rights are being denied and are living in poverty, and many of them, not just women, are facing a humanitarian crisis.”

Just outrageous.

---

Remembering Jimmy Carter

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Believe it or not, a Democratic President once campaigned on deregulation, fiscal restraint and sunsetting federal programs.  Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere – Plains, Ga. – to win the White House in 1976 on a centrist platform, only to be undone after one term by economic and foreign-policy mistakes and the left of his own party.

“Carter...was an anomalous winner in an era of GOP presidential dominance.  He won the Democratic nomination by figuring out how to exploit the changes that made primaries and caucuses more important than party bosses.  He narrowly defeated Gerald Ford, who had taken office after Richard Nixon resigned, by running as an earnest evangelical who would restore integrity to the White House.

“A sign of how American culture has changed is that a major uproar in the 1976 campaign concerned a Carter interview with Playboy magazine in which he conceded that he sometimes had ‘lust’ in his heart.  He swept the South except Virginia and won 30% of self-described conservatives.

“A former Georgia Governor, Carter arrived in Washinton as an outsider with large Democratic majorities in Congress.  But they were liberal majorities, including a younger cohort elected in the Watergate year of 1974 who had deposed older committee chairmen.  Having destroyed Nixon with Nixon’s help, they gradually broke Carter too.  In March of his first year, he dared to criticize 19 water projects moving through Congress, calling them of ‘doubtful necessity now, in the light of new conditions and environmental policies.’

“Democrats trashed his energy rebate bill in response, and Carter had to accept half the projects.  Later that year his budget director, Bert Lance, was run out of town on an ethics rap.  Lance was later acquitted on all charges, but the Carter pattern of getting rolled by a Democratic Congress was set.

“Carter inherited an economy improving after the 1974-75 recession, but on economic policy he was mostly at sea.  The significant exception was deregulation, as he worked with Sen. Ted Kennedy to liberate trucking, airlines, railroads, natural gas and communications.  This is an underappreciated achievement that is impossible to imagine in today’s Democratic Party....

“(But) inflation accelerated under Carter’s Federal Reserve chief, G. William Miller, until he was persuaded to replace Miller with Paul Volcker in 1979 – too late to save his Presidency.

“The Carter foreign policy traveled a similar arc of naivete followed by realism that came too late. He gave a speech in May 1977 at Notre Dame deriding America’s ‘inordinate fear of Communism,’ and the Communists took him at his word. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan and meddled via proxies in Central America and Africa.

“Carter negotiated an unlikely treaty between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadar, and that peace has held through today. It was a tour de force of personal diplomacy. Along with elevating human rights to a more prominent place in U.S. foreign policy, this was his main foreign achievement.

“But his Middle East policy blew up with the Iranian revolution in 1979.  Carter misread Ayatollah Khomeini’s intentions and failed to back the Shah, a long-time U.S. ally.  Despite peace overtures from Carter, the Ayatollah called the U.S. ‘the Great Satan’ and took 66 American hostages at the Embassy in Iran in 1979.

“Carter tried a rescue mission that failed, though these columns praised him for trying. The Iranians held the hostages for 444 days, returning them on the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.  Carter also began a military buildup to counter the Soviets, but it was too late to make up for the global impression of his weakness.

“As Reagan began his run as a Republican, Kennedy challenged Carter for the Democratic nomination from the left.  Kennedy lost but he damaged the incumbent, not least with a half-hearted endorsement at the Democratic convention.  Carter kept the 1980 general election close until the final debate when Reagan showed he wasn’t the reactionary of media myth. Carter won 41% of the popular vote.

“Many have praised Carter as a better former President than chief executive, and his charitable work for Habitat for Humanity and other causes was exemplary.  His post-presidential forays into foreign affairs were less praiseworthy. He became a persistent critic of Israel to the point of suggesting that Palestinian violence was understandable.  His last-minute intervention in North Korea in 1994 boxed in Bill Clinton and paved the way for the Agreed Framework that the North used to extort aid while lying about its nuclear program.

“Carter brought good intentions and admirable character to the White House, but he was unable to address the main problems of his time.  Democrats nominated him as a fresh face in a center-right era of American politics, but he was ground down by the left and his Presidency paved the way for the great Reagan restoration.”

President-elect Trump on Sunday said the nation owes former President Carter “a debt of gratitude.”

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the 39th president served the nation during a crucial time.

“Those of us who have been fortunate to have served as President understand this is a very exclusive club, and only we can relate to the enormous responsibility of leading the Greatest Nation in History,” he wrote.  “The challenges Jimmy faced as President came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans.  For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude.”

President Biden called Carter “an extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian.”

“With his compassion and moral clarity, he worked to eradicate disease, forge peace, advance civil rights and human rights, promote free and fair elections, house the homeless, and always advocate for the least among us,” Biden wrote.  “He saved, lifted, and changed the lives of people all across the globe.  He was a man of great character and courage, hope and optimism.  We will always cherish seeing him and Rosalynn together.

“The love shared between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is the definition of partnership and their humble leadership is the definition of patriotism,” Biden said.

George F. Will / Washington Post

“Jimmy Carter’s melancholy fate was to be a largely derivative figure: He was a reaction against his elected predecessor and the precursor of his successor. Richard Nixon made Carter tempting; Carter made Ronald Reagan necessary.

“The deceits and crimes of Nixon’s imperial presidency bred Carter’s pompous crusade against pomp.  Carter proclaimed ‘I’ll never lie to you’ while claiming that he was a ‘nuclear physicist.’  He denied saying what a tape proved he said about Lyndon Johnson’s ‘lying, cheating and distorting the truth.’

“Carter’s signature achievement, peace between Israel and Egypt, diminished the threat of another conventional Middle East war.  In his post-presidency interventions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, his hostility toward Israel was proportional to his admiration for the terrorist Yasser Arafat.  Here Carter was mostly harmless because the ‘peace process’ was mostly chimeric.

“But for President Gerald Ford’s debate blunder in 1976 – ‘There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe’ – Carter probably would not have become president.  He won 50.1 percent of the vote, lost the vote outside the South, and a switch of a total of 18,000 votes in Ohio – home of many of Eastern European origins – and Hawaii would have elected Ford (disregarding a faithless elector in Washington state).

“Carter was the first non-incumbent elected from the South since the Civil War and the most conservative Democratic president since Grover Cleveland, which is why the liberal post-Watergate congressional Democrats would have despised him even if he had disguised his contempt for them. With airlines, he began the deregulation project inimical to progressives and excellent for the nation.

“Candidate Carter proclaimed himself ‘optimistic about America’s third century’ and promised ‘a government as good as the people.’  As president, however, he decided Americans were deeply defective, making him the right foil for Reagan, the human sunbeam.  In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson ebulliently vowed to legislate Americans to a Great Society ‘where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.’ Fifteen years later, the next Democratic president morosely said ‘all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America,’ which included the ‘worship’ of the ‘consumption’ of those marvelous products.

“The 1970s were a decade of self-absorption in the name of ‘self-actualization,’ and of apocalyptic forebodings, such as those of Paul Ehrlich, the environmental hysteric who suggested that Americans should delay mass starvation by killing their pets.  So, in July 1979, in one of the weirder episodes in presidential history, Carter went to earth at Camp David, to which he invited more than 100 liberal savants. There he brooded about Americans’ failings, then delivered a nationally televised speech in which he diagnosed Americans’ ‘crisis of confidence’ and ‘self-indulgence,’ and announced an insight: ‘We’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.’

“Actually, Americans were longing for gasoline, which Carter’s baroque allocation scheme had made scarce.  He urged Americans ‘to park your car one extra day per week.’  And, ‘Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country.’

“ ‘We are,’ he said, ‘at a turning point in our history.’   Voters emphatically agreed: In October 1979, Gallup recorded his job approval at 31 percent.  Twelve months later, Carter lost 44 states, becoming the only 20th-century president defeated after his party had held the office for only four years.  His campaign scurrilities against Reagan – accusing him of racism and other vices – were, the liberal New Republic said, ‘frightful distortions, bordering on outright lies.’  The Post said that Carter had ‘few limits beyond which he will not go in the abuse of opponents and reconstruction of history.’

“Carter’s closest aide, Hamilton Jordan, called him ‘the world’s worst loser,’ and less than three weeks after the election Carter wrote in his diary, which he would publish in 2010, that ‘dictators around the world are rejoicing because of the outcome of the election.’   Not those behind the Iron Curtain, or Fidel Castro.  Carter later said he and Castro were ‘old friends.’

“As ex-president, Carter’s freelance diplomacy included hijacking the Clinton administration’s policy toward North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.  Time magazine’s Lance Morrow described Carter as ‘a psalm-singing global circuit rider and moral interventionist’ who behaved ‘as if the election of 1980 had been only some kind of ghastly mistake, a technicality of democratic punctilio.’

“His post-presidential involvement with Habitat for Humanity illustrated the large reverberation of a good example.  Of his presidency, let us charitably say what he said of his disastrous Iranian hostage rescue mission, in which eight helicopters invaded a nation larger than Alaska.  It was, he said, ‘an incomplete success.’”

Random Musings

--Presidential approval ratings....

Gallup: 39% approve of President Biden’s job approval, 56% disapprove; 37% of independents approve (Dec. 2-18). 

Rasmussen: 45% approve, 54% disapprove (Jan. 3)

--President-elect Trump endorsed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for another term, working to tamp down rumblings from some Republicans that the party should seek an alternative leader over complaints about spending.

“Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN,” Trump said on Truth Social.  “Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement.”

The move by Trump should boost Johnson’s uncertain prospects, after a bipartisan spending deal brokered by the speaker earlier this month was savaged by Elon Musk and rejected by House Republicans.  Johnson failed to pass a slimmed-down version of the original agreement that also included an increase in the country’s borrowing limit – a condition specifically demanded by Trump – as several dozen House Republicans voted no.

Ultimately, the House passed the narrower spending bill without the debt ceiling provision sought by Trump, drawing heavily on Democratic support.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has vowed to oppose Johnson, and several others have said they are undecided.

The House can’t swear in new members or conduct any business until a speaker is elected – including certification of Trump’s electoral college victory on Jan. 6.

Massie then opposed Johnson in the first round this afternoon, but after some twisting, and one can assume, compromise, Johnson remains speaker, 218-215.

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Donald Trump on Monday endorsed Mike Johnson for another term as Speaker when the House votes to convene the 119th Congress on Friday, and that’s the smart move. The vote will test whether House Republicans are serious about governing or whether they’ll descend again into political masochism....

“The trouble is a rump, blow-it-all-up GOP faction that wants to make statements more than law. They’re threatening to take down Mr. Johnson, though they don’t have an alternative.  [Thomas Massie] has declared that he’ll oppose Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Massie opposes just about everything.  This means the Speaker has to keep everyone else on side if all Members are voting on Friday.

“Defeating Mr. Johnson would send the House into disarray, and to what end?  Some Members may be holding their votes in reserve to angle for some better committee post in return for voting yes. But that’s the trouble with the House GOP: Too many Members are looking out for themselves rather than the larger political good. And the narrow majority gives them more leverage than they deserve....

“Voters expect results, and the GOP won’t be able to dodge responsibility now that they’re in charge.  If Republicans can’t even elect a Speaker without a meltdown, it will bode ill for the next two years.  Down that disruptive path lies Democratic Speaker Hakeem Jeffries in 2027, if not sooner, and the effective end of the second Trump Presidency.”

--I led off my Week in Review two weeks ago talking about Elon Musk and his support for Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.  Musk last weekend then took the extraordinary step of writing an opinion piece for the country’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper that prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest.

The commentary piece in German was launched online on Saturday before being published on Sunday in the flagship paper of the Axel Springer media group, which also owns Politico.

Musk attempts to deny AfD’s extremist, neo-Nazi bent, and the essay expands on his post on X, which I also cited two weeks ago, that claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany.”

Translated, Musk’s piece said: “The portrayal of the AfD as rightwing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!”

Musk also argued that Germany’s economy is handicapped by regulatory overreach and bureaucracy.

“The AfD has understood that economic freedom is not just desirable, but necessary.  Its approach of reducing government over-regulation, cutting taxes and deregulating the market reflects the principles that made Tesla and SpaceX successful,” Musk wrote, according to a translation.

“If Germany wants to regain its industrial strength, it needs a party that doesn’t just talk about growth, but also takes policy action to create an environment where companies can thrive without heavy government intervention,” he added.

Musk also endorsed AfD’s immigration proposals.

“The traditional parties have failed in Germany. Their policies have led to economic stagnation, social unrest and an erosion of national identity,” Musk wrote.  “The AfD, even though it is labeled as far-right, represents a political realism that resonates with many Germans who feel their concerns are ignored by the establishment.”

Shortly after the piece was published online, the editor of the opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, used the tech mogul’s own platform to post on X that she had submitted her resignation.

“I always enjoyed heading the opinion department at Welt and Wams. Today a text by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag.  Yesterday I submitted my resignation after printing,” she posted.

The AfD has a strong snit-immigration stance and, like Donald Trump, is calling for mass deportations from Germany.

The newspaper’s editor-in-chief designate, Jan Philipp Burgard, and Ulf Poschardt, who took over as publisher on January 1st, told Reuters: “Democracy and journalism thrive on freedom of expression.  This includes dealing with polarizing positions and classifying them journalistically.”

Underneath Musk’s commentary, the newspaper published a response by Burgard.

“Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally false,” he wrote, referencing the AfD’s desire to leave the European Union and seek rapprochement with Russia as well as appease China.

Musk defended his right to weigh in on German politics due to his “significant investments,” but it comes as Germans prepare to vote on February 23 after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government collapsed.

The German government accused Musk on Monday of trying to influence its election with articles supporting AfD, even though it suggested they amounted to “nonsense.”

“It is indeed the case that Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal election” with X posts and the opinion piece, a German government spokesperson said.

Musk is free to express his opinion, the spokesperson said, adding: “After all, freedom of opinion also covers the greatest nonsense.”

As I noted a couple weeks ago, the AfD is second in the polls but none of the main opposition parties will help it form a coalition at the national level.

The government spokesperson said Musk’s endorsement of the AfD was “a recommendation to vote for a party that is being monitored (by domestic intelligence) on suspicion of being right-wing extremist and which has already been recognized as partly right-wing extremist.”

The co-leader of Chancellor Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) compared Musk to Vladimir Putin.

“Both want to influence our elections and specifically support the AfD’s enemies of democracy. They want Germany to be weakened and plunged into chaos,” Lars Klingbell told the Runke news group on Monday.  [Reuters]

In Scholz’s New Year’s Eve speech, a wide-ranging one that touched on Germany’s flagging economy, the Christmas market attack and upcoming 35th anniversary of German reunification, he didn’t mention Musk by name, but one carefully worded section seemed to be squarely aimed at him, in referring to the upcoming elections:

“Where Germany goes from here will be decided by you – the citizens,” Scholz said. “It will not be decided by the owners of social media channels.”

He continued: “In our debates, one can be forgiven for sometimes thinking the more extreme an opinion is, the more attention it will garner.  But it won’t be the person who yells loudest who will decide where Germany goes from here.  Rather, that will be up to the vast majority of reasonable and decent people.”

--President-elect Trump failed to overturn a $5 million judgment that he sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and later defamed her.

Trump’s lawyers argued to a federal appeals panel that a lower court in Manhattan had erred by allowing two women to testify in the Carroll trial that he had also sexually assaulted them. The lawyers also argued that Carroll’s lawyers should not have been allowed to play the recording of the “Access Hollywood” conversation.

The appeals court rejected Trump’s request for a new trial in the case, which produced the smaller of two defamation judgments against him.  “Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said.

--David Brooks / New York Times...on the fight inside MAGA on immigration....

“This conflict is now roiling the Republican Party.  Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are dynamists.  They want to welcome talented immigrants to the American economy for the same reason the New York Mets are spending over $700 million to sign Juan Soto.  You could field a team with all native-born players, but you couldn’t hope to compete with the best in the world.

“This has elicited howls of outrage from those who want to restrict immigration, including supporters of canceling the H-1B visa program for skilled immigrants.  We should be employing Americans in these jobs, those on MAGA’s rightward edge respond. The vaunted technological progress the dynamists worship has ripped American communities to shreds.

“This is not a discrete one-off dispute. This is the kind of core tension you get in your party when you do as Trump has done: taken a dynamic, free-market capitalist party and infused it with protective, backward-looking, reactionary philosophy.  We’re going to see this kind of dispute also when it comes to economic regulation, trade, technology policy, labor policy, housing policy and so on.

“It’s normal for people like me to have contempt for the reactionaries. We’re in an epic race with China over the future, over who will master A.I. and other technologies.  Of course we need to attract the world’s best talent.

“But the reactionaries have a point.  One of my favorite sayings from psychology is that all of life is a series of daring explorations from a secure base. The reactionaries are right to point out that the past few decades of go-go change have eviscerated many people’s secure bases – stable families, vibrant hometowns, plausible career paths for those who didn’t want to go to college, the stable values that hold communities together.

“I don’t know if Trumpism will ever evolve into a serious governing force, but if it does, then resolving the tension between its dynamists and its stasists will be its chief mission – that is, giving regular people a sense that they are being taken care of and seen, so that they feel secure enough to welcome all the bounty that skilled immigrants and technological change bring in our lives.

“In its own cranky way, MAGA is now having an interesting internal debate.”

--Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“The aftermath of an election, especially when it coincides with the end of a Presidency, is typically when partisans finally admit some incriminating truths. That’s happening now as Democrats come to terms with their November defeat.

“This doesn’t seem to include President Biden or his advisers, who are spinning the unpopularity of his Presidency and the Democratic defeat as a disconnect between his old-style politics of substance and compromise with the new politics of style and unreality.

“That’s the main takeaway of many exit pieces in the press, and it’s something to behold.  No regrets about policies that produced inflation or a world in disarray.  The problem was mainly a failure to communicate in the new landscape of social-media and celebrity podcasts.

“Mr. Biden’s biggest regret seems to be that he dropped out of the race under unfair Democratic pressure.  Here’s how a story in the Washington Post puts it:

“ ‘Biden and some of his aides still believe he should have stayed in the race, despite the rocky debate performance and low poll numbers that prompted Democrats to pressure him to drop out.  Biden and these aides have told people in recent days that he could have defeated Trump, according to people familiar with their comments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.’

“The Post reports that Mr. Biden doesn’t want to say this publicly lest it seem a criticism of Kamala Harris, but wow.  This ignores that Biden was trailing before he dropped out and that Ms. Harris made the race closer.  Mr. Biden’s regret should be how he governed, and that he didn’t drop out a year earlier.”

Veteran CBS News reporter Jan Crawford, appearing on “Face the Nation” Sunday, blasted news organizations for not thoroughly covering President Biden’s “obvious cognitive decline” this year until it became unavoidable during his disastrous debate against Donald Trump.

Crawford, the network’s chief legal correspondent, insisted stronger reporting on the topic could have changed the entire election.

“Undercovered and underreported, that would be, to me, Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline that became undeniable in the televised debate,” she said.

Crawford then noted the recent reporting by the Wall Street Journal that I cited the other week that detailed how White House aides covered up Biden’s mental decline over the past four years.

“And yet he insisted that he could still run for president.  We should have much more forcefully questioned whether he was fit for office for another four years, which could have led to a primary for the Democrats,” Crawford said.  “It could have changed the scope of the entire election.”

Yup.  Of course.

“Yet still, incredibly, we read in the Washington Post that his advisers are saying that he regrets that he dropped out of the race, that he thinks he could have beaten Trump,” Crawford said of Biden and his staffers, echoing the above Journal editorial.

“And I think that is either delusional or they’re gaslighting the American people.”

Peggy Noonan / Wall Street Journal

“I end speculating on why the Biden White House and those close to them might have felt justified in misleading the public about the president’s true state. It isn’t only ‘Trump,’ and ‘Biden’s the only one who can unite the party and beat him.’  It was Ronald Reagan. It is Democratic Party gospel, their deep belief, that Reagan while president, certainly in the last years of his presidency, was neurologically damaged, that his Alzheimer’s had already begun, that he was an old man of 77 who was barely there.

“Here I ask those reading online to hit on this link to Reagan’s last news conference as president.  For those not online, it’s available at the Reagan Library site.  Watch it.

“That news conference took place on Dec. 8, 1988, six weeks before he left office. It was live, in prime time, wide-ranging, and covered the world.  Compare it with what you have seen of Mr. Biden the past few years.

“Political parties, like people, must beware the stories they tell themselves, the stories they weave and come to believe that just are not true. The not-true ones can get you in terrible trouble, especially the ones you use to justify your actions and that make poor personal motives seem noble.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_puNc2MpCA

--We look back at year end on those we lost.  In the world of politics...one figure stands above the others.  Russia activist Aleksei Navalny, my Man of the Year.

As William McDonald wrote in the New York Times:

“A man of courage who championed democracy in a country, his native Russia, that does all it can to suppress it, Mr. Navalny died in an Arctic prison as he had lived: as a ceaseless foe of authoritarianism and the nemesis of one of its most intractable practitioners, Vladimir Putin.”

--Poor Puerto Rico, most of the island without power New Year’s Eve, with full restoration taking at least 48 hours.

At least the main airport was able to operate normally thanks to power generators.

Power outages have been a recurrent problem on Puerto Rico and have worsened since Hurricane Maria, the deadly 2017 storm that damaged or destroyed 80% of the grid.

--The U.S. surgeon general today said alcoholic beverages should carry a warning label as packs of cigarettes do, because of the link to various types of cancer, after we heard for decades that moderate drinking could help prevent heart attacks and strokes.

I’m still having a beer when I finish this column.  And another while watching the Knicks-Oklahoma City hoops game this evening.

--Lastly, dear readers, I can’t help but note a comment from The Atlantic’s Editor in Chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on journalism and the ‘mainstream media.’

“There are those – the owner of the platform formerly known as Twitter, for instance – who believe that social media is replacing the functions of journalism. They are wrong. At their worst, X and other such platforms spread unspeakable amounts of untruth; at our best, we at The Atlantic and like-minded publications try to inject observable, empirical reality into a world too often gripped by mass delusion. We are far from perfect, but we have as our north star the idea that truth still exists.”

For nearly 26 years, all I have tried to be here at StocksandNews is a single source of the truth, and raw facts, including when it comes to global financial markets. 

I greatly appreciate your continued support. 

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Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families in New Orleans.

Pray for Ukraine.

God bless America.

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Gold $2652...closed 12/31/24 at $2639
Oil $74.07...closed 12/31/24 at $71.87

Bitcoin: $98,350 [4:00 PM ET, Friday]...$93,545 at 4:00 p.m. ET, 12/31/24.

Regular Gas: $3.06; Diesel: $3.51 [$3.09 - $3.98 yr. ago]

Returns for the week 12/30-1/3

Dow Jones  -0.6%  [42732]
S&P 500  -0.5%  [5942]
S&P MidCap  +0.4%
Russell 2000  +1.0%
Nasdaq  -0.5%  [19621]

Returns for 2024

Dow Jones  +12.9%
S&P 500  +23.3%
S&P MidCap  +12.2%
Russell 2000  +10.0%
Nasdaq  +28.6%

Bulls 54.1
Bears 18.0

Hang in there.

Brian Trumbore

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