We had another down week during our one week of winter weather.
I got out my long pants for their three day use for this year and back they went.
I will say that I am grateful that I don’t reside further north where one would deal with that type of weather for months.
I will take the heat of the summer any day and we in the Hill Country received much-needed rain without flood damage for once.
It takes me to the topic at hand of unintended consequences.
The new administration has implemented many new policies.
Among the first were tariffs.
I don’t see any good in any tariffs and wish they would all go away.
I do understand trying to bring some of our trading partners to the table to reduce tariffs they have had in place for years.
It might provide a trading opportunity with investments in European companies.
We may find a trend where countries try to support local vendors over the likes of Meta, Oracle and Microsoft.
Whether they can compete is debatable, but it may prove a challenge to US companies and an opportunity for foreign companies to gain revenue.
On another matter, which is immigration, I feel we need to come to grips with a realistic immigration policy. We have come from open borders to a complete shutdown.
We need immigrant labor in this country.
We do not need undocumented workers being taken advantage of through lower wages.
What we are quickly will find is there will be a labor shortage in the trades sector. I have a grandson that probably will never go to college and is already out there working in his time off gaining work by advertising on Facebook and word of mouth.
There has to be a reckoning to follow the immigration laws we have in place. T’here obviously needs to be some form of documented workers that can come and work and gain citizenship over time.
I will not go into the reasons why we are here at this point in time but you can always look at the politics of the various sides.
Whatever the reason, it is time to come to grips with reality.
Speaking of reality, I hope you had your seatbelt on as it relates to precious metals and crypto.
The run up to record levels in silver and gold has been stunning.
Friday, however, proved to be more than just a bump in the road.
Losing double-digit gains in one day gets anyone’s attention.
That is not to say you should panic, but it does remind investors that nothing goes straight up.
On the Bitcoin side of the ledger, the crypto dropped back down to $77,000 from $97,000 a couple of weeks ago.
It appears that precious metals are a much larger market while crypto is much more thinly traded.
I also wonder if the efforts to support crypto around the end of the year are running out of assets.
I will say that we are starting to see investors looking around to areas outside of the Mag 7.
That does not mean that tech is dead, it is just investments in supporting areas like storage.
We have seen significant gains in the likes of San Disk, Seagate and Western Digital.
These are different than the cloud storage companies dominated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
The previously mentioned storage companies will be a necessity in the data storage centers being touted.
You will need the GPUs by Nvidia, but will also need the storage on site.
You also will see energy companies gaining favor as there will be a significant need for additional power. We are seeing data centers planned for Western Pennsylvania and the Permian Basin, where the most natural gas resides.
The power generated will be a boon for companies like GE that make gas turbines and I would dare say that coal will be brought in to the mix.
I would say nuclear, but the time line for building and implementation may be a problem.
Corning is getting a boost as it produces the fiber optic glass for these centers. There will be all sorts of associated businesses that don’t get the headlines, but will fatten their annual earnings.
I hope Mr Groundhog predicts an early spring as I had all the winter I needed in those three or four days.
I am more than ready to get back to the yard work. There is much cleaning and replanting on my agenda. My budget will move away from HEB to Home Depot. It won’t impact them, but it will seriously change my recent lifestyle for the better.
Here’s to spring being just around the corner.
Now I just hope I don’t injure myself too badly as I know there will have to be a little blood letting. Hopefully only minor but my clumsiness knows no boundaries.
