Category: General

What to Do When Interest Rates Rise

Posted on by The MarketClub Team

Last year, when the Federal Reserve realized that the inflation, which was earlier thought to be “transitory,” might be feeding on itself and soon spiral out of control, it acted swiftly to respond with an aggressive interest rate hike cycle, one of the quickest on record.

As a result, we have gone from living in a world of virtually free money, marked by a target federal funds rate of 0% to 0.25%, for more than 12 years since the global financial crisis to a world of constricted credit, with a target rate at 4.50% to 4.75%, the highest since 2007.

Right on cue, the market and economy responded to the end of the era of easy money with withdrawal tantrums. Although the Fed has been able to bring down CPI inflation from a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022 to 6.4% in January 2023, it has come at the cost of increased market volatility, stressed margins due to increased borrowing costs, and bank runs due to bond price devaluations.

Given that the federal funds rate appears to be nothing short of a force of nature for the capital markets and the economy at large, its deeper understanding would serve market participants well.

What is the Federal Funds Rate?

The federal funds rate is the interest rate that banks charge other institutions for lending excess cash to them from their reserve balances on an overnight basis.

Legally, all banks are required to maintain a percentage of their deposits as a reserve in an account at a Federal Reserve bank. This mandated amount is known as the reserve requirement, and compliance of a bank is determined by averaging its end-of-the-day balances over two-week reserve maintenance periods.

Banks, which expect to have end-of-the-day balances greater than the reserve requirement, can lend the surplus to institutions that expect to have a shortfall.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) guides this overnight lending of excess cash among U.S. banks by setting the target interest rate as a range between an upper and lower limit. This target interest rate is called the federal funds rate. Continue reading "What to Do When Interest Rates Rise" →

How to Steer Clear of the Silicon Valley Bank Meltdown

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Editor’s Note: Our experts here at INO.com cover a lot of investing topics and great stocks every week. To help you make sense of it all, every Wednesday we’re going to pick one of those stocks and use Magnifi Personal to compare it with its peers or competitors. Here we go…

Bank stocks have dropped and markets are still spooked after last week’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and it’s unclear how far the fallout will reach.

But amid all the talk of how many other banks are in trouble, the effects on a related industry has gotten very little attention.

We're talking about the mortgage-backed bond markets. See, according to an article from the Financial Times' Alphaville team, Silicon Valley Bank is still sitting on a $50 billion book of MBS (mortgage-backed securities). It is likely government regulators that have taken over Silicon Valley Bank will need to dump those bonds to help cover the cost of giving depositors all of their money back.

That possibility caused mayhem in the U.S. mortgage market on March 10, as investors rushed to get ahead of getting squashed by the bank’s potential MBS dump. Therefore, mortgage spreads sharply widened on that day as Silicon Valley Bank circled the drain.

So today, we're going to use the Magnifi Personal investing AI to compare the most important MBS-trading companies and see if there are any opportunities here - or if the risk is too high.

Doing this was simple. we asked Magnifi Personal to “Compare AGNC, STWD, and BXMT” and it did all the work.

To have the investing AI run similar comparisons for you, or to dive deeper into this one and compare other banks or REITs, we’re offering 90 days of free access to Magnifi Personal - just click here!

This ability to have an investing AI pore over reams of data for you in seconds and spit out an easy-to-understand comparison of two or more stocks is an invaluable tool in deciding where to invest next.

I highly recommend you try it out. Click here to see how you can do it today, free-of-charge.

Here’s what Magnifi Personal showed me after we asked it to in “Compare AGNC, STWD, and BXMT”: Continue reading "How to Steer Clear of the Silicon Valley Bank Meltdown" →

Semiconductors Are Heating Up - Here's The Best One

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Editor’s Note: Our experts here at INO.com cover a lot of investing topics and great stocks every week. To help you make sense of it all, every Wednesday we’re going to pick one of those stocks and use Magnifi Personal to compare it with its peers or competitors. Here we go…

The never-ending demand for more technology creates long-term growth trends for semiconductor businesses. In the short term, however, they are vulnerable to wider economic pressures – demand for chips will fall off as the economy slows down.

In fact, as far as the chip industry is concerned, the world is already in a recession.

For the past three decades, a globalized production model has created a series of semiconductor giants across the world. In other words, in this sector, bigger has been better. Despite recent struggles, the stocks of all the semiconductor companies market caps have at least doubled in the past five years.

Many on Wall Street believe investors are already starting to look beyond the prospect of a recession. The market is becoming more desensitized to negative estimate revisions, as the focus begins to shift towards signs of recovery.

So let’s look past the possible coming recession, and see what semiconductor designer stocks are the most attractive right now. To do that, we used Magnifi Personal’s Compare function to compare Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA).

All we had to do was type in “Compare AMD and NVDA.”

To join in, ask for more details, or expand the search by asking something like “Compare AMD to its competitors,” just click here to get a free trial of Magnifi Personal.

Instead of having to pore over financial statements and earnings reports yourself, Magnifi Personal can do this kind of research for you. Here’s what it showed me when I asked it to “Compare AMD and NVDA.” Continue reading "Semiconductors Are Heating Up - Here's The Best One" →

Best Growth Stock? One To Watch Now

Posted on by The MarketClub Team

Twilio Inc. (TWLO) enables developers to build, scale, and operate real-time communications within software applications through a cloud communication platform and a customer engagement platform. The company operates both in the United States and internationally.

Over the past three years, TWLO’s revenues have increased at a 50% CAGR. Its total assets increased at a 34.6% CAGR during the same time horizon.

TWLO has adopted sweeping changes to improve the efficiency of its execution and accelerate its path to profitability. On February 13, the company announced its decision to reduce its workforce by approximately 17% to drive meaningful cost savings. To rationalize expenses further, on December 9, 2022, it announced its voluntary delisting from the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) to remain solely listed on the NYSE.

TWLO has also announced that, moving forward, it will operate two separate business units: Twilio Communications and Twilio Data & Applications. This strategic realignment enables Twilio to execute each business's key priorities better.

TWLO’s management has expressed its confidence regarding the effectiveness of the abovementioned changes by announcing the authorization of a share repurchase program of up to $1.0 billion of its outstanding Class A common stock.

TWLO’s stock has gained 17.1% over the past month to close the last trading session at $73.88.

TWLO is trading above its 50-day and 200-day moving averages of $57.86 and $70.99, respectively, indicating an uptrend.

Here is what may help the stock maintain its performance in the near term.

Improving Financials

During the fourth quarter of the fiscal that ended December 31, 2022, TWLO’s revenue increased 21.6% year-over-year to $1.03 billion, while its non-GAAP gross profit increased 19.9% year-over-year to $517.78 million. Continue reading "Best Growth Stock? One To Watch Now" →