Market/Economic News and our portfolio updates for the week ending on January 10, 2025 are as follows.
Market And Economic News
Jobs And Labor
Job openings rose around 260,000 in November, which was about 375,000 more than projected. Interestingly though, both quit rates and hire rates are lower than they were prior to the pandemic. This further illustrates the labor market has cooled substantially from its highs.
Something to keep an eye on going forward. Part of the narrative about inflation is the labor market is dictating interest rates being lowered. We’ll know more on Friday when the jobs report comes out for December.
Market Volatility
The markets have been hella volatile to start the year. We didn’t have the usual Santa Claus rally like we suggested and expected January to do what it’s doing.
I really do think that it’s going to be a bumpy ride higher this year. Just remember to shelve the emotions. If you do the research upfront and get good buy-in prices, let the volatility do what it will while you collect divies and sleep easy at night.
Portfolio Updates
In the Retirement Portfolio
EQNR finally hit our sell limit order. Yay! Based on valuations, we put the majority of the proceeds from EQNR into UPS, and whatever was left went into our THTA cash fund.
Remember THTA is what we’re using now instead of BulletShares.
Growth Stock Pick Update
If you listened to me and bought AUR back when I talked about it at the beginning of October, you’re welcome.
NVDA introduced a superchip and Cosmos Platform specifically for robots and autonomous vehicles (mainly trucks). That caused AUR to blast off and hit $9.83.
It’s really up to you if you want to take profits here or not. You guys should know that I’m not the best when it comes to getting out of growth stocks. I’m holding because I originally said AUR could shoot up close to 1,000% and seeing all those gains that we missed out on in our 2024 screw ups really sucked.
P.S. Don’t forget that January is usually bloody with investors needing to wait 30 days to avoid the Wash-Sale Rule on their Tax-Loss Harvesting.
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