All stock charts are courtesy of Barchart.com unless otherwise noted. All currency amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless denoted otherwise. I have decided to discontinue the True Vine Letter. There are essentially two factors that have led to this decision: (1) I have competing priorities in my life. Notably, I am presently writing a novel which I believe God has called me to do and my True Vine Life subscriber base continues to expand (these are related). (2) I have not been able to grow my Premium subscriber base as hoped. I am going to continue writing investing content on Seeking Alpha at ..read more

All stock charts are courtesy of Barchart.com unless otherwise noted. All currency amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless denoted otherwise. The following True Vine Letter was originally published for Premium subscribers on September 4, 2023. The charts and other data have not been updated. Let us start by examining the monthly charts of Brent crude oil and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil: Crude oil’s correction phase appears to be firmly in the rear view mirror. Moreover, these charts reveal an established, upward price channel going back to the January 2016 monthly low. Outside of the ..read more

All stock charts are courtesy of Barchart.com unless otherwise noted. All currency amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless denoted otherwise. The following True Vine Letter is an excerpt of a Premium Letter originally published on August 13, 2023. Generally Bullish on Insurance and Annuity Companies Let us start with the tailwind: By my estimation, the U.S. Treasury still has to sell over $1.1 trillion of debt this year. As you can see in the above quarterly chart, the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield is breaking out higher. Because of this, I expect that we will see weakness in the mega cap tech s ..read more

All stock charts are courtesy of Barchart.com unless otherwise noted. All currency amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless denoted otherwise. The following True Vine Letter was originally published for Premium subscribers on July 23, 2023. The charts have not been updated. I recently came across the following chart which caught my attention: Source: Bank of America Merrill Lynch; FactSet This discovery of the relative cheapness of small cap stocks came around the same time I was examining charts like the following of the monthly Vanguard Small Cap ETF (VB): This a very bullish chart as the m ..read more

All stock charts are courtesy of Barchart.com unless otherwise noted. All currency amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless denoted otherwise. The following 2 charts are the monthly chart of the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index and the monthly chart of the Vanguard Extended Market Index Fund: Both of these charts look very bullish. Vanguard describes its Extended Market Index Fund as follows: This fund offers investors a low-cost way to gain broad exposure to U.S. mid- and small-capitalization stocks in one fund. The fund invests in about 3,000 stocks, which span many different industries and ac ..read more

All stock charts are courtesy of Barchart.com unless otherwise noted. All currency amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless denoted otherwise. The following True Vine Letter is an excerpt of a Letter first published for Premium subscribers on July 6, 2023. The charts are slightly dated. I started covering Church & Dwight (CHD) last November when the stock was $78.57. It was a bit stretched then, but I really liked the business (still do). The stock has since soared to the $100 level, rising 28% in 7 months which is pretty good for a Consumer Staples stock. Here is the monthly chart: This mo ..read more

All stock charts are courtesy of Barchart.com unless otherwise noted. All currency amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless denoted otherwise. What I love about my stock market evaluation method is that it almost always lines up with the long-term monthly trend channels for stocks. In other words, it is in touch with market realities and provides a fine guide for gauging future stock market performance. Consider the following monthly chart of Apple (AAPL): Apple soared into valuation overshoot (i.e., above the upper monthly trend channel) during the Covid tech boom and has continued on that traj ..read more

The following True Vine Letter was originally published for Premium subscribers on June 29, 2023. The charts are now about a week and a half old. All stock charts are courtesy of Barchart.com unless otherwise noted. All currency amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless denoted otherwise. I have 4 long-term palladium and platinum charts that I want to start this Letter with. First, here is a monthly chart of palladium: This chart reveals that palladium has a ton of long-term support at $1,000 per ounce. A reasonable mid-range price target looking out a year or two is $1,400 to $1,500 per ounce. H ..read more

All stock charts are courtesy of Barchart.com unless otherwise noted. All currency amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless denoted otherwise. There is presently much hype in the stock market over Nvidia (NVDA) since it is the dominant producer of the GPUs used in generative AI accelerated computing infrastructure. Share price gains accelerated after company management guided Q2 FY 2024 Compute & Networking revenue almost $4 billion higher than what Wall Street analysts were expecting. Asia Risk What is not readily apparent is that this quarterly guidance is partially being impacted by Chines ..read more

All stock charts are courtesy of Barchart.com unless otherwise noted. All currency amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless denoted otherwise. I went through Tesla’s (TSLA) Q1 2023 earnings release and updated my financial model. Tesla’s aggressive price cuts are going to hit margins over the near term and reduce its ability to generate excess free cash flow for share repurchases. Moreover, it is my view that lithium prices will ultimately rebound and remain significantly above consensus view which won’t help margins either. My main takeaway from the investor call is that Tesla is simply going ..read more