Jan 30, 2023 Pre-market

Jeffrey Cohen
US Advanced Computing Infrastructure, Inc.

We notice a few things in the market this morning before the open. We did our review about 45 minutes before market open (and into the open) on Monday. 

The US equity indices were all down. Small caps were down more.
US equity indices are all up lately...up about 10%, so this can be considered chop. In fact, if the S&P 500 can rise to 4200, they break the lower high trend of this bear market. We are facing consolidation and resistance to continued increases.

US Treasury Bonds are very high these days, close to the peak. This means that long-term interest rates (US Notes and US Bonds) are falling. Not that they are as low as they were a year ago, but they are lower than they were a few months ago. 

Overall, we see signals into the future macroeconomic situation:
Copper prices are up ~20% from where we remember it recently. This is a China reopening trade, and a manufacturing bet. Copper goes up with manufacturing goes up. It is also likely an inflation trade. 

Silver is up too. Like Copper, Silver has industrial and commercial uses, in addition to being a precious metal. This is likely also a China reopening and no-recession trade.

The US Dollar is down 10% from where we recently tracked it. That is a big move, and means either the rest of the world is raising interest rates, or the US will not go through with its inflation fight. The world does now want US Dollars, nor the safety of US investments. Ten percent decline in the US Dollar is a big drop, although admittedly it had risen significantly before this recent fall (Euro/Dollar was under 1.0).  This feels like a consolidation in the US Dollar.

Gasoline prices are rising, but more importantly end-user gasoline prices are rising. We see this in Illinois, and worry that taxes may have increased, along with refining, transportation, and marketing costs.

The international market was mixed last night. Hong Kong and South Korea were down, along with Europe. However, mainland China was up, and the rest of the markets were mixed. The Hang Seng may just be a small consolidation of recent gains. Slight consolidations. Same with the Kospi (South Korea).

Equities are up over the past six months. Markets are up.

In the US, the S&P 500 is up significantly and today could be a slight consolidation. The market bottomed at ~3600, and is now up to ~4100. This is just chop in our opinion.

$CRBP or Corbus Pharmaceuticals is not looking up this morning. It is our worst nightmare, and is down 85% from where we started buying it. We are still very bullish on Corbus, and are afraid we might be the only bulls in this stock. We are long Corbus Pharmaceuticals common stock.

We also reviewed these groups of stocks all in pre-market:
Negative BETA
High BETA
Low BETA
Leptokurtic 
Platykurtic
Negative SKEW
Positive SKEW
Semiconductors
Quantum Computing and quantum security pure-plays
Transportation
Cannabis
Steel and mining

The market looked very negative and not RISK ON this morning. It looked down with little regard to risk. 

Good luck in the markets today.
Jeffrey Cohen