6 Aug

Are you late to the tech party?

The time to be bullish tech was two months ago (outlined here), but back then people were busy puking tech.

Not overly surprising, but the latest big tech melt up has forced people into buying quality tech up here. Chasing tech here is a late trade according to us, but nevertheless this remains the trade du jour.

It’s been a very concentrated rally. As Harntett notes;

“AAPL, ADBE, AMZN, FB, GOOG, MSFT, NFLX, NVDA, PYPL, TSLA = almost 2/3 gains past eight weeks”

– TME

Apple announces image scanning by iPhones

iPhones in the USA will scan your images to check if you are engaged in child sexual exploitation. Well, that’s the official reason. Once the population have accepted this, well, you’ve agreed to share your data with the NSA.

No doubt a few mainstream media outlets will witter on about ‘privacy concerns’ but when they see that nobody cares any longer they’ll drop the topic. Of course, some people will just shrug, as the Russians do when they discover that Vlad Putin has just been elected again with 99% of the vote.

Wrap

A rising dollar, driven by very strong jobs numbers, knocked back crude prices. Other markets behaved as might be expected: US indexes struggling to maintain trend, but SPX just hitting another ATH. Bonds up around the globe. Fed FOMC members are increasingly thinking about thinking about tapering, and indeed net buying has eased over the last few months. It’s not exactly Paul Volcker’s Fed, but it may be the beginning of the end.