| Thursday's Headlines 1. US markets close mixed in choppy trading 2. 1.5 million Americans filed for unemployment last week 3. Gambling stocks are on a roll 4. Individual investors lack conviction 5. Cargo loads are rising Markets Closed
 Image courtesy James W. Porter/Getty
[Programming Note: Our offices will be closed tomorrow to observe Juneteenth, and we will be suspending our newsletters for the day. We'll be back with you on Monday. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Texas became the final U.S. State to formally proclaim its enslaved people free, thus ending the injustice of slavery entirely in the United States. This came following the end of the U.S. Civil War, which was fought to end the institution.]
Markets Today U.S. markets see-sawed throughout the day and ended with the DJIA in the red, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq managed small gains on the back of Big Tech. That's basically the trend for the month of June, as the Nasdaq has closed higher for the fifth straight day and nine out of the last ten.
There were no major catalysts to move markets, but plenty of economic and health news to be concerned about.
Another 1.5 million Americans filed first-time unemployment claims last week, which was slightly higher than forecast, but still lower than a week ago. The central banks of England and Australia announced new monetary policy stimulus measures but left their ultra-low interest rates unchanged. New coronavirus cases keep spiking in places like Florida and Las Vegas, which were just getting their economies revved up again. California's governor, Gavin Newsom, mandated the wearing of masks at all times when outside in the Golden State.
Recent surveys of individual investors (including our own) show a lack of conviction among participants, especially older ones. They've seen a few cycles, gained, lost, and regained a lot of money over the years. There is something about this particular cycle, however, that has many of them skittish.
They are taking their chips off the table.
chart courtesy Yardeni Research  [NEW READER SURVEY: As promised, we are running another two-week survey of our U.S.-based readers to gauge your sentiment and see what moves, if any, you have been making with your money given the market recovery. We'll share the results, as always, and we thank you for your time and participation.]
Headlines:
 Gambling Stocks on a Wild Ride Casinos have been pummeled with the double whammy of social distancing guidelines and a lack of professional sports amid this crisis. Those casinos with hotel properties have had it even worse as their properties in Nevada, Atlantic City, Macau, and the Bahamas have been empty for months.
As cities with casinos reopen, many of those stocks have spiked off of their late-March lows to high-rolling returns. None has spiked higher than Penn National Gaming (PENN), which owns a mix of resorts in places like Detroit, Arizona, and Florida as well as several popular online gaming companies.
Not surprisingly, the best performing stocks in this sector are those with heavy online presences. DraftKings (DKNG) is a great example of that, up 276% since the March lows.
Physical casino stocks have also bounced off the bottom, but that rally could crap out if COVID-19 cases in cities like Las Vegas, which opened its casinos two weeks ago, keep rising.  Older Investors Were Big Sellers as Markets Tanked The chart above, from a recent Fidelity survey, has been making the rounds in financial media this week. It shows that nearly one-third of investors 65 and older sold all of their stocks in March as the stock market tanked. It matches up with our recent reader survey findings, and it is not terribly surprising to see heavy selling amid a viscous drawdown, especially by older investors who may be trying to protect their nest eggs.
Still, selling in a period of heavy volatility amid other sellers is a good way to lose more than you anticipated. It's also proven that if you sell in an extreme downdraft with an intention to buy back in at some point, you'll likely miss the best performing days of the upturn when most of those gains are made. It's impossible to time it right.
That said, if you are an investor at any age, and you need the money you have in the market, or want to protect gains you have accumulated over years of compounding, there is no harm in booking those gains and walking away.
P.S.: Now we know the source of a lot of those equity mutual fund outflows in the beginning of the spring.  chart courtesy AAII.com
Individual Investors Are Still Skittish Individual investors (not the new-to-the-game day traders) are still feeling the fear, according to the latest AAII Sentiment Survey. The percentage of individual investors describing their outlook for stocks as "neutral" is at its highest level since February. Bullish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, declined by a mere 0.3 percentage points to 34.3%. Optimism remains below its historical average of 38% for the 14th consecutive week and the 19th week this year.
Nobody likes this rally, except for those day traders.  Cargo Alert: Shipments Rise! "I hear a train a coming... it's coming round the bend, and I ain't seen the sunshine since, I don't know when..." - Johnny Cash
You can just hear the Man in Black when you see stats like this. Rail carloads are ticking up, and they have risen for the past four weeks, according to BofA Research.
This industry moved more than 700,000 carloads this week for the first time since March, up 52,000 from its trough but still below its Sept. 2018 peak of ~900,000 weekly carloads.
What's moving? Everything from coal to grain to natural gas is seeing increases as the economy slowly comes back to life. Levels are still at multi-year lows, but the trains are moving again, and somewhere, this man is smiling.
photo courtesy CMT.com 
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(chart courtesy YCHARTS)  Shares of ViacomCBS are up by over 5% today. The mass media conglomerate recently acquired the licensing rights for the popular Smurfs franchise. Phillips 66's stock price rose over 4.5% following the construction of a replacement pipeline, designed to carry propane and butane to consumers in Missouri and Illinois.  Shares of Biogen are down by over 7% today. A U.S. district court judge ruled in favor of pharmaceuticals company Mylan regarding a patent dispute surrounding Tecfidera, the biotech company's multiple sclerosis drug. American Airlines' stock price fell over 3%. Word of the Day Fibonacci extensions are a tool that traders can use to establish profit targets or estimate how far a price may travel after a retracement/pullback is finished. Extension levels are also possible areas where the price may reverse.
Extensions are drawn on a chart, marking price levels of possible importance. These levels are based on Fibonacci ratios (as percentages) and the size of the price move the indicator is being applied to.  Today in History June 18,1998: Internet stocks got an electrifying boost as the Walt Disney Co. agreed to buy 43% of Infoseek Co. for roughly $550 million in cash, stock, and warrants. Infoseek stock shot up to $42, then closed at $35.125. By March, 2001, Disney had exchanged the old Infoseek assets for its own shares at an approximate value of only $5 per share. Why anyone would want to own a web portal that searches the Internet for answers about everything is beyond me...
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Thursday, June 18, 2020
Skittish
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