How Lloyd Financial Group Used November Downturn To Re-Position, LFG Daily - December 2, 2025

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ISM Manufacturing was 48.2 vs. exp. 48.6. Prices paid were a little strong, while New Orders and Employment were a bit weak, so nothing good there. That said, we’re not much of a manufacturing economy, these days and the difference vs. expectation isn’t that high. Industrial stocks didn’t love the report, though.

10Y JGB bond auction saw higher demand but lower prices. Way better than 2Y yields blowing out yesterday and trying to sink global markets.

Korea’s tariff rate is going down to 15% after introducing legislation to invest in the US.

The WSJ reports that Kevin Hassett is viewed as the likely new Fed Chair. Someone dovish. Huh.

Vanguard is rolling out crypto ETF access for their brokerage clients.

Trump is making an announcement at 2PM.

What does it all mean? We’re seeing some recovery from yesterday’s rate stress.

Markets got knocked back again, yesterday. How concerned should we be? It’s always good to review what happened, which I did to some extent, yesterday. Basically, markets faced a lot of fear and concerns in the first few weeks of November, then bounced.

Yesterday, markets gave back some of those gains on a mix of worries-- Japan is talking about raising rates soon, the new Fed head is going to be aggressive about cutting rates, and China is working to curb crypto speculation. Let’s go through those.

The news about Japan isn’t really new, though 2Y JGBs hitting a 1% yield is. They’ve had inflation concerns for years, now, and the new Prime Minister wants to stimulate the economy. My main point is that we knew about this last week, as well. Similarly, we’ve known since the last national election that the next head of the Fed would be dovish. Does it really change anything now that people are actively guessing which dove it will be?

As for China, the crypto space was beaten badly, last month, as the biggest beneficiary of liquidity suffered the most from its loss. The fact that crypto pulled back hard this morning isn’t a huge shock, though the lack of eager buyers is something of note. I don’t think the Chinese news is any worry for equities in general and not all that important for the crypto space, really.

It’s not like China just woke up on Monday and decided they’re not all that comfortable with crypto. This action could be described as a refresh of their ban on crypto trading, and not anything particularly fresh. It seems they’ve found crypto speculation has resurfaced and the want to tamp it back down.

To me, the common thread with all these worries are that they were largely known issues. However, it’s not a surprise that markets pulled back after the big run, last week. The more important question is if downside continues. For my part, I don’t think it will, for reasons largely explained yesterday. In short, conditions continue to look constructive for upside.

We used the November downturn to get more constructive, mostly selling staples and buying tech. For instance, we bought the video game company Take Two (TWTO,) the tech finance company Blue Owl (OWL,) the big AI partner Oracle (ORCL,) and the Amazon-like South American company MercadoLibre (MELI.)

Some may consider at least some of those picks aggressive, as they were all under a fair amount of pressure in November. To me, they represent bargains that were dumped from a broad fear largely involving the timing of rate cuts. No doubt, at some point, we will see more worries, but I believe it will take some time for concerns to have an impact.

That said, I’m sympathetic to the idea that risks are rising. While we should get a boost from the reopening of the federal government, it’s not crystal clear what the world looks like after that likely wave of liquidity recedes. If stocks can’t make gains, now, my patience is limited.

I’ve worked hard to get the portfolio in shape for likely futures and after markets settle down next year, we’ll have to look closely at what we see and what we want to own. I want to keep an open mind, as the good times could last a while, but things could also go south pretty quickly. Thus, I’m currently largely focusing on how to have the portfolio reasonably positioned for right now, as next year’s range of outcomes seems high. However, one day, or a few hours, shouldn’t have a big effect on a long-term strategy.

Don’t leave your financial future up to chance. Let’s build a plan that gives you confidence today and peace of mind for tomorrow. Click here to schedule a meeting — I’m here to help you take the next step toward financial freedom.

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