Rising Interest Rates Play: Short Treasury Bonds

I think it is time to short US T-Bonds. I'm going to give you the fundamental reason and show what the market itself is doing. I'm basing this thesis on the theory that when interest rates go up bonds fall. Maybe it really is that simple. The tricky part has been figuring out when the FED will start tinkering with rates. I think they might do it this year. I don't see anything in the latest BLS employment report to make me think otherwise. You could say headline unemployment of 5% is to high to the FED. Of course the real unemployment rate is higher because they bake the numbers these days. But still real, unreal, semi-real unemployment rates are falling. I say 3% unemployment is unrealistic given the situation we have been in the last 8 years. I think anybody who is intelligent realizes the old days of conceptual thinking about target unemployment rates aren't possible now. Yeah, we could have 3% unemployment in a bubble economy. Let's just get 40% of the economy devoted to financial services(engineering) and see what happens! Any way you look at it unemployment is falling. Maybe I'm smoking dope on this report but this says wages are rising.

In May, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 8 cents to $24.96. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 2.3 percent. Average hourly earnings of private- sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 6 cents to $20.97 in May.

For the next exhibit we have job openings. There are more job openings out there than there have been in fifteen years. There were over 5 million job openings in April.

Let's think about the gravity of the FED raising rates. Will a slight rise really matter that much? I think the banks can handle it. They will still be in a situation to prosper.

Finally, I believe the market itself is saying the top is in for bonds. Below is a five year chart of TLT 20 Year Bonds. The red arrow points to the spike top. A spike top or bottom is one of the strongest reversal chart signals. The top was tested in March and April. It was confirmed in May. The drop for bonds continued and we are in free-fall now. The stock TBT is a vehicle to short TLT. So the way I want to short is with TBT Proshares Ultrashort Treasuries. Any spike upward on TLT is opportunity to get longer TBT.

Bojangles BOJA IPO

Bojangles a southern style fast food restaurant went public this week. Bojangles BOJA is headquartered in my hometown and I'm very familiar with eating there. I've been eating at Bojangles since I was a kid and the food quality is always great. Fried chicken and biscuits aren't my favorite food but I like them and eat them occasionally. Bojangles does have some spicy fried chicken that I do like. In my opinion Boajangle's sweet tea might be the best fast food sweet tea. They do a big breakfast with biscuits. They do lunch and dinner of course with the chicken entrée. For side dishes they have typical southern things like macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes etc. They have a very large marketing presence in Charlotte. They always work the the NFL Carolina Panthers and their players. They sponsor the Hornets too. That's my quick company profile. Here is the more in-depth Yahoo Finance profile.

Bojangles', Inc. owns, operates, and franchises a chain of quick-service restaurants. The company offers boneless chicken, buttermilk biscuits, sandwiches, iced tea, biscuit sandwiches and snacks, salads, combos, boxes, dinners, family meals, drinks, sweets, fixin’s, and kids’ meals. It also sells apparel, drink ware, and lifestyle and writing products online. The company was founded in 1977 and is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. It has locations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., as well as Honduras.

I think Bojangles might be one of the better Food IPO's to come out recently. I'd like to do some comparative analysis of BOJA vs the rest of the industry but I didn't find any financial statements. I tried unsuccessfully on the SEC's site too. It's a good market for food companies lately and the Street has been eating them up. Bojangles looks like a good speculation as far as this industry goes as the stock printed a new high of 28.45 today.

Funny Market MEME's

Deep Value Stock Blonder Tongue BDR

You guys remember the value stock Blonder Tongue (BDR) ? It's usually been around net tangible asset value over the years. It will run up a bit one year then come back to around net tangibles. Well the stock has recently just crashed. It plummeted from over $2.00 a share to just $.77 a share. I went through the press releases on Yahoo! from the 30th and 31st on the day it crashed and couldn't find a good cause of the crash. They released quarterly results which were not to bad, not to good. I don't get it. There may be no good reason though of course and the stock is just crazy cheap for no reason. Here are the old posts on BDR. Looking back at all my notes on the stock $1.00 has been the floor for many years. At the last print it traded at $.90 Monday. This puts it at a market cap of roughly $5 million. Net current asset value is just above $5 million also. We are near net current asset value territory. I really like the stock here below $1 and might take a small position in it.

I'm Putting Trading Watchlists On The Other Blog

I have this other domain DynamiteStocks.com that I've held onto for awhile. Years back I used to put trading watchlists on it. I'm going to start doing that again. I just posted one up for trading day 4/7/2015. This blog will continue to be deep value focused and anything else I feel like talking about.
I've been very accurate lately with short set-ups and trading crude oil and natural gas ETF's. So I'll definitely post those if anything. Oil is to choppy for me here. To range bound. I've had success trading the breakouts and breakdowns. No doubt the energy and commodities sectors are moving off of the dollar here. It looks like the dollar is going to continue to breakdown. We will see.