Cars, Corrections and Coffee
Cars, Corrections and Coffee
By:James Melton
A weekly look inside Luckbox magazine
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Your next Luckbox is coming soon
The upcoming Spring 2024 Luckbox is all about cars and the trends shaping the industry that makes them. We look from several angles at the business of making vehicles that run on batteries, hybrid systems and old-fashioned dinosaur juice. And we include a lot of cool car photos.
Companies mentioned include venerable names like General Motors (GM), Ford (F), Tesla (TSLA) and Toyota (TM), but also up-and-comers like Lucid (LCID) and privately held Olympian Motors and China's BYD (BYDDY)—aka, the carmaker keeping Elon Musk awake at night.
Could a stock correction come soon?
It may not seem like it right now, but the stock market historically moves up and down. Due to that historical reality, it's likely the stock will enter a 10% correction at some point in 2024. This is especially true given that 2024 is a presidential election year, which can be more volatile than an "average" trading year.
So far in 2024, the S&P 500 is up 8%, but since bottoming last October, it's up nearly 25% in just four months. Last October, the S&P 500 bottomed out around 4,100, and today trades closer to 5,100. But according to one Wall Street analyst, the current dynamic in the stock market is more characteristic of the latter stages of a rally, as opposed to the early part, or middle.
Robust performance for Robusta coffee beans
Coffee continues to be one of the hottest commodities in the world. With prices remaining stubbornly high, coffee will undoubtedly play a continuing role in the ongoing inflation narrative, alongside the rising prices of other consumer goods.
In 2022, the price of Arabica coffee—considered the premium bean in the coffee world—surged to a five-year high of roughly $6.20/kilogram. That rise in prices was primarily attributable to a poor coffee harvest. In response, many coffee makers started buying a larger percentage of Robusta coffee beans, which are traditionally a lot cheaper than Arabica.
This market dynamic caused Arabica beans to fall in price, while Robusta beans have been rose. Since peaking above $6/kilogram in 2022, Arabica beans have retraced back to about $4.50/kilogram in early March.
Be careful with zero DTE options
Zero days to expiration (0DTE) options have exploded in popularity among retail investors because they can offer volatility during otherwise calm markets and may offer cheaper alternatives to longer-term trades. But they can be risky.
0DTE trades highly speculative, and investors should not consider them a reliable source of income. Traditional options risk metrics tend to break down for such short-dated contracts, and the expiration mechanics of options become much more relevant with 0DTEs, compared to longer-term options.
We offer the correct strategy.
Read the latest edition of Luckbox magazine here.
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James Melton is managing editor of Luckbox magazine. @JDMeltonWriter
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