Approximately $200 billion of AAPL's market value is now missing. One day it was there. The next, poof, it was gone. AAPL was the Street's most recent attempt to resurrect the technology fantasy. Course that couple of hundred billion dollars which disappeared was OPM, Other People's Money. For that reason, the Street will worry little over the matter, and continue on its merry way, Oh, and of course, they will keep taking fees for their superior investment management skills. Clearly, technology, banks, and insurance stocks are "dead" money for years to come, as they have been. As we have been writing some time, real apples should be the focus of investors not fantasy AAPLs.
For some time, nearly seven years, we have been informing investors on the wisdom of exploring Agri-Investing. The importance of doing so at the present time may be about to increase. In the above chart plotted in green, and using the right axis, is the Agri-Food Price Index. It measures the movement of prices for sixteen major Agri-Commodities. Red line, using left axis, is a stochastic built on that index.
As can be observed at the far right the stochastic is giving another buy signal. That would mark the sixth buy signal in the current base building period. Earlier in the chart you will note that the stochastic gave six buy signals prior to the Agri-Food Price Index rising by ~50%. One way of reading that development is that repeating stochastic buy signals are an indication of exhaustion of selling pressures, and a shift to accumulation.
Above chart relates to our universe of nineteen(19) Agri-Equities. The green bars represent the percentage of those issue that have reached new 52-week highs each month. Solid black line is the percentage of those issues that outperformed the S&P 500 each month.
Let us focus on the black line. For about 5 months the percentage performing better than the market has been near or above 60%. Those are impressive results, and clearly better than the experience in quite some time. In the most recent month, January to date, that percentage has risen to 79%. Agri-Equities seem to be a group gaining strength. At the same time, the low level of new 52-week highs suggests the group is not over bought.
Investment opportunities in Agri-Foods are wide and varied. Companies range in size from large multinational to smaller, emerging companies. With the Chinese economy and stock markets recovering strongly, these issues should gain strength in the years ahead. We also now have some developing opportunities in the equities of Agri-Land and Agri-Technology companies. We consider these companies our farm team. On the other hand, one could continue to lose money in the Street's technology fantasies.
AGRI-FOOD THOUGHTS is from Ned W. Schmidt,CFA,CEBS, publisher of The Agri-Food Value View, a monthly exploration of the Agri-Food grand cycle being created by China, India, and Agri-Energy. To contract Ned or to learn more, use this link: www.agrifoodvalueview.com
