ARTICLES

An Alternative To Money Market Funds

December 2025

MARKET OVERVIEW
November is behind us and what a turnaround month it was. The Government shutdown ended November 13 but it took a toll on both sentiment and spending for consumers. Nevertheless, the market rebounded strongly after the shutdown. As of the close of trading on Friday, December 5, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 12.72% year to date, the S&P 500 is up 16.81% and the Nasdaq is up 22.10% year to date.

Some items of note: Carvana, CRH and Comfort Systems will be added to the S&P 500 before the market opens December 22 replacing LKQ, Solstice Advanced Materials and Mohawk Industries, Netflix has been chosen by Warner Brothers Discovery as the winner of the recent bidding war but many expect Paramount Skydance to make another bid, Verizon will cut about 15,000 jobs as it seeks to cut costs under new CEO Dan Schulman, Netflix split its stock on a 10-1 basis, Johnson & Johnson is acquiring Halda Therapeutics in a $3.05 billion deal, Amazon and Oracle raised billions of dollars in debt offerings to help fund their AI initiatives, Google is expected to expand its travel reservations unit to compete with Expedia and Booking Holdings and finally, Abbott Labs will acquire Exact Sciences for $21 billion in cash.

ECONOMIC SUMMARY
Due to the Federal Government shutdown, a combined October & November Nonfarm Payroll Report will be released later this month. It is expected that this report will be released as it has been traditionally done beginning in January.
 
FEDERAL RESERVE
The Fed met October 28-29 and announced a quarter point rate cut. Another quarter point cut is expected when the Fed meets for the final time in 2025 on December 9-10.

STOCKS TO WATCH
On November 16, 2021. Target shares (TGT) reached an all time high of $235.02 and has slumped ever since. In the meantime, its top competitor, Walmart (WMT), has surged. Back in August, TGT announced that Michael Fiddelke will succeed Brian Cornell as its new CEO on February 1. Cornell will move to Executive Chairman based on this announcement. Many Wall Street analysts and Institutional Investors were disappointed with this news as TGT was replacing Cornell with another long time insider.

TGT shares closed on Friday at $92.19 and many expect the shares to move lower until a sound turnaround strategy is announced. Former Target Vice Chairman Gerald Storch has been quite critical of TGT’s management for several years. To him, TGT’s biggest mistake was its decision to differentiate itself from WMT to focus more on its department store and rely less on groceries. This decision backfired. Walmart’s grocery business represents about 60% of its total revenues. Even more importantly, it brings shoppers into its stores more frequently. TGT shares currently yield nearly 5% and the company has raised its dividend over 50 straight years. Still, until TGT resembles its product offerings more in line with the WMT model, it is hard to see how TGT shares can have a meaningful rebound.

My weekly radio show is now on holiday and should return soon on WWPR 1490 AM. My prior radio shows and newspaper columns are available here.

If you are unhappy with the returns now offered by money market funds, feel free to contact us.

Disclaimer

The material contained in this website is for your private information. We are not soliciting any action upon it. The opinions expressed here are our present opinions only. The material is based upon information which we consider to be reliable. No representations are being made that it is accurate and complete and thus should not be relied upon as such. Past performance is neither an indication nor guarantee of future performance.