Recap of Nov. 22: Is President Bush Going to Kill the Bull Market?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING "Cavuto on Business Recap" CONTAINS STRONG OPINIONS WHICH ARE NOT A REFLECTION OF THE OPINIONS OF FOX NEWS AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON AS INVESTMENT ADVICE WHEN MAKING PERSONAL INVESTMENT DECISIONS. IT IS FOX NEWS' POLICY THAT CONTRIBUTORS DISCLOSE POSITIONS THEY HOLD IN STOCKS THEY DISCUSS, THOUGH POSITIONS MAY CHANGE. READERS OF "Cavuto on Business Recap" MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN INVESTMENT DECISIONS.
Neil Cavuto was joined by Gregg Hymowitz, founder of Entrust Capital; Jim Rogers, president of JimRogers.com; Cheri Jacobus, Republican Strategist; Tom Dorsey, President of Dorsey, Wright & Associates; Mike Norman, founder of Economic Contrarian Update; and Wendy Murphy, former prosecutor and founder of Victim Advocacy and Research Group.
Neil Cavuto: Is President Bush about to go from wall street hero to wall street villain? The stock market has rewarded the President with an historic rally for his tax cuts and for his tough stance on terror. But is he about to wipe out all all those gains with his tough stance on bras and bathrobes? I'm talking about a looming trade war. The White House is trying to protect American manufacturing jobs by limiting the amount of bras and other fabrics we buy from China. So Jim, is it getting nasty?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Jim Rogers: Of course it's getting nasty. This isn't good for the country. It's not good for the market. And it's not good for the economy. We did it with steel and it cost us more jobs than we saved. And no one has ever won a trade war. We will lose as much as the other people.
Gregg Hymowitz: I don't think there's going to be a full-blown trade war. Free trade is a great thing in theory. But in reality, when it's about your jobs and when it's about the 300,000 jobs that have been lost in the textile industry. That's a real problem.
Mike Norman: The fact of the matter is, the Chinese just don't play fair. Out of the sixteen million vehicles Detroit and the "big three" manufactures every year, only about 25,000 vehicles go to China. And that's because there's 100% tariffs on imported vehicles.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Neil Cavuto: Here's what worries me that this is going to start causing problems for this President because he touts himself as a free trader but again and again he appears to be anything but.
Cheri Jacobus: I don't think anyone expects a president to be 100% free trader if it means jobs in the United States being lost. If this is perceived as an elbow jab to the Chinese, that's going to be just fine as well. It's also a speed bump to correct an inequity and imbalance of trade with China. I don't think this is going to hurt the President at all. And there is certainly not going to be a trade war.
Mike Norman: Jim, when you said there were jobs lost in steel you were wrong. It did lose but it was at a slower rate than it lost in the year before the inception of the tariffs.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Jim Rogers: The people who use steel lost more jobs than the steel industry.
Gregg Hymowitz: The problem is it's nice to have free trade but you also have to balance competition. There are more unemployed people in China than the entire labor force in the United States. And they will do everything they can to get them employed. Even if it's How do we tell people in the United States, 'just re-train yourself.' That's not a good enough answer when it's your job.
Jim Rogers: If you raise prices here by putting on tariffs, that makes us less competitive and we lose more jobs.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Mike Norman: Jim, the Japanese and the Chinese have essentially been doing that for decades and you say these are the countries that we should emulate. We're not allowed to do it, but they are?
Gregg Hymowitz: The problem this President faces and we face as a country is how do we manage the problem in the short-term. We're basically talking about tariffs on 5% of a $10 billion textile industry. You have to manage this carefully otherwise you're saying to hundreds of thousands of people to just retrain themselves.
Neil Cavuto: Cheri, what do you make of the notion that where there's smoke, there's fire. That it starts with steel and could now effect things like bras and bathrobes.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Cheri Jacobus: No, I don't think there is any link. The steel tariffs were something that was designed to help the employment situation here in the United States in the steel industry and it's been working. Our economy needs to come back and employment is the last lagging part of this.
Jim Rogers: The Europeans have already said they're going to put retaliatory tariffs on our goods in 2004. Nobody wins trade wars.
Cheri Jacobus: The President hasn't announced what he's going to do and I'm sure there's a compromise in there somewhere. The retaliatory measures could be lessened.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Jim Rogers: Mike, the steel stocks have not done anything during this whole period of time.
Mike Norman: It's a three year program. They went down and came back as the effects of the tariffs started to take hold. If we run it through for the three years, they're going to be a lot higher.
Neil Cavuto: Here's a point Jim has made: when you start protecting industries, ultimately the markets don't like that. I'm not saying what's justified or not, but in periods when we do that markets don't do well.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Gregg Hymowitz: I think you saw some of that in the dollar declining slightly. I think if the market believed this would be a full-blown out trade war it would react very negatively. I don't believe that's what's going to happen.
More for Your Money: Turning Turkey Stocks Into Stock Treasures!
Neil Cavuto: Forget buying turkey for Thanksgiving! Someone here says you should be buying the stock market "turkeys" to get more for your money. If one year ago, you bought the five worst performing Dow stocks, today you'd have 30% more money. That's well over twice the return of the Dow's overall performance. Tom, is this a good investment strategy?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Tom Dorsey: This makes a lot of sense. It's something you or anyone can do once a year. And the idea is you want to do this with Dow Jones stocks, not tech stocks. If I did this now, I would buy Eastman Kodak (EK), AT&T (T), Merck (MRK), SBC Comm. (SBC), and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). But you want to wait a couple of weeks before you buy them, because a lot of these stocks that have done poorly for the year get tax selling in December. So they're prices will be even lower then.
Jim Rogers: Tom's right, a very wise policy is to wait for tax selling, people dump stocks that have been beaten down already and you buy them.
Neil Cavuto: When is that tax selling period?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Jim Rogers: Right now.
Neil Cavuto: What would you do Jim?
Jim Rogers: I own SBC Comm. (SBC) and I noticed SBC was on Tom's list. I own it and I think the telephone industry has been beaten down and ready for a rally. It's not going to be a great growth stock ever again but I like it.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Gregg Hymowitz: I don't think you should ever in buy a stock blindly. You should at least know the fundamentals.
Tom Dorsey: If you go back and hold those bottom 5 for one year, you're probably in the top 10% of money managers in the country.
Neil Cavuto: What are you doing Mike?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Mike Norman: I like DuPont (DD). I don't own it, buy DuPont is basically a commodity play and and a weaker dollar should work in favor of DuPont.
Gregg Hymowitz: One stock that hasn't done that well this year is Microsoft (MSFT). It trades at roughly 22 times next year's earnings. I do not own it but clearly it's one of the greatest companies in the world.
Tom Dorsey: It's burnt out though.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Gregg Hymowitz: I don't get it. You just said to buy burnt out stocks.
Tom Dorsey: That's not one of them though. I think Microsoft is a behemoth like General Electric and there's no where for it to go.
Head to Head: Are Wall Street ' Sheriffs' Helping or Hurting Investors?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Neil Cavuto: Are Wall Street sheriffs (SEC, FBI, States Attorney Generals) targeting each other more than the crooked executives and mutual fund managers?
Wendy Murphy: There's nothing better for the public's confidence in the market than to hear the truth. The public becomes cynical when bad things are happening to our money and we don't even know about it. I don't know a hedge fund from a hedgehog but I do have money invested and I depend on the S.E.C. to do the right thing by my money.
Neil Cavuto: Well then you better talk to Chris Dodd, a democrat who said this week, "We can't have you," referring to Donaldson, the head of the S.E.C. "and Spitzer screaming at each other in public form everyday."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Wendy Murphy: This isn't about them screaming at each other everyday. It's about them telling the truth. And holding the government accountable.
Neil Cavuto: Then you must be arguing that Spitzer is telling the truth more than the S.E.C. Would you feel the same way if the political parties were reversed?
Wendy Murphy: This has nothing to do with politics. The only point I'm making is if someone responsible for my money with regulatory authority isn't doing the right thing, I want to hear about it. At least now it's out there and we're having a conversation.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Neil Cavuto: It's like the FBI and CIA arguing about withholding information before September 11th. Their job is to protect me. These regulatory agencies and the New York Attorney General have an obligation to share information and to get along and not worry about turf wars.
Wendy Murphy: This is not about information sharing. There's no question that sharing of information, especially when it comes down to national security is a good thing.
Neil Cavuto: This is about information sharing. It most certainly is. If you were going after a Putnam Funds, you would want to know where the abuses were and not territorially hold on to it and shout names at the other. Share the information and quit fighting.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Wendy Murphy: I disagree. I'd rather have people screaming at each and hear that my government agency responsible for the well-being of my investment is not doing its job.
Neil Cavuto: So you'd feel the same way if it was the S.E.C. going after New York's attorney general.
Wendy Murphy: Absolutely. For me, this isn't about politics.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Neil Cavuto: I agree with you. It shouldn't be about politics but I think it's blurred the lines and become about politics.
Wendy Murphy: The S.E.C. is far more interested in protecting corporate America. And I'm not part of corporate America so perhaps my goals are better met with the Attorney General.
FOX on the Spot
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Tom: JetBlue soars again. JetBlue will be added to the Nasdaq 100 Index, which often gives the stock a boost because money managers of index funds have to buy it. Buy JBLU now!
Mike: Lookout Jim! Prices tank for raw materials and raw materials stocks due to a slowdown in China's growth.
Jim: Political kickbacks kick off new scandal. Business "Soft money" donations to politicians will be exposed as bribes.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Cheri: Plug is pulled on "liberal" radio network. AnShell Media L.L.C, will be kaput less than one year after it goes on the air. They have already had a choppy start, plus, there are already a great many liberal media outlets, including NPR to compete with.
Gregg: Trade war is averted and stocks rally.
Neil Cavuto: Trade tensions, from steel to Chinese made bras, is getting out of control. If we're not careful, it could roil the markets the last few weeks of year.