I read the headlines this morning, and it's really hard not to laugh out loud at the mainstream media and analyst community and see what they find surprising.
Everyone is surprised that retail sales do not match last month's. Sales were flat after the huge boom in March.
Why anyone is surprised is beyond me. March was all about using stimulus checks to buy things where the purchase had been put off to hoard cash because of COVID. Once they got those $1400 checks, folks replaced the washing machine, bought a new Smart TV, or put a down payment on a new car.
That money is spent. Unless Uncle Joe opens the wallet back up, the boom is over for now. We should see steady smaller gains as the economy continues to reopen around the United States.
The experts were surprised. Those of us who live in the real world were not.
As the so-called experts debate whether or not inflation will shake up the markets, one group of investors is not waiting to find out. They are selling with both hands and collecting cash.
Jeff Bezos has sold $6.7 billion worth of Amazon stock (AMZN) this year.
Zoom Video Communications founder Eric Yuan is selling about 100,000 shares of stock every month in recent months. Last week he really picked up the pace and offloaded stock. This month he got serious and sold 270,000 shares.
Larry Ellison dumped 7 million shares of Oracle last week for over $550 million in cash.
Google Founder Sergey Brin has sold $163 million of Alphabet and is expected to sell up to 250,000 more shares.
Worried about higher interest rates to curb inflation and proposed capital gains tax increases, the big tech executives are selling as fast as they can right now. Since ...