Free Whelan: Tackle September investing head on, but don't fight the Fed

In this Stockhead series, investment manager James Whelan, managing director of Barclay Pearce Capital Asset Management, offers his insights on the key investment themes and trends in domestic and global markets. From macro musings to the metaverse and everything in between, Whelan offers his distilled thoughts on the hot topic of the day, week, month or year, from the point of view of a professional money manager.

It was an amazing week just gone – was on the road for a chunk of it with Impact Minerals and mining conferences.

There are a few good companies out there in the critical minerals space but I’ll be keeping them close to my chest for the foreseeable future. I never would have drawn the connection so closely to the AI advance and critical minerals but that’s why you need to go to the conference.

We discuss this and more on the podcast (link at end of article), recorded Friday, along with a few other big announcements.

Speaking of announcements, we’ve finally been able to announce Balmain’s favourite son, Robbie Farah, as one of the team here in Wealth Management, specifically working with athletes on their financial journey.

Along with that my journey to become a competent football player is also coming along and anyone keen to see more please follow the #BackJimmy campaign on various platforms.

All of which is culminating with the launch of our Athlete’s Wealth Management offering. And this being Australia, requires a game of football and a BBQ. I’ll be lining up next to Robbie on the All Star team. There’s nowhere to hide out there.

Message me for details.

All being said I’m proud of what we’ve been able to achieve in the time since I joined. This family gets a little bigger and better every day.

Meanwhile in the world of investing…

Markets rallied last week. I guess I was a little premature on the “mid-October is the time for the buying to come back in” but if anything hath been proven it’s that it’s always better to maintain an investment in the market.

Because while two weeks ago was awful, last week was one of the best there’s been.

The best week this year to be accurate.

Am I buying it?

Well, yes. Data is still showing a weakening economy but weakening at an ‘okay’ rate and, as mentioned, the Fed has lots of wiggle room.

As I’ve said before, we ebb and flow between good news and bad with the Fed being staunch to dovish.

Here are two interesting disinflationary (almost recessionary) charts of note…

Zooming in on dining out

This is the Restaurant Performance Index for the US. It’s something I’d never heard about either but it’s telling you what you would already assume would happen if food prices away from home increased by 27% since Covid.

The shipping news

Now shipping, where costs have also declined significantly. This also has a little to do with US government policy on small good imports but still…

Weaker before stronger

And on to the seasonality side of things and September plays to my theory of weaker before stronger.

All eyes on the Fed this week to see if the known rate cut is sold into, bigger than many expect (which would be a bad signal for the economy) or a priced in non-event.

Any other ideas?

Gold carries on and if you don’t have the courage or conviction to follow it then you could always look to silver, which seems to be lagging.

Global X has a nice little silver miners ETF and that could always be the shot.

Stock code is SIL and it provides access to a basket of silver miners around the world.

Don’t overcomplicate it.

Going further into the weeds there’s some individual silver names listed in Australia we keep stashed in the bottom drawers and we’re happy to talk on request.

All the best and stay safe,

James

Theory of Thing podcast > Listen here for all the market news you need.

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