MidSouth Week in Review
December 13, 2024

Weekly Update from Fund Manager Buzz Heidtke, MidSouth Investment Fund

S&P was down 0.65% for the week and year to date it is up 26.9%.  U.S. inflation rate accelerates to 2.7% and core to 3.3%, after 4 straight months of 0.3% jumps.  Mortgage rates decreased for the third week, falling to 6.6% down from the high of 6.7% last week.  Sources:  Wall Street Journal and New York Times

Qualified Charitable Distributions - QCDs allow savers 70½ and older to donate pretax funds directly from traditional IRAs to charities and owe no income tax on those withdrawals.  The QCD limit is $105,000 for 2024 and $108,000 for 2025 for each IRA owner, and the total can include many separate donations - Wall street Journal

Investing - 46% of U.S. individual investors believe there is less than 10% probability of a market crash over the next 6 months,  The highest share since June 2006.  The percentage has doubled over the last 2 years, according to the Yale school of management survey.  This comes as the S&P has rallied 50% since it bottomed in Oct 2022 – Financial Times

Gold & S&P - For the first time in history gold and S&P could post 30% annual gains - Ryan

Global Food Prices - Global food prices jumped 5.7% year-over-year in November, hitting a 19 month high.  Dairy and meat surged by 20.1% and 5.9%.  Since the beginning of 2020, global food prices are up a whopping 26.5%.  Global inflation is back on the rise - The Kobeissi Letter

Tesla - TSLA ($436.25) is up 84% over the last 65 trading days, or since 10/11.  As comparison, the rest of the Mag 7 is up, on average 10%, and the Nasdaq up 8%.  $500 worth of TSLA shares in 2012 is now worth $112,500 - Gene Muster

Mag 7 - The Magnificent 7 (NFLX, META, MSFT, AMZN, NVDA, GOOGL, TSLA) represents over 70% of the trading volumes on the Interactive Brokerage platform - CEO Thomas Peterffy

The material was prepared by MidSouth Investment Management LLC, and does not necessarily represent the views of the presenting party, nor their affiliates.  This information has been derived from sources believed to be accurate.  Please note – investing involves risk, and past performance is no guarantee of future results.  The publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional services.  If assistance is needed, the reader is advised to engage the services of a competent professional.  This information should not be construed as investment, tax or legal advice and may not be relied on for the purpose of avoiding any Federal tax penalty.  This is neither a solicitation nor recommendation to put through a regular purchase or sell any investment or insurance product or service, and should not be relied upon as such.  This material represents an assessment of the market environment at a specific point in time and is not intended to be a forecast of future events, or a guarantee of future results.  Investments will fluctuate and when redeemed may be worth more or less than when originally invested.  All economic and performance data is historical and not indicative of future results.  Market indices discussed are unmanaged.  Investors cannot invest in unmanaged indices.