If they had their choice, most couples would want to get married on a Saturday. The problem is that there are just so many Saturdays in a year and tying the knot is a crowded trade this year.

 

Weddings, like so many other events that involve community gatherings, have suffered mightily during the pandemic. Postponements were about the best a couple could hope for during the worse of the COVID-19 crisis. Since then, bottlenecks, supply and labor shortages, not to mention the isolation required to safeguard against the coronavirus itself, have plagued wedding planners continuously. But, as virus fears begin to fade, there is suddenly a mad rush to get hitched.

 

A look at wedding statistics, according to WeddingWire, which follows nuptials data, shows the average cost of a wedding in 2021 was $22,500. That number is supposed to rise to $23,517 or more in 2022. Last year (2021), saw an increase in weddings from the dismal lockdown year of 2020. In 2022, more couples will be getting married than at any time since 1984 with estimates exceeding 2.5 million.

 

Underneath these figures is the story of a wedding industry that had suffered steep financial losses from the 2020 season. Many of this year's estimated 2.5 million weddings are simply "reschedules" from 2020-2021 postponements. During the last two years, the industry, like so many others, has had to cope with and then adjust to the costs of the pandemic. For example, increased safety precautions, such as temperature checks, sanitation stations, and spacing concerns has reduced the space available while increasing manpower and health safeguards. In addition, vendors and venues were hit with a vast array of higher costs for everything from caterers, personnel, flowers, paper products, and much more.

 

What this means for the average couple, who may have been waiting for a year or two, may be a severe case of sticker shock. Adding insult to injury, competition for popular locations, dates, photographers, DJs, and even wedding gowns, makes for a wedding planning nightmare. To just get married somewhere, at some time during the year is a win-win. Obviously, making key decisions now without delay, should be at the top of the list for engaged couples.

 

On the cost side, there are things couples can do to keep expenses down starting with hiring a competent wedding planner, who knows how to cut costs. You can also reduce guest count, share expenses with another couple who are getting married at the same venue, or in the local vicinity, who can share certain items like flowers. Finally, choose a venue that offers some flexibility on things — lower minimums on food, beverages, and smaller guest sizes. That venue may be harder to come by if you are planning a weekend wedding.

 

Weekday weddings, therefore, may be just the ticket to keep costs down, while also getting most of what couples want. That is why a lot more couples are seriously contemplating a weekday wedding. Weekday weddings are expected to rise by about 2 percent in 2022, according to a survey by TheKnot.com. In the destination wedding category, 13 percent of weddings took place on weekdays in 2021. Thursdays seem to stand out as the weekday most coveted by couples planning either local, or destination weddings. A Thursday allows for a long weekend of activities for guests.

 

A weekday wedding in general provides a lot more flexibility around dates, especially when it comes to booking a dream venue. It may also come with a discount on everything from the site itself, to the prices various suppliers normally charge. Most venues also offer added extras on weekdays, including things like reduced minimum spends and complimentary extras, such as arrival cocktails, upgraded beverage options, side dishes, etc.

 

There will also be much less competition for photographers, bands, make-up and hairdressers. If you are planning a destination wedding, hotels and airfares are less expensive as well. You can also expect a smaller guest list and therefore a more intimate affair.

 

But will your invited guests agree to come on a weekday? My guess is that more than you think will say "yes."

 

Who knows, a day off from work may be just what they need. After two years of remote work, they have probably built up a lot of paid time off, or annual leave. And after so much enforced isolation, many more than you might expect may be up for a wedding with friends they may not have seen for a year or two. Destination-wise, I would love a Thursday wedding in Costa Rico right now. How about you?

 

On Groundhog Day, Wednesday, Feb. 2, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, predicting that there will be at least six weeks of winter weather ahead of us. Given the market action of the last few days, can we expect inclement weather ahead for market bulls as well?

 

Last week, I warned readers to expect the stock market to bounce. It did, retracing 50 percent of the market's decline in just about four days. I also warned that investors should not get comfortable with this bounce because after the bounce markets should go south once again. That prediction seems to be playing out.

 

It would be an understatement to say that markets remain volatile in both the stock and bond markets. Commodities, the currency and crypto markets are also gyrating like a championship bronco.

 

Part of the problem lies with the FANG stocks. These large-cap mega companies account for so much of the major averages and indexes, that when one or another of these stocks catch a cold, the markets catch pneumonia. Most recently Meta (formerly known as Facebook) missed earnings and gave poor guidance on Wednesday night. The stock dropped more than 22 percent overnight. It was the single largest loss of dollar value for a public company in U.S. history. All the major averages declined with it, with the NASDAQ falling 2.25 percent, while the S&P 599 Index fell almost 1.5 percent.

 

Just the day before, Alphabet (Google) did the opposite, gaining 20 percent on stellar earnings and took the indexes for a major rise upwards. On Thursday, Amazon surprised investors with what looked like a massive beat on earnings and gained 11 percent in overnight trading. At first the U.S. indexes traded more than a percentage point higher but gave that all back by the opening on Friday morning, and so did the markets.

 

Overall, corporate earnings have held up with roughly 75 percent beating numbers, but down from 82 percent last quarter. The size of the beats, compared to the last few quarters, have been anemic, while the number of revisions upward in future earnings have been few and far between. Obviously, none of this has been enough to hold up the stock market, let alone propel it higher. I warned investors that would turn out to be the case more than a month ago.

 

The omicron variant is evidently not taking its toll on the job market yet, according to the latest payroll numbers. Friday's employment numbers saw 467,000 job gains versus the forecasts of only 110,000 gains.

 

Investors, rather than celebrate the job gains, saw them as proof that inflation is still climbing. Wages, a key element of the inflation equation, continued to move higher. The Ten-year U.S. Treasury bond spiked higher on the news to more than 1.90 percent. My target, as I have advised investors in the past, is a 2 percent yield on the "Tens" in the short-term.

 

But let's get to the meat of this column — the markets, where now, given that my forecast that the markets would see a 10-20 percent correction between mid-January and February. That prediction has been accomplished at this point. I also signaled that we would bounce this week and we have. At its height the bounce retraced 61 percent of the losses on the S&P 500 Index. But I also warned that we should not get too comfortable with this bounce. The last two days brought this point home to those who doubted that warning. Now what?

 

The stock market took less than half the time to recoup 61 percent of its losses. Since then, the volatility has exploded both up and down. This volatility will continue. Next week, for example, we could see a similar pattern as last week — up for a few days, and then down.

 

 In situations like this, over the longer term, we can expect to see a large "W" pattern in the market's behavior. We are about halfway through this pattern. At a bare minimum, we should see the markets (S&P 500 Index) retest its recent lows of 4,222 (on January 24, 2022). But it doesn't have to stop there. As I wrote two weeks ago, we could see a decline to 4,070 if investors begin to panic. But we could also see a higher low as well. Right now, the markets are in a state of indecision.

 

Given this potential scenario, I don't believe it is time to be a hero. If we retest the recent lows, sure, put a little money to work, but don't bet the house. From there, if it goes lower, start averaging in. The same maneuver could be applied on the upside as well, if 4,222 is truly the bottom. How will you know? Keep reading my columns.

 

Fifty dollars may be an exaggeration, unless you frequent some high-priced restaurants in Manhattan. But consumers should be prepared. Beef prices, for the foreseeable future, will continue to climb.

 

Some cuts of meat are already up 25 percent from where they were six months ago. As the cook in the house, I usually buy a prime rib roast for New Year's dinner, but not this year. The cost for said morsel doubled in price since last year. I bought Australian lamb instead, which was much more reasonable, but just not the same.

 

I assumed that the price of beef, like almost every other food product, was going up due to supply shortages caused by the pandemic. I knew that as the number of COVID cases climbed and businesses started to shut down, there was a run on everything from toilet paper to steaks.

 

In my neighborhood (back at the start of the pandemic), consumers flocked to the wholesale stores and supermarkets to buy what meat they could and stock up their freezers. At one point, rationing became a commonplace tool in controlling the consumption of beef, pork, and chicken in a tight market.

 

One of the major bottlenecks was in the slaughtering and processing part of the business. More than 59,000 meatpacking workers were infected by coronavirus and 250 lost their lives, according to a government investigation. Since then, turnover has been high in this labor-tight market, where low wages and poor working conditions are prevalent. All of these issues have contributed to higher costs.

 

Climate change has also become a bigger factor in the production of beef. Drought, now a constant companion to ranchers and farmers, last year squeezed supplies of feed for cattle in the Northern Plains. It was so bad that some ranchers were forced to sell even breeding stock to slaughterhouses. This reduced the overall herd of beef by 2 percent, according to the Department of Agriculture.

 

Now, the southern part of the Plains is experiencing a deepening drought. It is here that most of the cattle in the U.S. is raised. That is expected to reduce the cattle stock even further, marking three straight years of declines and the smallest herd since 2016.

 

You might think that America's ranchers and farmers are in "hog heaven" as a result of these skyrocketing prices for beef at the supermarket, but you would be mistaken. Cattle ranchers receive about 37 cents on every dollar spent on beef, according to federal data.

 

As input costs for everything from gasoline to livestock feed keep rising, the ranchers' portion of profits drop even further. The sad fact is that drought is forcing more and more ranchers to reduce their herds, which has caused a glut of product at the slaughterhouses. That, in turn, causes the price the processors are willing to pay to plummet. But those price declines never show up at the grocery store. Why?

 

It can be summed up in four names — Tyson Foods, Cargill, National Beef Packing Co. and JBS — together, these conglomerates now dominate the meatpacking industry with an 85 percent market share. Over several decades, through mergers and acquisitions and a lax attitude toward competition by regulators, the meat-packing industry became an oligopoly. Once that was accomplished, these four remaining companies, in the name of efficiency, cut their capacity to process beef, closing slaughterhouses, and processing plants across the nation.

 

As a result, profit margins improved. Company stock prices improved, but ranchers and farmers were increasingly forced to accept whatever prices the processors were willing to pay for their product. Over time, this oligopoly was able to first influence prices and then dictate what they were willing to pay ranchers for their herds. It worked. The four meat packing companies identified above, for example, saw their profit margins jump 300 percent last year.

 

So, you might ask, who is making money from these steadily climbing meat prices? The government is asking the same question. Last month, the Federal Trade Commission opened an inquiry into how anticompetitive practices by major companies have contributed to supply chain problems.

 

As for the meatpackers, Senior White House economists Brian Deese, Sameera Fazili and Bharat Ramamurti, in a blog post in December 2021, explained it this way:

 

"Here is the bottom line: the meat price increases we are seeing are not just the natural consequences of supply and demand in a free market — they are also the result of corporate decisions to take advantage of their market power in an uncompetitive market, to the detriment of consumers, farmers, and ranchers, and our economy."

 

While investors focus on the losses that are piling up in the stock market, the cryptocurrency space has suffered far more. The bears say it has further to go, but that may depend on what happens to stocks.

 

Bitcoin, the grandaddy of crypto currencies, is trading around $36,900 per coin as of Jan. 27, 2022. It has suffered a 50 percent decline since its record high in November 2021. Ethereum, the second most popular coin, has dropped from almost $5,000 to $2,498. In total, the combined crypto market has lost $1.4 trillion over the past week.

 

At one time, crypto speculators argued that coins like Bitcoin danced to their own music and were uncorrelated with the boring stock and bond markets. Others like Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, made Bitcoin legal tender in his country. Some professional sports stars announced their desire to be compensated in crypto, and even the Mayor of New York City Eric Adams said he would be converting his first three paychecks into Bitcoin and Ethereum.

 

As more celebrities (like Matt Damon) and companies expressed willingness to accept payment in crypto currencies, it seemed crypto's extreme volatility might be a thing of the past. More and more retail and then institutional players began investing in crypto currencies. Company managements from Tesla's Elon Musk to MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor expressed confidence in the viability of this market. That may have been true, but underneath the hype things have changed. As many traditional investors began to consider electronic currencies, the currency market changed.

 

That was good news at first, as crypto bulls argued that "crypto had finally come of age." But traditional investors soon began to consider electronic currencies as just another risk asset. As a result, over the last two years, the prices of coins such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have increasingly become linked to the movement of stock prices.

 

In tougher markets, like we have been experiencing since the new year, investors tend to sell riskier assets like commodities, stocks and now crypto. So, who has been selling? Retail investors for the most part, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal. That makes some sense, since crypto currencies, (in hindsight) were a main beneficiary during the pandemic of the wave of government stimulus money and extended unemployment checks that found its way into many American pockets.

 

As in every market, as certain coins hit historical highs back in November 2021, many retail buyers poured money into the coin market at its peak. Now, these investors (called weak hands by the crypto faithful) are heading for the exits all at once, while institutional investors, inured to the ups and downs of the market, hold steady. Some believe that there may be a political angle to this sell-off as well.

 

The government continues to monitor and study ways of reigning in some of the excesses of this crypto currency market.  There have been recent reports in the media that the Biden Administration is gearing up to issue a cryptocurrency executive order asking federal agencies to determine crypto risks and opportunities. The specter of a flurry of government regulations dealing with everything from national security to oversight on transactions, products, and platforms has investors worried.

 

As the crypto market matures, some misconceptions are becoming apparent. Clearly, the idea that crypto currencies could act as an inflation hedge has now proven to be a myth. Nor do they act as a safe haven (like the U.S. dollar) in times of geopolitical uncertainty. Volatility, however, seems to a distinguishing and enduring feature.

 

The fact is that this marks the eighth time that Bitcoin has fallen 50 percent or more since its inception in 2009. In each case, the price has risen to a higher price, although there have been times when it has traded sideways for months to years. It is not, as many believe, a get-rich-quick scheme, or sure-fire way to riches. Strip out the mystique — what it ultimately could be, or should be — and what do you get? Crypto currencies are simply another class of risk assets. and What's wrong with that? 

 

Across several industries, corporate executives are guiding investor's expectations lower during this fourth-quarter 2021 earnings season. To me, it is just added another nail in the coffin of bullish sentiment.

 

Pick your poison. The money center banks earnings beat on the bottom line, but it was the commentary and nuanced forward guidance that dismayed investors. Airlines did OK, but also warned of tough times ahead due to higher fuel costs, and the Omicron variant. Companies in other sectors (such as Netflix) warned of thinner profit margins ahead due to higher costs, less demand and/or supply chain issues.

 

None of this should come as a surprise to my readers. I expected a mounting chorus of woeful predictions (real and imagined) by executives, who are eager to cover their butts in the event things don't go their way over the next quarter or two. Lower guidance is one, but not the only reason, I am expecting further downside in the markets ahead.

 

The U.S. 10-year Treasury bond yield is another reason. This week, the bond yield hit 1.86 percent, which was a 40 percent increase since the beginning of December 2021. I expect the yield to hit 2 percent, which is another 7 percent gain from here. Is it any wonder, given that fixed income analysts are outdoing themselves (like lemmings) in predicting more rate hikes this year and sooner? "Four or more," says one analyst from a big brokerage house. "I'll see you four and raise you eight," says another.

 

Bottom line — a 7 percent inflation rate is a real problem. Even President Biden, in his televised two-hour press conference this week, had to remind all of us that "it is the Fed's job to fight inflation."  Anyone (and there are many) who may have been hoping that a stock market decline would cause President Biden to pressure the Fed into backing off from raising interest rates has been put on notice — there is no longer a Fed put under the stock market. It would take a 20 percent decline or more, I believe, before the Fed might have change of heart, if then.

 

Another of my forecasts slower growth is starting to unfold. The economy is beginning to feel the back up in interest rates. Take the housing sector, for example. A 30-year conventional fixed rate mortgage traded at 3 percent a few short weeks ago. Today, that rate is 3.7 percent on average.

 

Since mortgage rates are super sensitive to even a small rise in interest, I would expect existing home sales to begin to falter. And as mortgage rates climb higher, less people may be willing to stand in line and pay up for that house. The housing sector is a huge segment of U.S. GDP. But it won't collapse. I'm not expecting the housing market to do more than slow a tad, but that is enough to scare investors. The good news, I suppose, is that over time prices will come down. That should help reduce the overall inflation pressure. But the key word here is time.

 

Unfortunately, markets aren't about to wait for this kind of scenario to unfold. About the longest investors can wait in today's markets is until the next Fed meeting, which just happens to be next week. On Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022, traders are expecting an announcement from the Fed spokesmen that there could be as many as four interest rate hikes (of 25 basis points each) in 2022.

 

That won't exactly be good news, but at least it is expected, or at least I hope so. Anything more, and I would say "look out below." A hawkish comment or two from Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, Jerome Powell, could easily swing the market up or down 75 to 100 points on the S&P 500 Index.

 

We have already passed the start date (Jan. 15, 2022) of the correction I predicted several weeks ago. I have been warning readers of a 10-20 percent decline between that date and the end of February. So far, the NASDAQ has fallen more than 10 percent, the consumer discretionary sector is down 8 percent, healthcare down 6.5 percent, real estate down 8.6 percent, and materials down 5 percent.   The S&P 500 Index is only down 7 percent while the Dow has done the best only falling 5 percent.

 

I was hoping that readers took advantage of the few rally attempts we had this past week to reduce positions further and get more conservative. I advise you to do the same in the coming week, if we get another bounce or two. It is not the time to "buy the dips", but rather my advice is to sell the rips.  Once the S&P 500 Index has hit my 10 percent target, we will reassess for further downside.