How to ‘get out of the way’ of a bubble bursting for stocks

If you bought Amazon back in late March, early April, when it was getting kicked to the curb by POTUS tweets of doom, then you might be feeling like a few victory laps this morning.

Amazon’s in-your-face earnings and CEO Jeff Bezos’s bet that his millions of users are ready to pay more for Prime could be setting shares up for a record session. From its bargain basement price of $1,371.99 on Apr. 2, Amazon has climbed about 7%.

It tops off a pretty sweet week for the sector, especially the FANGS. (We’ll add another “A” — is for “Apple” — when the iPhone maker reports Tuesday.)

“Tech is on fire. AMD, Intel, Microsoft all pointing to strong tech spending. Google, Amazon and Facebook all had accelerating revenue trends, which is pretty sick for such huge companies. I mean, come on — that’s pretty nuts,” says Elazar Advisors’s Chaim Siegel, in emailed comments.

But alas, Amazon may not be able to lift all boats this morning. Dow & S&P 500 futures were in the red, even as a historic handshake was taking place at the Korean DMZ today.

Maybe it’s a good time for our call of the day from John Coumarianos, analyst at Clarity Financial, who is ready to pop your bubble with talk of all sorts of places you shouldn’t be investing right now.

“Nobody needs to own bitcoin or cryptocurrency. Also, nobody needs to own any technology stocks right now. Moreover, there are many stock markets around the world cheaper than the U.S. market,” says Coumarianos, who says the best strategy is to “get out of the way” of potential bubbles.

Where to invest, then? Emerging markets, which have their own share of volatility, but with valuations that are below U.S. stocks, the Clarity analyst says in his blog post for Real Investment Advice.

This may sound a little harsh to investors who have made a bundle on tech stocks, and some would argue that they still aren’t wildly expensive.

Real Investment Advice

Not that Coumarianos is saying you should toss out your U.S. stocks, of course, as he points to a couple of ways to “mitigate overvaluation” of those equities. He suggests exchange-traded funds with more of the cheaper stocks, such as the iShares MSCI USA Equal-Weighted ETF  or the PowerShares FTSE RAFI US 1000  .

Key market gauges

Dow  and S&P 500  futures are in the red, ahead of U.S. growth data. Bucking that trend is the Nasdaq-100 futures  as some big tech names trek higher. On Thursday, Facebook helped cinch some hefty gains for the Dow  , S&P 500 and Nasdaq  .

See the Market Snapshot column for more.

The chart

Lumber futures have been on a bit of a tear, as our chart of the day from The Daily Shot points out, which brings up a pretty good question. How long until home buyers start paying more?

Earnings

Amazon  is headed for a record high when it opens, after some pretty spiffy results. It also announced a 20% hike in Prime subscription prices. The jury’s still out on whether that’s a good idea or not.

Plus, Amazon has committed to streaming NFL games for another two seasons.

Intel  shares are rising after forecast-beating results. Microsoft  is also higher after better-than-expected earnings and strong guidance.

The earnings pace mercifully slows Friday, with mostly oil majors reporting — Phillips 66   , Exxon,  and Chevron  .

The buzz

KOREA SUMMIT PRESS POOL/AFP/Getty Images

There’s lots of chatter about that meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in which Kim even cracked a joke — of the nuclear kind. But the two also agreed work on “complete denuclearization” of the peninsula and end their decades-long state of war. Meanwhile, Otto Warmbier’s parents are suing Pyongyang over the alleged murder and torture of their son.

Meanwhile, next week’s trade talks between the U.S. and China are getting a few nervous. Tech stocks fell in China after worries that U.S. action against ZTE  could be repeated for telecom-equipment peer Huawei  . Another worry is the U.S. may start to take a hard look at information partnerships between the two countries when it comes to artificial intelligence.

T-Mobile  and Sprint  could be headed for a merger deal next week. Those shares are both up in premarket.

On the economic beat, get ready for some big data, with first-quarter gross domestic product ahead of the open. Economists expect softness, with growth of 2%.

Central bankers in Europe must be doing some hard thinking today, after GDP growth in both eurozone heavyweight France and the U.K. undershot forecasts a lot. Over in Japan, the BOJ dropped its target date for 2% inflation as it stood pat on policy.

In honor of International Chart Day yesterday, here’s our most important chart of the century for investors.

The stat

The quote

“It would be a shame if countries that we always support were to lobby against the U.S. bid. Why should we be supporting these countries when they don’t support us (including at the United Nations)?” — That was POTUS tweeting in the wee hours of Friday morning, as he appeared to threaten potential opponents to the idea of a U.S-Canada-Mexico joint bid to host the 2026 World Cup.

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