Zero Price Memory Up Here

Now that it looks like Hello Kitty is gone and the $GME nonsense behind us, it appears markets are legging up and without any resistance or price memory in its way. What I mean by that is, you are no longer waiting for your down stocks to break even to sell them because they’re probably all at or near record highs. Stocks at record highs tend to make new record highs. That’s how it works.

Markets can always pause or become affected by external events. But for the most part, and this will piss off some of you out there, the FOMC did a superb job in managing rates back over 5%.

I understand costs are higher and inflation was/is an issue for some. No one likes to pay more for things, and I do not want to come across as elitist here since I too grew up lower middle class, but those of us with some money who played in the market the past few years made a great deal of money. More than that, most government workers benefitted greatly via their retirements plans, and 401ks. The inflation monster is in fact TRANSITORY, even though you pretend it isn’t. This doesn’t make up for the fact that our currency lacks buying power. I am not suggesting everything is great.

This is what I am suggesting.

The FOMC managed to provide Americans, pension funds, foreign investors with a 5.25% riskless return in Tbills and at the same time keep markets at RECORD highs. You might hate the Fed but you have to admit that was clutch. If the economy tails off, the Fed has plenty of fire power to fight against recession.

Into the afternoon hours, I am 157% leveraged long.

Contemplating macro moves, I’m having a hard time accepting dividend paying stocks are a worthwhile venture. Value guys are endlessly jabbering about them and many are at 52 week highs. But let’s be honest, risk free returns are over 5% now. Barely any of the really interesting divvy plays are yielding more. Why bother?

On the other hand we have growth and the overvalued nature of it, placing investors in between growth and a hard place. Should we just continue to buy up growth and ignore value, hoping the gravy train continues? Just by saying that I sound like a bearshitting skeptic. Anyone who is against the orthodoxy of $NVDA and $MSFT is simply wrong.

And what about cryptos? Everyone trips over themselves to describe to me how great $BTC is but on nearly every time horizon, $SOL does better.

Looking for “value” growth might land you in odd places, such as China. On the surface level, China should be good. It’s the biggest and fastest economy in the world. Everyone says it’s the future. Yet, all of their stocks suck. I suppose the fact it is a communist state might have something to do with it. But they really don’t act communist, given the profits the companies retain. The stocks aren’t very reliable and the risks associated with holding Chinese stocks, given the tenuous nature of US relations, is palpable.

This leads me back to $NVDA and the semis and the crowded AI trade, with all of its bells and whistles. Aside from the occasional rally in basic materials, which is extremely fickle, the semis have been the most consistent area of the market to make money. There are others, such as industrials, which lead all sectors in sales growth TTM. There are an array of industrial stocks crushing and most are under the radar. But are you going to make 50% per year on those?

We are nearly midway through 2024 and gains have been tapered. Both the NASDAQ and SPY are up around 11%, Russell +4%. If you think about the 100 year return of 8% and then the +15% annual return the market has provided us with since 2009, you can see how fucking spoiled rotten we are and how making 20% per year on investments isn’t all that attractive anymore.

I had what you can call a ‘Tom Sawyer like childhood’, in a middle class suburban neighborhood in Flatlands, Brooklyn. I lived  in a 3BR apartment, with my Mother and sister, across the street from my Grandparents, who we visited daily. My Father was murdered when I was 4, so it was just us. My Mother worked two jobs to keep us fed and clothed and I spent the majority of my time in the parking lots with dozens of kids my age playing baseball, tag, manhunt, kick the can, midnight madness (based off the movie), football, hockey or a simple game of hardball errors (IYKYK). My Mother also made sure I got involved with the Catholic Church and made me become an altar boy, which I did about 3 days per week.

During the summers we’d go to the pool club that belonged to our buildings. We’d hang out there from morning to night, playing swimming games (Marco Polo), racing, doing cannonball contests, or diving for money when the managers would create events for the kids. There were pinball machines inside and shuffleboard courts outside, but we more or less focused on swimming. At the end of each swimming season, the managers would throw quarters into the pool for the kids to get and then everyone would take their mats and toss them into the pool and have a great big floating party, amidst the music and laughter of people genuinely happy. When that event happened, I always knew it was time to go back to school.

My elementary school was mixed race because just down the block were the housing projects. I got along great with my black classmates and grew up with them and considered them friends. There weren’t many fights in the school, but there were some. I’d get into plenty of fights with my own friends, but that’s just the way it was back then, or at least where I grew up. If you had an argument with someone, you settled it there and after the fight ended you shook hands and became friends again.

Then in 1989  the building I lived in and the 4 associated with it turned condo. While this might sound great, it actually destroyed the neighborhood. They offered tenants money to leave and most did, including my Mother. I think they gave her $15,000, which was a decent sum back then. My Grandparents didn’t take the offer because they were old and couldn’t care less about moving. This is when the white flight occurred, in earnest.

Moving in were middle class west indian families, mostly from Jamaica and Trinidad. From my vantage point, they were great people and I made good friends with many of whom were my age when visiting my grandparents and friends on the weekends. And then the cultural rot of the 1990s took hold, with gangster rap music, crack, and glorified bad behavior. Many of my friends’ parents bought their apartments instead of taking the money to move, so I still had the majority of my childhood friends there. Like many kids who turn into teenagers, my friends fell into smoking pot, drinking beer, and chasing girls are their primary objective.

The housing projects that I mentioned earlier got inexorably worse, in terms of safety, and I no longer walked around there. Before the 90s, it was about 20 to 30% white, and it was considered by other housing projects to be “soft.” The group of buildings my Grandparents lived in were considered beyond soft and often times teenagers from the housing projects would visit to rob and fight with the newly arrived west indians and the whites. In my experience, the west indians were far less violent  than some of the more vocal American blacks in the neighborhood. There was once a lad dubbed “Livewire” who terrorized the neighborhood, akin to Omar from The Wire, robbing people with either an ax or box cutter and was known to cut people when they resisted.

I’ll cut to the chase and tell you what transpired from 1990 to 1999.

The buildings were unable to sell condos and the company who owned it went bankrupt. The new owners made the apartments rentable again, opening it to low income black families.

The neighborhood went from 90% white to 95% black, all this inside of a decade.

One of the stores I used to frequent as a boy for candy  got bought and the new owners sold drugs from it.

Car thefts and robberies skyrocketed. I once knew someone (west indian) who’d steal cars all the time, just for the pleasure of joyriding. He never sold them and just wanted to ride in a nice car. He came from a good family, and was raised well by an educated Mother, but chose to be a criminal for reasons that I still cannot understand.

One day 5 of my friends were shot, 1 through the chest, by two gunmen in a totally random but deliberate attack. They walked down the block where my friends were and opened fire. Thankfully all survived. It was only by chance that I was not there.

One of the car thieves got into a high speed chase from cops and accidentally ran over an elderly white woman, killing her. He got 10 years in prison.

One of my friends was shot in the head and killed over a dispute over a girl.

I was robbed for my jacket by gunpoint at 13 years of age, on Thanksgiving.

Our local shopping mall, where we used to frequent on weekends, became unsafe and was targeted by mobs of black teens for acts of wanton criminality.

The new generation of kids did not play outside like we did and the parking lot was quiet and abandoned by the youth. The pool club closed and became a CVS. Most of my friends who stayed got into drugs and many died. It was because my Mother moved out of there when I was 13, and the fact my Grandparents died in the late 90s, that I wasn’t really around there to enjoy the full splendor of the neighborhood collapsing into ruin. For example, our local high school, South Shore, was shuddered by the city because students were being killed, maimed, and grades were failing.

South Shore is now used by the NYPD to train. It used to house over 3,000 students.

FIN.

I’d like to quickly elucidate what has been transpiring the past week in one stock chart, ticker $FFIE.

This soon to be zero EV play was trading at 10 cents at the time the $GME craze took off. It was boosted by all sorts of influencers, topping out today near $4, an incredible move. When it crescendo’d there today and slipped, buyers panicked and the fucking stock collapsed like lead balloons resting on cheap tents. The stock is back to $1 and it’s over.

There are all sorts of these runners happening, even $BNED took the fuck off by 200% before “resting.” All of this is gambling and beneath a man of my station. However, the major corporate winner in all of this excitement is $HOOD, the proverbial picks and shovels of this new gold rush.

On the issue of gold, it’s clear to me there is something awry in the metals market, with big dicked gains in Silver, Nickel and Copper to lead the fray. We have ourselves an interesting tape, but it isn’t without worry. Every so often fuck you candles harangue the tape, causing late buyers to find religion about their purchases.

I closed the day +51bps, 112% leveraged long and without hedges. I am just about flat for May, which is disgraceful and disgusting. But life is long lads and there is time to make things better, do things more efficiently. If you’ve had a modicum of trading success, like I have, you know that on a long enough time line things work out. But this doesn’t mean you sit back and take your God given rights for granted. I must work hard all the time, permitting myself to only relax during brief moments in the day. I live a disciplined life bereft of vices and fun. I do not partake in hedonism because I believe life should be hard. I endeavor to maximize my success in the trade of my choosing, collect wealth and prestige, drop dead and leave a legacy behind through inheritance and personal interactions to last a few generations. If you’re asking for more than that, well then, good luck.

I don’t want to discuss $GME anymore, other than to remind you that when a bad company’s stock goes up, the CEO of that company will almost always take advantage of the situation and issues shares. Remember that.

That said, I’m barely up this morning, which isn’t ideal to say the least. Pre market looked promising but we are sort of listless here with bland action and dispassionate fervor.

I do like the China stocks and bought some $BABA. My trading aside, there is a massive and notable move in commodities here, led by copper and silver and gold and even nickel and zinc. It’s similar to the risk off vibe we had at the onset of the Ukraine war. Russia centric materials are gapping up and silver is beloved by those who want to “end the Fed.”

Take that what you will. Are we pricing in war, inflation, the end of the Fed, or all of the above or none of it and this move will shortly be revoked?

My sense is the copper move is tethered to Chinese growth and/or demand, so either China is taking off now or they are hoarding the metal.

Good day

The session started like shit for me because, like a jackass, I bought $GME into the close. I also had some $IQ, which TANKED at the open by 8% only to later SOAR and close +9%. I was bogged by losses all day and it got more difficult to avoid being routed, due to the market’s life being drawn out of it by micro cap gambling CUNTS. We saw an array of 10 cent stocks soaring by 500% and if you’re wondering: yes I hate you and want you to die.

In the morning I had all sort of SHIT popping, like $HOOD and $AMD. The Robinhood cocksuckers went from +3.5% to down 3%. I executed several successful day trade but still could not stop what was going to happen: me closing at the fucking session lows of DOWN 135bps.

Into tomorrow, I am 101% long without hedges, because why the fuck not?

All you need to know about today is high beta stocks closed down 1.27%, OFF by 2% from session highs. If you stepped in late and tried to be cool, you got DOWN 3% for the day and now you’re wondering if it’s too late to buy some $GME to make it all back.

On the bigger picture, I am down 0.6% for May, trying to climb back to green.

Since I am fasting for the next day, in order to test my mettle, I will be doing very little for the balance of the evening.

See you fuckers tomorrow.

One of the consequences of the renewed fervor in $GME has been people are now actively hunting short sellers, gunning up stocks higher based solely on the idea if they press it high enough they could kill hedge fund managers. I am not using hyperbole.

Case in point is soon to be ZERO $FFIE is up over 5,000% the past week, running from below 10 cents to over $2 in a few sessions.

Other winners include $CTNT +466% $CRKN +340% $SINT +272% $NVAX +191% $LIDR +165% $SLNA +145% $IPQ +135%

Notice how $AMC or $GME isn’t on that list.

I thought I’d take a break from talking about me and touch on a part of the market that goes largely unseen, especially from day traders. The fucking industrials are zooming and have been zooming for quite some time now. Doing a macro search of the highest growth rate by sector brings me directly to the industrials, +13% TTM. I ask people around the country what they’re seeing and almost everyone says they’re seeing lots of construction projects happening.

Here in Raleigh, I see nothing but cranes, as all of you northern scum come down here to escape your northern dystopian hell holes.

Most traders are attracted to the high stakes, high volume, high reward of tech. But in the underbelly of the market are these fucking stocks that are crushing, almost all of them growing on the top line as well we generating FCF.

Here are the top rated in Stocklabs.
$EME $ROAD $PWR $FIX $POWL $WWD $TREX $SPXC

and some other notable FCF generating beasts.

$MLM $TYL $URI $PH $WSO $CACI $BLD $CSL $MEDP $USLM $ETN $TT $CMI $CW $TSCO $EXP $DHR $IBP $TTEK $GE $WAB $WMS $CRAI $IESC $OC $DOV $AIT

The only explanation for all of this greatness is the boom we are in that we (I) sometimes pretends isn’t happening because we (I) find something wrong with society that needs correcting. This isn’t a cultural or even a long term attestation of good times in America but a mere fact that certain areas of the economy are incredibly strong now.

Methodically, I made sure I booked gains on this terrific market day. With the NASDAQ steaming higher and meme stocks on the mind of the Third Estate, it was rather a mundane affair to extract money from the tape today. I closed out the session +53bps, 115% long and I did bring some $GME, $BB, $IQ and $RUM into tomorrow.

Much of what you are seeing now is being fueled by the derivative market, lunatics buying calls and increasing the gamma, pressuring shares higher. It’s all very high finance stuff, which would fall on deaf ears, akin to explaining calculus to mentally retarded people.

There is a bias higher. The breadth wasn’t terrific today, closed at 52%, yet many are excited about what happens next. This heightened sense of awareness in people creates opportunity, permitting a whack a mole quality in the tape with traders wondering which stock is the next to go.

The good news for me, I erased my losses for May and now have gains just under 1%. The bad news is, my gains are comically inferior to whatever this is, grandiose moves in the underclass. I am emotionally torn between my high finance trading and my middle class upbringing which craves for aspiration and the ideal of becoming something or someone great.

Either way, things are going in th right direction and I can only hope that I made the right decisions to navigate what is going to be, almost assuredly, extremely volatile days ahead.

Although I’m not advocating to be long bad companies like $GME or $AMC for any significant length of time, today’s drawdown is most likely a pause in the fire that recently started. The difference between what I believe and what others are telling you to do is that I am just renting these fuckers and have very little interest in enriching the CEO’s of these companies with an opportunity to sell stock to the public. Bear in mind, by elevating the shares of $GME to unnatural levels, not only are you “having fun” but also providing the impetus for the CEO to sell shares to the public to raise capital, quite literally using all of the unsuspecting $HOOD traders as bag holders.

The way to mitigate this possible occurrence is to 1. only trade with money you can afford to lose and 2. book the profit.

There are some stocks I trade that I might’ve made 300 points in the name, but not continuous, doing so in dribs and drabs with risk mitigated by the holding duration or size of the position. What I am advocating against is you believing this to be a world changing event, that once you gun $GME to $500 all of the fucking trannies and meth heads littering your streets will magically disappear. This changes nothing, other than the digits in your account.

That being said, I had some bullshit overnighters and with today’s open I had to buy some real stocks like $AMGN, $GS and $CRWD in order to make up some losses. I am down 23bps and 100% cash, looking to get back in.

The meme stock trade isn’t necessarily for me, which is why I tend to play on the edges of it, names other than $GME or $AMC that might see sympathy bounces. Nevertheless, I am not opposed to trading anything on an intra day scale, just somewhat reticent to hold them overnight due to my serious trading nature. Unlike you, I am not a fucking clown and know what I am doing.