THE GREAT BITCOIN CRASH OF 2013 IS UPON US

Max Keiser must be losing his strudels. It appears his preferred currency is undergoing a bit of volatility, as evidenced by its daily range.

Low: $105

High: $266

Last: $139

Internet news man, Max Keiser, has been very outspoken in his support for the BitCoin. He’s even went so far as to tell people to convert their fiat currencies into it, despite the fact that it has been a vehicle for speculation and not a store of value.

Let’s see what Max has been up to on Twitter.

Here are his top 7 reasons to not panic about today’s 45% decline in the bitcoin.

Incidentally, a few hours before the crash, lil’ ole Max was recommending the bitcoin, with two fists pumped into thr sky. His price target was…well see for yourself.

Normally I’d refrain from calling someone out on bad calls; but this one was painfully obvious. It had all of the hallmarks of a classic bubble, on the cusp of popping. It’s one thing to hold onto legacy positions that enjoy a large profit cushion. It’s entirely different telling people to buy into the pyramid scheme at the very top of the pyramid.

Bitcoin was $40 last month. I think it’s fair to assume $265 was the top of the pyramid.

Enjoy the other side of the mountain, Mr. Keiser.

UPDATE: BitCoin bulls are blaming today’s crash on a DDOS attack on one of the pristine exchanges. Pray tell me, isn’t that a pillar of the inherent risk of owning an internet currency?

UPDATE II: The internet people under the stairs, who’ve been long Bitcoin, share their misery.

Sequestration means nothing.

Weak employment data means nothing.

North Korea nuclear threats mean nothing.

I could be right about calling a top here, out of sheer luck. Calling tops is like playing a really high level of whack-a-mole. The trend is up. The fix is in and if you have some skin in the game, played smartly, you can improve your social position in this country.

Being a skeptic based upon facts will get you nowhere.

Welcome to the new, new normal.

I’m not surprised to learn that the Fed inadvertently leaked information to small amount of people yesterday, effectively helping them participate in the ‘grande finale.’ If the Fed is all beginning and the end of markets, the reason behind new all time highs, why do you assume they would play such a game fairly?

All of the small-mad-cappers are screaming today. The OTB guy is in full force today, playing the ponies, procuring enough money to upgrade to a 1989 oldsmobile.

Just know, it doesn’t get much better than this.

The tax paying citizenry, which is a very small part of the US economy, shouldn’t have an issues paying their tax bills this year.

Thanks to Ben.

Original thinkers do not care what other people think. They have a plan, with goals affixed, and try to accomplish them. They aren’t swayed by public opinion and they don’t do something just to be original.

Sometimes being original means to do what the herd is doing, other times the opposite. That’s the point of being an independent thinker.

Are you buying/selling XYZ only because a famous hedge fund manager is buying or shorting it?

Are you shorting XYZ because it’s the fashionable thing to do?

Do you find yourself selling too quickly, because you lack conviction?

Conviction is a hard thing to manage. It’s not as easy as some people think. Most people believe being stubborn or ignorant is conviction; but that’s simply not the case. To have conviction in a name, one must be fully educated about the facts supporting the reason to be long or short. When a person is stubborn/ignorant, he’s simply being lazy, leaving fate to be decided by time and luck.

It’s burdensome to be original because it means being responsible for actions, words and thoughts. Going throughout life emulating people is a short cut, preferred by many, practiced by most. There’s nothing worse than an unoriginal moron. It’s boring and tedious to watch.

That being said, I’m not here to lecture you. I swear on a stack of King James bibles that wasn’t my intention when I started to write this blog. I don’t plan these posts; they just flow as I am typing. Like now, I can literally talk about anything, since this is non-scripted. Would you like to discuss NASA’s statement about “never putting a man on the moon in our lifetime again” and how the Russians are planning to put a robot on the moon, 44 years after America put men on it?

Doesn’t seem odd to you that we’ve never been there since? Moreover, doesn’t seem odd that we’ve never sent men outside the Van Allen belt since the early 1970’s?

Perhaps it’s because Stanley Kubrick directed the lunar landing in Hollywood. Or, perhaps we got bored of the moon because it was unoriginal, boring, moribund to its last stupid moon-rock.

There aren’t any legs to be swept here. As fate would have it, the guy who is calling the market top is getting lured back into the market, slowly but surely, at the degenerate level. Instead of buying mega-cap safe havens, I’ve opted for two companies that should be floating around in a giant homeless man’s pickle jar, instead of my portfolio.

It’s the momentum, the perversion of greed and envy, that will crush you like a mandolin in the hands of a mad ape– every single time.

It’s time for Le Fly to refrain from late inning grand slams, in favour of beer runs and midnight earl gray sessions (honey and a splash of milk). I’ve been here before, many times, over 1,000 years, and it never ends well. I end up having yo clean up my own mess for a solid 6 months, toiling amongst the working class during the hottest of days, sweating like a beast in the jungle, trying to make back what was rightfully mines.

I spit on the stock exchange and shall not waiver in my belief that most of you are going to suffer from outrageous, firm breaking, margin calls.

Good day.

GTAT is now a 20% position of mine. I am pressing the envelope on this one for several reasons.

1. FSLR’s numbers were so good, I feel the stock is worth $80. If FSLR is going to $80, this is the 4th inning of the solar melt up.

2. GTAT has exposure to Sapphire, which is a lotto ticket on the smartphone craze.

3. The Gods smile upon me, especially the old ones.

4. My cash position is 45%, which allows me the flexibility to trade like a lunatic, given my 22% returns.

Wow. Massive melt up is underway, thanks to huge guidance offered by FSLR. Needless to say, solar is back.

First Solar isses upside FY13 EPS and rev guidance; sees FY14 EPS in line; sees FY14 revs above consensus; sees FY15 EPS above consensus; sees FY15 revs above consensus

• Co issues upside guidance for FY13 (Dec), sees EPS of $4.00-4.50 vs. $3.60 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees FY13 (Dec) revs of $3.8-4.0 bln vs. $3.21 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.
• Co issues guidance for FY14 (Dec), sees EPS of $2.50-4.00 vs. $3.26 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees FY14 (Dec) revs of $3.5-4.0 bln vs. $3.42 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.
• Co issues guidance for FY15; sees EPS of $4.00-6.00 versus $3.61 Capital IQ cosnensus; sees revs of $4.2-4.8 bln versus $3.66 bln consensus
• Co sees FY14 Module Shipments between 1.8-2.2 GW; Co sees FY15 Module Shipments of 2.3 to 2.7GW
• For 2013, First Solar expects total module shipments to be between 1.6GW and 1.8GW and net sales of $3.8 and $4.0 billion, including approximately $3.6 billion in net sales from systems sales. Consolidated gross margin is expected to be between 20 and 22 percent. Excluding up to $10 million in restructuring expense as previously announced, diluted EPS is expected to be between $4.00 and $4.50, and consolidated operating income is expected to be between $430 and $460 million. The Company expects to generate $0.8 to $1.0 billion of operating cash flow and plans for approximately $350 to $400 million in capital expenditures in 2013.

The move triggered circuit breakers, halting shares of FSLR, +38% for the day.

Conveniently, I am long GTAT at the time of this event.

#TIMEMACHINE

I’m not participating in today’s rally, down about 0.01% thanks to HDGE and GTAT. But I dodged much bigger losses with yesterday’s closing out of my short book. One notable mover is AG, which was an 11% short position–booked for an 8% gain.

In the past, I’d get pissed off for missing days like this, lament over the peecee like a drunken pervert. Today I swung on the hammock in my backyard, back and forth like my balls. So, don’t worry about Senor Tropicana. I got this.

As I write this, GTAT just went positive and HLF tanked a bit. I have no skin in the HLF game, but only hope and pray–to the new Gods and the old– that it will become Bill Ackman’s Stalingrad.

My prediction is very straight forward: this is the grande finale of the run. We’ve exhausted all options, leading up to tax collection day. Just like every dog has its day, every banker needs a break.

Don’t expect miracles this summer. That, my friends, is reserved for colder climes.

The stock opened down 40 cents.

Whoever kept the stock halted for almost 3 hours should be decapitated. Seriously, how material is the news when it reopens unchanged?

Watch JCP. I suspect the higher HLF goes, the lower JCP will sink.

LIVE BY THE ACKMAN : DIE BY THE ACKMAN.

-BEAS, 2014

Several months ago, Bill’s short thesis on HLF was accepted by Wall Street and the media as “visionary”,  immediately sending the shares sharply lower. However, shortly thereafter, Dan Loeb and Carl Icahn bet against Ackman and went long HLF, which split the media and Wall Street elite between the two parties, Ackman v Everyone else.

Carl, always the skeptic, questioned the timing of Bill’s HLF bear raid and said so in a very public manner.

Carl got really mad at Bill, which was fueled by a prior engagement in which Bill sued and defeated Carl in court for monetary damages. His anger caused him to go on the television and deride Bill for his very public short position in HLF, calling it manipulative and stupid. Bill challenged Carl and told him to “make a bid for the company” if he liked it so much.

Carl was not amused.

Bill insisted HLF was going to zero and promised the FTC would act and shut them down.

Shortly after their public debate on HLF, Carl announced he was taking a very large position in HLF, as much as 25% and wanted seats on the board. Bill was chagrined by this news, as the shares skyrocketed higher.

Several months later, things at JCP went really bad to biblically wrong, led by former Apple exec, Ron Johnson. Mr. Johnson was supported by Bill Ackman and gutted the old retailer for a “new vision”, one that would make Bill “15-20 times” his investment. But that didn’t work out for Bill either, as the strategy failed. Ron Johnson was fired, leaving  the company in shambles and shareholders in ruin.

On the same day Ron left JCP, HLF announced their auditor was committing crimes, by trading on insider information. As a result, the auditor, KPMG, resigned from HLF. However, the drama thickened as the companies stock  remained halted for an undetermined amount of time, even after the KPMG news was released. Speculation ran rampant, as bull and bears debated the timing of the news.

Could Carl be making a bid for the company to destroy Bill?

Or, maybe the FTC decided to act upon Bill’s urging to finally shut HLF down?

The drama, as always, continues.

Stay tuned.