Panic at the Auction: Sotheby’s Failed Art Auction Worst Showing Since 2009

Every other news story is ‘worst since 2009,’ yet the official numbers out of the government propaganda arms suggests we’re booming. What sort of Orwellian nonsense is going on here? How could all the actual, individual, data be bad, yet government GDP and payrolls keep showing zero signs of wear?

In the latest string of bad events to hit the economy, Sotheyby’s just presided over an embarrassing impressionist and modern art auction, where revenues came in well below estimates and 61% below last year. Moreover, 21 out of 62 works of art went unsold. It was crickets all day long at the famed auction house.

Sotheby’s sold $144.5 million of Impressionist and modern art, its worst showing at an evening sale in the category in New York since the 2009 recession and the latest evidence of a cooling auction market.

The auction capped a wild day that began with Sotheby’s reporting a larger-than-expected loss in the first quarter. The company’s shares fell as much as 8.5 percent before rebounding to a 6 percent gain on news that an unidentified investor may boost its stake to 10 percent.

Monday’s sale fell short of the presale target range of $164.8 million to $235.8 million and marked a 61 percent drop from a year earlier as 21 of the 62 lots went unsold. One bright spot was the the top lot — Auguste Rodin’s marble “L’Eternel Printemps,” which sold for $20.4 million including buyer’s premium, handily outperforming the presale estimate. A day earlier at Christie’s and Phillips, those auction houses also did a fraction of business compared with last May.

The high-end art market “appears to be going through a correction,” Taposh Bari, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said in a note last month.

Derain, Picasso

The biggest casualty at Sotheby’s was Andre Derain’s painting of a red sailboat, estimated at $15 million to $20 million. It didn’t get a single bid in the Upper East Side salesroom. Works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin and Pierre-Auguste Renoir also flopped.

Shares of BID have been under pressure for me more than a year now.

The big surge in iron ore prices is over. Prices have collapsed by more than 22% over the past two weeks. Tonight alone, prices are down by 6%.

In an otherwise sanguine Asian trade this evening, mining related stocks are getting the business, with many of the Australian based miners feeling the brunt of the sell off.

The reason for the sell off, allegedly, has to do with Chinese crackdown on speculation. They’re doing for iron what they did for Macau. My opinion is empirically simpler: the iron ore short squeeze has ended and now the unwind begins to equilibrium.

But, short term, he might take a brief stab at it, if not for the sake of ‘rank speculation.’

Once again, Gartman delves into conspiracy theories regarding the end of crude and how some mystical technology is going to render crude worthless. He even cites the new energy kingpin in The House of Saud as saying crude might be worth zero in the future. Really? I find it hard to believe he’d say that. That’s truly an outlandish statement, well deserving of at least 150 lashes upon the gibbet. What is he an energy minister for Saudi Arabia or propaganda minister for China’s strategic crude reserves?

Maybe both.

Nevertheless, Gartman weighs in on the pin action in crude.

Note: See how he’s always holding his hands up like that to form a pyramid? Illuminati confirmed.

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. Cramer goes off the deep end again with his Fibonacci horseshit, something that is actively ‘studied’ by one of his TheStreet.com employees. He cites her ‘homework’ and determines the market might be running up against some ‘natural numbers’, that coincide with pinecones, suggestive of a market devoid of steam.

Lastly, towards the end of his video, he proclaims the market is fresh out of cash, making it indelibly hard for stocks to climb in such an arduous and oppressive environment.

So much for the new bull run just beginning.

So the company was supposed to come in with same store sales of +0.5%. Instead, the posted a -7% deficit.

Banana Republic sales were off by 7% for the month, while degenerate clothing chain Old Navy dove by -10%.

First-quarter sales totaled $3.44 billion, down 6 percent from $3.66 billion a year earlier.

The company now expects to earn 31 to 32 cents per share for the quarter. The average analyst estimate was for earnings of 44 cents per share on revenue of $3.54 billion, according to FactSet.

I realize there are some people out there who say ‘the mall isn’t dead. It’s merely resting and waiting for better merchants.’ But I view the collapse of these chains as a symptom of an economy that is providing people with less than ideal discretionary budgets. While jobs are being created, the quality of said jobs are an abomination. How else can you describe the divergence between jobs and retail sales?

Is Amazon truly capturing all market share, leaving traditional outlets to rot in hell?

GPS is down 13% in the after hours to a fresh 52 Week low.

Reports Q1 (Mar) earnings of $1.72 per share, $0.67 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of $1.05; revenues rose 85.7% year/year to $81.8 mln vs the $68.5 mln Capital IQ Consensus.
Co issues upside guidance for FY16, sees EPS of $6.00-6.50 vs. $5.28 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees FY16 revs of $310-330 mln vs. $302.73 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.
As a result of the strong free cash flow and the significant increase in the Company’s cash balance during the first quarter, on May 6, 2016 the board of directors elected to make an unrequired principal repayment of $10 million against the borrowings under the Company’s existing credit agreement related to the Endicia acquisition. Prior to this repayment, as of March 31, 2016 the total debt under the credit agreement excluding capitalized debt issuance costs was $162.4 million.

Chanos just highlighted during his #SOHN2016 sales pitch how Elon Musk was nothing more than a factory floor sleeping showman. He described the absurdity of SolarCity and Tesla and how the former would run into funding issues in 2016.

Lo and behold, one week hence, shares of SCTY are swimming lower after a offering investors truly horrendous guidance. For Q2, the company is guiding revenues down to $135-143 mill from $152 mill–sporting a loss of $2.80.

“While the regulatory clarity provided by California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York put many of last quarter’s headwinds behind us, we do not expect to be able to make up for the decline in MW booked in Q1 2016,” the company said in a statement.

Regarding the outlook, Rive said, “Looking ahead, we are recalibrating our outlook for the year after taking into account the regulatory developments that impacted Q1 2016 MW Booked and the impact of an increase in pricing for our commercial business. While the regulatory clarity provided by California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York put many of last quarter’s headwinds behind us, we do not expect to be able to make up for the decline in MW Booked in Q1 2016. In conjunction with the lower MW expected from higher pricing instituted in Q2 2016, we now expect to install 1.0 – 1.1 GW in 2016 as compared to 1.25 GW previously. For Q2 2016 we expect to install 185 MW, representing a decline of 2% year-over-year, largely due to the 14 MW project that was completed ahead of time in Q1 2016.

Shares are down 20% in after-hours.

The dynamics of this market are very clear. It cannot go up without the support of oil. When oil trades lower, so do the energy, industrial, and banking sectors.

That roughly constitutes around 50% of the market. When you take into account the earnings recession underway in tech, a sector maligned by earnings shortfalls, you get to truly understand why the market has a hard time rallying without crude.

Those sectors combined account for 70% of the market cap in this market. The only big sector left to allocate into is healthcare, which accounts for another 20%. Unfortunately, that’s been the worst performing sector of 2016.

Ergo, without the benefit of Canadian tar sands being held captive by an inferno, there’s very little reason to get excited about stocks.

Tonight, before you go to bed, pray and beg for the House of Saud to cut production. Otherwise, you and your ilk are going to be rooted and routed out of this market with ease.

The right wingers in North Carolina are foaming at the mouth, in an attempt to deny me of my rights to shave my beard inside the woman’s bathroom. Moreover, they’re trying to take away the hobbies of transgender lads/lassies, who enjoy moonlighting between the ladies and the men’s room.

“Oh Oscar, which restroom will you use tonight? I feel like a standing up pee inside the ladies room tonight.”

“The Obama administration is bypassing Congress by attempting to rewrite the law and set restroom policies for public and private employers across the country, not just North Carolina,” the governor said in his statement. “This is now a national issue that applies to every state and it needs to be resolved at the federal level.”

Lynch said in a news release that she would hold a news conference Monday afternoon “to provide an update on a law enforcement matter.”

North Carolina’s standoff with the federal government began in February, when the city council in Charlotte passed an ordinance allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice. State lawmakers called a special session and passed the bill in 12 hours on March 23.

Super gay companies like Target have already went apeshit and taken gender signs off the bathroom doors. They’re progressively positioning for a world when genders are passé, old hat. In the future, everyone will intermingle between genders. Detachable cocks will be sold at the front of Target, for those looking to partake.

The relics inside of the state of North Carolina are trying to deny the people of their God given right to change their sex. This, of course, cannot be tolerated. I am sure the Obama administration will take appopriate actions to ensure they’re justly punished.

The broader indices are looking better. Breadth is still anemic, at around 56%. The sole standout sector is biotech, higher by 3% for the day.

Some of the stocks within the sector are really jumping higher, many by double digits.

Why?

Random stuff. There was a weakness within the sector on Friday. Other than that, the biotech sector is up because there are more buyers than sellers. It is the quintessential risk sector, one that could ignore the superficialities of earnings and revenues. To buy a biotech is to buy a lotto ticket and a dream.

We have a whole ‘lota dreamers out there today.