Larry Summers Lays Waste to the Yellen Fed

In what can only be described as a screed against the Yellen Fed, L. Summers says the Fed is partaking in a groundhog day scenario and says they need to reverse policy immediately, opting for a much more loosey goosey approach in order to stoke growth.

Essentially, we are Japan and someone else said this long ago.

An analyst from Cleveland Research had some positive things to say about Kohls and retail in general today.

Warmer weather helped same-store sales improve by a “decent amount” in late May and early June, analyst Matthew Delly said Wednesday in a note. While Cleveland Research is cautious on Kohl’s for the long term, the brightening trends could help Kohl’s meet analysts’ consensus projections for the current quarter.

Moreover, there’s a retail conference taking place today at Piper Jaffrey. The notes out of JC Penney were very bullish.

Via Briefing.com

11:20 | JCP | (8.63 +0.61)
J. C. Penney at Piper Jaffray Conf.
Memorial Day weekend was positive; feel good about position.
Discretionary spending is being hampered by uncertain macro.
Appliances:

JCP will not own appliance inventory, just what’s on display.
Appliance floor space took over worst performing segments… Appliances are significantly more profitable

Major competitor is donating share in appliances — likely a reference to Sears (SHLD) as HD, LOW and BBY are all doing well in the space.

Now that JCP is gonna sells washer and dryer combos to seniors, all is well.

JWN had something to say about recent trends too.

Multiple factors driving softness in retail, which started ~mid-Aug 2015: Shift in consumer spending towards housing and away from apparel, somewhat cyclical. No new fashion trend. E-commerce also taking share.

Online offerings are doing well (now 20% mix).
Now learning about how to be more profitable in e-commence
Growing off price/online.

Committed to investing in technology, the ‘new mall’.
Co cut inventory plans.

Competitor’s marketing has become transnational, JWN not interested in that.

Close to one million phone numbers in new loyalty program in less than one month.

Flagship Michigan Ave (Chicago) store as robust as ever (co installed a bar on the second floor).
Trunk Club is doing well.

Nordstrom Rack/Haute Look is a great clearance channel. Targeting 270 Rack locations (down from 300) by 2020 due to expansion in online. Rack model is flexible and attractive, attracts people to JWN brand.

Testing economic partnership with Tesla (TSLA) in one store, with a Model X on display (attempt to drive traffic).
Excited about oppties ahead.

Couple that with the fact the sector had been extremely oversold and you’ve got a rally on your hands.

I noted yesterday in Exodus that the overbought/oversold oscillator was very oversold.

The mall is still dead, though.

If it was up to me, I’d execute this person via dick guillotine. However, it’s worth noting, I would not be doing the ‘handling’, so to say.

This fucker accessed 500,000 accounts and sent 27 million spam messages. The fuck.

Federal prosecutors say a Las Vegas man has been sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison for sending more than 27 million spam messages to Facebook users and disobeying a court order not to access Facebook.

Federal prosecutors say Tuesday a federal judge in San Jose, California on Monday also ordered 47-year-old Sanford Wallace to pay $310,000 in restitution.

Last year Wallace admitted to accessing about 500,000 Facebook accounts and sending unsolicited ads disguised as friend posts over a three-month span.

I hope he gets spammed 27 million times in prison.

The former prison inmate, Michael Milken, is going to open his family office of $2 billion of personal and family funds to the public, so it can become a hedge fund.

How wonderful.

Silver Rock Chief Investment Officer Carl Meyer, a former Citigroup Inc. executive, will control the new firm and have a staff of about 10 executives, the newspaper said. Until recently, the family office was based in the same building as Mr. Milken’s office in Santa Monica, California, but the executives leased new space in Los Angeles when they formed an independent entity on March 25, according to the Journal.

The executives had been managing more than $2 billion for Milken and his family in junk bonds and distressed loans, along with stocks, the Journal said. The firm has run into challenges recently because of poorly timed energy investments and Milken’s insistence to hold a large cash allocation, according to the newspaper.

Don’t worry, Milken will not be managing the fund or have anything to do with it, according to Carl Meyer. Oh, and that last sentence that says the family office fund has sucked balls due to shitty energy investments and Michael’s insistence that the fund hold a large cash position should be ignored by all those interested in sending money to this new venture.

The ultimate leveraged bet on China is copper. The most prolific copper company with lots of upside leverage is FCX. Ergo and henceforth, the best way to play a resurgence in China is through FCX.

Last night the Shanghai traded higher, in a very government controlled sort of way–after being rejected by the MSCI for inclusion into its benchmark.

Today, the price of copper is whipsawing higher, which in turn is forcibly crushing the skulls of all those short FCX.

I can’t endorse a long term position in FCX, especially with the outlook for China so grim. However, for a trade, it might run for a few days, maybe more. This whole BREXIT scare mongering has ‘trap’ written all over it for shorts. Do not think for a second that central banks aren’t plotting and scheming, scheming and plotting, to cause another frenzied move to the upside.

Shares of TWTR are higher again this morning. The takeover rumors have been circulating ever since the MSFT for LNKD deal was announced. Most people that I know scoff at Twitter when presented with the idea that someone might want to buy them. The general reaction is ‘why would anyone want to buy a money loser like Twitter?’

I can answer that question with another one.

Why do really rich people want to buy newspaper companies?

Answer: for power, influence and prestige.

Love or hate Twitter, it is the news super highway, the ultimate real time denizen for anything noteworthy happening in the world. Whenever a crisis hits, I go to Twitter to find real time information. As a resource, it’s invaluable, truly.

The valuation?

It’s actually not too bad.

The stock is trading a touch over 4x sales. Typically, growth stocks of note trade upwards of 10x.

As you can see, relative to its peer group, the stock is cheap. Note how LNKD got bought out at around 8x sales. Data provided by the indomitable Exodus. Give it a try.

The only other stock in social media that is more attractive than TWTR now, in my opinion, is YELP. But I’m biased and have loved Yelp from day 1.

I don’t think anyone would be surprised to see TWTR catch a bid for around $30-35 per share, given its potential. Just because the morons who operate it now can’t figure out how to monetize it doesn’t mean someone else won’t figure it out.

The article was like 100,000 words strong. I wanted to blow my brains out for even beginning to read the damned thing. In summary, the New York Times article doesn’t have the balls to outright say Netflix is a huge disaster waiting to happen, because the world of streaming teevee and movies is unpredictable. However, they did make note of NFLX’s absurd $1 billion negative cash flow and dependence on debt markets to keep the charade going.

Here’s a snippet.

One of the most prominent Netflix skeptics is Michael Pachter, a research analyst at Wedbush Securities, a Los Angeles-based investment bank. In his view, Netflix’s true advantage in the beginning was that it had the entire game to itself, and the networks, not realizing how valuable streaming rights would be, practically gave them away. He had a “buy” on the stock from 2007 to 2010, he told me. But, he added, referring to those years when Netflix had streaming all to itself, “If it’s too good to be true, then it will attract competition.”

Now, he said, the networks and studios are charging higher fees for their shows, forcing up Netflix’s costs. Netflix doesn’t own most of the shows that it buys or commissions, like “House of Cards,” so it has to pay more when it renews a popular show. In addition to the money it now spends on content, it also has more than $12 billion in future obligations for shows it has ordered. The only way it can pay for all of that is to continue adding subscribers and raise subscription rates. And even then, Pachter says, the networks will extract a piece of any extra revenue Netflix generates. “It is naïve to think that Netflix can raise its price by $2 a month and keep all the upside,” he said. “I defy you to look at any form of content where the distributor raises prices and the supplier doesn’t get more. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.

“Netflix,” Pachter concluded, “is caught in an arms race they invented.” He compared Netflix to a rat racing on a wheel, staying ahead only by going faster and faster and spending more and more: As its costs continue to go up, it needs to constantly generate more subscribers to stay ahead of others.

And if that doesn’t happen? If subscriber growth were to stall, for instance, then Wall Street would stop treating it as a growth stock, and its price would start falling. Slower growth would also increase the cost of taking on more debt to pay for its shows. The company would be forced to either raise subscription prices even higher or cut back on those content costs or do both, which could slow subscriber growth even further. Netflix’s virtuous circle — subscriber growth and content expenditures driving each other — would become a vicious circle instead.

Personally, I watch several Netflix shows. I watch House of Cards, Peaky Blinders, Marco Polo and I’ve watched Sherlock and Luther through it, though I believe they’re both BBC owned shows. I’m not paying attention to the balance sheet now, mainly because I haven’t really cared. But I do recall when NFLX got smoked several years ago, after they errantly hiked prices and the stock plunged. For a while there, it looked like the company was facing bankruptcy.

Hopefully they can keep growing and learn to balance their budget. Otherwise, they might Blockbuster themselves within the next decade.

The CIO from UBS, Mark Haefele, believes we’re all a bunch of Nancies for buying bonds. He believes stocks will trade up, the Fed will jack rates twice, and that bonds will sell off.

Perhaps he took a few qualudes before penning this missive? Anything is possible, EXCEPT the notion that the Fed will hike twice in 2016, in an election year, whilst the economy is slowing and most of the western world is fucked and mired, mired and fucked, in a negative interest rate panorama of stupidity.

Despite the recent weak labor report, the Federal Reserve still appears on course to raise interest rates relatively soon. Economic data on jobs, wages, and inflation, as well as financial market conditions, will influence the Fed’s decision.
We think it is unlikely that the Fed will raise rates this month but we expect two rate hikes of a quarter percentage point each this – in September and December.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen recently clarified her thinking on the economy and the outlook for Fed policy following last Friday’s surprisingly weak labor report, which showed payroll growth in May slowing to its lowest level since 2010. While Yellen called this “concerning” and repeatedly noted the uncertainty in the economic outlook, overall she was cautiously optimistic. In our view, if the incoming data are reasonably good, then the Fed will be hiking rates in the not-too-distant future.

When thinking about monetary policy, it’s important to focus on the Fed’s dual mandate: maximum employment and price stability, where stability is defined as a 2-percent inflation rate. Yellen stated, “I believe we are now close to eliminating the slack that has weighed on the labor market since the recession,” and “I expect inflation to move back to 2 percent” as the impact of lower oil prices and the strong dollar fades. The big picture, then, is that the Fed is still on track to fulfilling its mandate.

A July hike is still possible if the economic data between now and the meeting are very strong. In either case, another hike should follow in December, as long as the economic recovery remains on track.

We recognize that Fed officials may struggle to communicate this without disrupting markets. Still, we believe risk assets can continue their recent improved performance. We maintain an overweight on U.S. equities, given our expectation for bottom-line growth to recover. We are underweight U.S. government bonds, which we expect to produce a modest negative return over the coming six months, as markets adjust to a somewhat faster pace of rate hikes by the Fed.

If my rantings about the Chinese culture being one that is born through trickery and piracy, look no further than the statements from the head of their top company, Jack Ma, from Ali Baba.

In an unbelievable candid interview, Ma pointedly said that fake items were better and cheaper. After all, most of the OEMs are located in China. The IP for our products aren’t respected. These people are pirates, salivating to steal from the ingenuity of others, siphoning off respected brands that have been developed and perfected by professionals.

This is the result of a policy that opted to utilize cheap Chinese labor, where laws for IP do not exist. They have fake Apple, McDonald’s and Starbucks stores for fucks sake. Do you think they’d, for a second, hesitate to rip off your brilliant idea once they had the blueprint for them?

“The problem is the fake products today are of better quality and better price than the real names. They are exactly the [same] factories, exactly the same raw materials but they do not use the names,” he said during a speech on Tuesday at Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou.

“We have to protect [intellectual property], we have to do everything to stop the fake products, but OEMs are making better products at a better price,” he added, referring to original equipment manufacturers that typically make products for branded sellers.

In May,Alibaba was suspended from the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition, a watchdog for the retail industry, over similar concerns about knock-offs.

“You can’t stop Alibaba for two hours otherwise it’s going to be a disaster for China. You can stop Tencent for two days, you can stop Baidu for two weeks and everything will still be OK,” he said referring to Alibaba’s two closest competitors.

“The way of doing business has changed for the brands. It’s not the fake products, its not the IP that is destroying them. It’s the new business model that’s revolutionised the whole world,” said Mr Ma.

In April 2015, Alibaba launched a programme to help Chinese factories develop their own brands dubbed “Zhongguozhizao” or “Quality made in China” in an effort to discourage them from producing counterfeits.

Upon birth, each Chinese citizen is taught to steal and lie, to manufacture goods and dump them onto the shores of America at cut throat prices.

Absolutely disgraceful.

In a conference call today, the new bond King (fuck B. Gross) laid waste to the Fed and other central banks, mocking the Fed for calling the June meeting a live one– besmirching them as zombies.

Moreover, the negative rate experiment is going very poorly wherever implemented, backed up by massive drawdowns in global markets from the highs.

Does any one disagree?

A great man once said ‘it’s gonna be a hot summer.’ An even greater one just said the summer will be one of the rocky varietal.

“Central banks are losing control and they don’t know what to do … just like the Republican establishment and Donald Trump,” Gundlach told Reuters in a telephone interview, referring to the Republic Party’s unpredictable presumptive nominee for U.S. President.

“The Fed is confused and their confusion spills into investor psychology,” said Gundlach, who oversees more than $100 billion at Los Angeles-based DoubleLine.

“The Fed changes its tone so frequently, it seems every other week the message is different. They’ve turned into the ‘Zombie Fed.’ They say the meeting this week is ‘live,’ but investors all know it isn’t at all.”

Gundlach said it is a “dangerous price appreciation game” to purchase German Bunds at current levels and that gold and gold miners are still an attractive place to put money to work.

On a webcast for investors later on Tuesday he said negative interest rates implemented by some major central banks, notably in Japan, were backfiring. “Negative interest rates don’t do what they’re theoretically supposed to do,” he said, noting the appreciation in the Japanese yen.

He added that negative interest rates “aren’t leading to higher economic growth.” He said world gross domestic product could be averaging around just 1 percent against the backdrop of aggressive global monetary policies.

Gundlach also noted the dramatic “drawdowns” from the highs in several stock markets. Germany is down 22 percent, Japan is down 23 percent, China is down 45 percent, the United Kingdom market is down 15 percent and France is down 20 percent.
“Negative rates do not prop up stock markets,” Gundlach said on the webcast.

“This summer is going to be a rocky ride,” Gundlach said, summarizing his outlook.

Go buy some Chinese stocks you degenerates.