Kohl’s and Macy’s Confirm Christmas Was a Bust; Shares Crash in After Hours

Who needs physical stores when we have Amazon and voice automated Echo devices to assist us with our shopping needs? In the after hours, both $KSS and $M warned and lowered guidance — sending shares CRASHING lower — because no one visits shopping malls anymore.

Kohl’s lowers FY17 EPS guidance below consensus; co cites lower than expected gross margins due to the mix and timing of the sales and the competitive promotional environment; Nov-Dec comps -2.1%

Co issues lowered guidance for FY17 (Jan), sees EPS of $3.60-3.65 from $3.80-4.00 vs. $3.93 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.
Co reported that its comparable sales decreased 2.1 percent in the fiscal months of November and December 2016 combined, compared with the prior year period. Total sales for the combined fiscal November and December period decreased 2.7 percent.

“Sales were volatile throughout the holiday season. Strong sales on Black Friday and during the week before Christmas were offset by softness in early November and December.” From a line of business perspective, Men’s, Home and Footwear were the strongest categories while Accessories was the most challenging.

The change in guidance is primarily a result of lower than planned sales for the quarter. Gross margin is projected to be lower than plan due to the mix and timing of the sales and the competitive promotional environment. SG&A expenses are projected to be as planned. Inventories per store at the end of the fourth quarter are projected to decrease from prior year levels in the mid-to-high single digit range.

Comparable sales on an owned plus licensed basis declined by 2.1% in the months of November and December 2016 combined, compared to the same period last year. On an owned basis, comparable sales declined by 2.7 percent in the combined November/December period.

“While our sales trend is consistent with the lower end of our guidance, we had anticipated sales would be stronger. We believe that our performance during the holiday season reflects the broader challenges facing much of the retail industry. We are pleased with the performance of our digital business, with double-digit gains at both macys.com and bloomingdales.com; however, store sales continued to be impacted by changing customer behavior. Our apparel business, which includes women’s, men’s and children’s, performed well, with particular strength in active and cold-weather merchandise. Sales were also strong in fine jewelry, as well as furniture and bedding, reflecting the success of our initiatives in those categories. However, ongoing weakness in handbags and watches negatively impacted our results.”

Macy’s maintains its previously provided full-year sales guidance of a 2.5-3.0% decrease in comparable sales on an owned plus licensed basis, and expects to come in at the lower end of that guidance, with comparable sales on an owned basis to be ~50 basis points lower.

Lowers FY17 adj. EPS to $2.95 to $3.10 (compared with previous guidance of $3.15 to $3.40) vs. $3.28 consensus.

Look for the entire retail sector to get lit up tomorrow. But it won’t matter all that much for the overall health and integrity of markets. We have gains to achieve and milestones to reach.

Everything went up today. Bitcoins rose by 8%. Biotech and LED lighting stocks broke jaws to the upside. Literally nothing lost anyone money today — as stocks wistfully pressed higher in a quest to achieve 20,000 on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Wondrous wonders.

What could go wrong, after all, when everyone from the best professional money managers down to the lowest of the low day trader is making bank every day — at a time when sovereign bond yields blow out and fiscal budgets explode due to entitlements, and governments scramble to make it all work and for growth to achieve assigned goals — efficiently coordinated with central bank rigging?

Going higher.

Please do not mistake my dark sarcasm as a veiled threat of apprehension or pessimism for markets. Quite the contrary is true. Ignorance is bliss and the less one has to think about solving the puzzle, the less one has to solve the fucking puzzle.

I remain obstinately long $UEC, $RGC, $IMAX, $SEDG and $TDW — with more to come. I welcome the coming sell offs and only hope that things become disjointed to the point that blood flows through the streets. I’ve always fashioned myself on equal terms with a vampire, when it came to opportunistically trading markets. Until then, I’ll be packed tightly inside the box car with all of the others, in a menacingly fast train, speeding for destinations unknown.

And to think how hard Obama worked to pass the ACA. I guess it’s simply the byproduct of a failed venture on a very large scale, by a man who has never successfully run a lemonade stand, let alone a real job.

Here’s the genetically modified Mike Pence promising to repeal the shit storm that is Obamacare.

.@mike_pence with House GOP leadership: "Make no mistake about it…we're going to repeal Obamacare." https://t.co/L1gnBT5069 pic.twitter.com/SaCuHZbIts

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) January 4, 2017

This follows an earlier tweet storm by the President Elect, describing how wretched and rotten Obamacare is and how premiums and skyrocketing.

Truth be told, I’m as thin as a bean pole and I love $SHAK and it has nothing to do with today’s news that they’ve been added to the SPY small cap 600.

This is the real deal and 2017 might represent a break out year for SHAK.

The company is growing quickly and the stock has done nothing in two years, following a post IPO collapse. Said collapse was due to corrupt and criminal venture capitalists and investment bankers pricing the company at an absurd valuation and then dumping it on the plebeian retail investor. We’ve seen this play out for nearly the past 7 years and it’s only gonna get worse — unless those greedy VC devils blow up and bankrupt themselves. But that’s a conversation for another time.

What’s not to like about these charts?

Don’t try this at home. You might go bankrupt.

In what can only be described as a game of financial chicken, I bought both $SEDG and $TDW this morning. Both companies are complete garbage, especially TDW — who sports a bankrupt balance sheet of 12x debt/eq. Unless a new renaissance of deep water drilling befalls us, TDW is toast before the year is through. Hopefully, I’ll be out by then. But if not, oh well.

Moving on, I bought SEDG — mainly because I hate both Israeli based companies and I loathe solar. What better way to expel my demons than to buy an Israeli based solar stock? If anything, this experience I am about to undergo will be therapeutic.

Aside from China, no country on the face of the planet is more shady than Israel, when it comes to their publicly traded stocks of course.

Stocks are milquetoasting higher this morning, as it approaches Dow 20k. Sort of boring action. I expect more cowbell by the end of the day. If not, I’ll buy more stocks to make it interesting for myself.

A bullish narrative is playing out here on China and the reflation trade. I just heard some analyst on Bloomberg says Japanese GDP would grow by 2% this year. If so, that’d be evidence of a god, a true miracle.

Copper rising by more than 2% here absolutely pulverizes any attempts at derailing this rally.

The usual suspects should rally off this move: $FCX, $BHP, $RIO.

Dow 20k or die.

Back in 2013, Bitcoin surged to over $1,200 just before Mt. Gox got hacked and the whole house of cards came crumbling down — bitcoin included. Then the Winklevoss Twins stepped in, along with other high profile venture capitalists, and the price has been supportive ever since.

The value of bitcoin, as a market cap, is anywhere from $15-19 billion now, a new record high. But the actual price value is still a solid $175 away from the 2013 levels.

BTC are higher by an astonishing 6% this morning.

In other words, the whole thing is a giant scam, one they could easily fall victim to those genius Russian hackers. In spite of the Winklevoss Twins hardly knowing how to do anything g right, rowing included, their timimg on bitcoin was perfect — almost too perfect.

According to public record, the twins bought $11 mill worth of Bitcoins when the price was $260. Then the price collapsed to $120 and then the leader of fake news, Washington Post, said they owned $40m worth of them, or 1% of all bitcoins. In other words, if they held, the current value of their pyramid scam currency is anywhere from $40 to $160m.

Fuck me.

The share price of the bitcoin ETF, $GBTC, will surge on the open.

Morgan Stanley is out with a helter skelter note of caution on markets, warning investors to sell the Trump inauguration while upping earnings estimates by 18% for 2018 — citing material upside in earnings and multiple contraction.

Plainly, if what Morgan Stanley says comes to fruition, stocks should trade higher on the backs of buybacks, fiscal stimulus, and big corporate tax cuts. However, the sages at Morgan are worried about the recent scale of the rally, coupled with Fed hike fever risks, European uncertainty and of course a rising dollar.

They see no near term catalyst to drive shares after the inauguration and suggest investors start to think about getting out.

U.S. stocks have rallied since the election, but it’s time for investors to start thinking about getting out, possibly timed for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, Morgan Stanley said.

“We are worried that there is arrogance in telling people that they should be worried, but to stay bullish for now,” Morgan Stanley said in a note dated Tuesday.

“Part of us thinks we should just sell the inauguration. After all, what incrementally positive and exciting outcomes could be produced in the first few weeks after that?”

“To us, it is WHEN, not IF we should fade this recent reflation trade,” it said.

Morgan Stanley set its base-case target for the S&P 500 at 2300 at end-2017, marking 16.2 times its 2018 earnings forecast, compared with Tuesday’s close at 2257.83.

“We can’t help but think that the Republican sweep has created a more uncertain and volatile outlook for the economy and corporate earnings growth,” it said, citing risks from a more hawkish Federal Reserve, China’s economic slowdown, a much stronger dollar and European political uncertainty.

Morgan Stanley said there was clearly a lot of earnings uncertainty ahead, but it still forecast that the S&P 500 earnings would be about 18 percent higher in 2018 than in 2016.

But it noted that the biggest driver of that increase – more than 50 percent of it — would come from Trump’s promised corporate tax cut to 20 percent from 35 percent. Another 30 percent of the earnings rise over the next two years would likely come from fiscal stimulus and nearly 27 percent from acceleration in share buybacks, it added.

One final note of weariness by Morgan is the possibility that companies might pass on cost savings to consumers following Trump’s tax cuts. This abhorrent specter of ‘competing away’ savings is hateful to Morgan and they feel that could pose as a potential pitfall for markets.

God willing, our valiant and industrious corporations will continue to gouge us and take said tax savings to increase corporate bonuses for C level executives and execute superfluous share buybacks to further enhance their standing at their local country clubs.

source: Morgan Stanley

The first week of January is a time to shitpost on the blog and make mounds of cash in societies worst stocks.

While the stated goal of any stable minded investor is to maximize returns while minimizing risk, I view this moment in time a bit differently. Even after a gigantic move higher, defying the laws of mathematics and economics, we are likely to see the very worst stocks rip higher this week.

I’m talking meat stocks, nuclear bomb plays, god damned solar stocks for Christ’s sake.

Last year was a time to mourn economics, which paved the way for central bank tyranny over markets, on a global scale. This January we are likely to see the mandate of the globalist elite gerrymander equities higher, in a final salvo before Trump’s policies castrate them.

I’ll be executing some fresh buys first thing tomorrow morning.

Listen to me democrats. The American people only like to see celebrities on the teevee. Everyone knows they’re a lot of filthy degenerate animals, a cabal filled with pedophiles, drug addicts and the very basest and worst qualities of mankind. Having celebrities speak out for liberal values does as much good as having neo-nazis screaming ZIONISTS at a Trump rally for conservatives.

If you want your party back, you first need to purge the idiots who make videos like this and order them to quit meddling in the affairs of normal people.

Look at this craziness. It’s like a caricature of a libtard, something one might expect to see in a comedy skit. If I was a republican strategist, I could not think of a better way to further GOP gains than by having videos like this spread across the web.