Cooperman Calls Ackman ‘Foolish, Inappropriate and Irresponsible’ For Going After ADP

Leon Cooperman, former board member of ADP for twenty years, went after Bill Ackman today — because Bill wants a minority presence on the ADP board and its CEO ousted from the company.

He called Ackman ‘foolish, inappropriate and irresponsible’ for targeting the company, which he lauded as being one of the best publicly traded companies in the world.

On Friday, Pershing Square announced an 8% position, mainly through call options, and an intent to effect ‘transformational change’ change to ADP.

All Bill is asking for is a mere FIVE board members, himself included, to be added to ADP’s 10 man board — in addition to the removal of the CEO, Carlos Rodriguez.

ADP responded, saying “The Board has unanimously determined that it is not in the best interests of ADP or its other shareholders to accede to Pershing Square’s last-minute request for an extension.”

Taking a look at ADP’s numbers and share price performance, my only question is, ‘Is Bill Ackman Retarded?”

The company has crushed the S&P over the past 5 years and the chart is modern art. Maybe ‘Montauk Bill’ is tired of playing in the sewers with CMG and wanted to shitpost against a quality company now — having been tired of being tossed through the ringer in his other gambits.

Today’s theme is Make China Great Again — as evidenced by the mammoth gains in copper, steel and of course Chinese burrito lottery stocks.

We can dance around the issue, and play games, discussing FCX, X or even BIDU. But let’s be clear, Chinese stocks are long overdue some respect here inside of America. They’re often regaled as ‘peasant stocks’ and viewed as ‘publicly traded frauds’ waiting to ‘blow people up’ and ’cause others to commit suicide’. The truth of the matter is, these securities have done wonders for those who’ve had the testicular fortitude to hold them.

Let’s go over today’s lottery winners.

ATV +25% — what the fuck is that? No one knows. Bid it up.
JRJC +18%
BITA +13%
CALI +12.5%
JP +12%
LITB +9%
XNET +9%
BGNE +8%
WB +7.7%
SHI +6.7%
HTHT +6.6%

Year to date, there are dozens of these little bastards up 50, 60, hell 100%. It’s the ultimate Constanza trade, seeing all of these evil Chinese companies roar higher under a Trump administration, which was supposed to put an end to Chinese tomfoolery.

The ETF for China, FXI, is higher by 24% this year, outpacing the S&P 500 by more than 2x.

Now isn’t that something?

Richard Blumenthal is one of the sleaziest people to serve in the U.S. Senate — and that’s saying a lot. For years, Tricky Dicky lied about serving in ‘Nam, being in the shit — making a hero out of himself. The truth of that matter is, he repeatedly lied about his service record and never had enough honor in him to resign from his post in the Senate. Ironically, now he wants to oversee Trump’s Russian collusion tale, which the President found it necessary to call him out on.

Interesting to watch Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut talking about hoax Russian collusion when he was a phony Vietnam con artist!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017

Never in U.S.history has anyone lied or defrauded voters like Senator Richard Blumenthal. He told stories about his Vietnam battles and….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017

…conquests, how brave he was, and it was all a lie. He cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness like a child. Now he judges collusion?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2017

Here’s Sen. Blumenthal being confronted about the issue.

Back in February of this year, several servicemen penned an open letter to Blumenthal, documenting the timeline where the Senator stole their valor.

Dear Sen. Richard Blumenthal,

You recently called upon your Senate colleagues to subject Judge Neil Gorsuch’s record to “extreme vetting,” questioning both his qualification and biography. The Senate certainly has the right and obligation to closely review any nominee for the United States Supreme Court. Conversely, it is our right as Americans and veterans to scrutinize your hypocrisy in doing so.

We are veterans of the Vietnam War. We fought alongside our brothers in arms, many of whom died or were gravely injured there. We saw the treatment meted out on us and our fellow military personnel upon our return, yet we never questioned our commitment to our nation’s freedom. But perhaps more relevant to this discussion is that we know you were not there with us.

The fact you repeatedly and consistently claimed to have served in Vietnam is a gross case of stolen valor in our opinion. You obtained at least five military deferments between 1965 and 1970, at least two of which were seemingly political favors to you so that you could avoid joining us in a war zone. Here are just a few examples where it appears that you have chosen to buttress your political resume by shamefully inflating your record of military service:

In 2003, you apparently stated, “When we returned [from Vietnam], we saw nothing like this [a public outpouring of support for deployed military personnel].”

In 2008, the New York Times reported you said, “We have learned something important since the days I served in Vietnam …”

At a Vietnam War memorial in 2008, it is reported you stated, “I served during the Vietnam era … I remember the taunts, the insults, sometimes even the physical abuse.”

We recognize that military service of any kind is valuable to the protection of our nation’s freedom. There is no shame in engaging in “Toys for Tots” campaigns, recycling efforts, or assisting in the improvement or construction of various facilities, which appears to be a fair description of the bulk of your duties during the Vietnam War.

What is offensive to those who fought in a most brutal conflict, some of us who were captured and tortured by our enemy, is any comparison of those most brutal experiences to the ones of people like you who never even sniffed the air in Vietnam.

You should be proud that you shared a uniform with so many brave souls who endured the hardships of war, but instead you chose to attempt to deceitfully and craftily join their ranks with your intentionally vague statements and false claims. Quite simply, it is impossible to “misspeak” about having seen a war.

Valor is too uncommon a commodity, and too precious a virtue, to be stolen by those who have not paid the high price for freedom. We recognize that some concerns over any appointee, especially the Supreme Court, are honest and legitimate.

You, sir, are neither. If you ever had a sense of duty, if ever you respected the service and sacrifice of others, then please recognize your duty now:

Sen. Blumenthal, “take your seat”!

Respectfully,

Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Bennie Adkins, U.S. Army, Auburn, Ala.

Retired Col. Don “Doc” Ballard, U.S. Army, Grain Valley, Mo.

Retired Maj. Gen. Pat Brady, U.S. Army, New Braunfels, Texas

Retired Col. Bruce Crandall, U.S. Army, Manchester, Wash.

Retired Sgt. 1st Class Sammy Davis, U.S. Army, Freedom, Ind.

Retired Col. Wesley Fox, U.S. Marine Corps, Peoria, Ill.

Retired Col. Harold Fritz, U.S. Army, Peoria, Ill.

Retired Maj. Gen. Jim Livingston, U.S. Marine Corps, Mount Pleasant, S.C.

Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Bob Patterson, U.S. Army, Pace, Fla.

Retired Sgt. Maj. Kenneth Stumpf, U.S. Army, Tomah, Wis.

Retired Maj. James Taylor, U.S. Army, Trinity Center, Calif.

Retired Lt. Mike Thornton, U.S. Navy, Dallas

Retired Col. Leo Thorsness, U.S. Air Force, St. Augustine, Fla.

Retired Col. Jay Vargas, U.S. Marine Corps, San Diego

Growth-fags always seem to focus on the top line, merrily toting on the line of thinking that suggests, eventually, companies will learn to convert revenues growth into profits. This is pavement ape thinking at best — utterly retarded on the surface.

Investing in money losing companies because they’re growing the top line at a frenetic pace has ruined more portfolios than parties at moonshine infused trailer parks in Alabama.

As a point in fact, I can prove to you that investing in companies with earnings growth is preferable to revenues, via Exodus.

While the differences might be small, they still prove that earnings is the true driver behind share price appreciation and not revenues.

Earnings growth of +30%

Revenue growth of +30%

Year to date, the earnings screen edged out revenues by 40bps. That spread widened over 2 years to ~400 bps.

Then I came up with the novel idea: why not look for companies that possessed both earnings and revenues growth of +30%? Here were the results.

Earnings, Revenues growth of +30%

This mystical combination of both top and bottom line growth resulted in a 200bps advantage YTD, 800bps over 2 years and an 8,900bps edge over 5 years.

So here’s my question for you. If I just proved to you that narrowing your search down to companies that possessed both earnings and revenues growth of +30%, why are you still fiddling around with charts like god damned subhuman morons, hoping to find the next breakout?

If you insist to chase performance, why not narrow down your stock picking pool to only list companies that are fundamentally sound?

This is the very essence of quantitative trading. It’s not the hocus pocus that some investment advisors make it out to be. I should know, having been one for 18 years. They’ll say anything to justify their relevance. Truth is, I can do anything an advisor can do with some simple scripts, using the analytical tools inside Exodus. If you’re a serious minded investor and wanted to take control over your investments, cutting out the middle men who collect fees for bad advice, I can show you how to do it through a few simple screens and some risk hedges.

If it wasn’t so funny, it’d be SAD. Had Obama pulled a stunt like this, the people of West Virginia would be toiling around, restlessly, in their bricks of coal. Due to an enormously biased media against the President, in all of his infinite wisdom, he determined this was a good idea — launching his very own ‘real news’ network — broadcasted directly from Trump Tower.

Kayleigh McEnany, formerly from CNN, quit her job yesterday and then issued this lovely dose of real news today.

Enjoy America.

Trust me, people are too busy taking selfies to rise up with pitched forks. Nevertheless, Savage is warning of civil war if Trump removed.

THE DAY OF THE LOCUST IS COMING, FUCKERS.

Enjoy.

Hardcore Trump supporters, the people that the President calls his base, dislike pretty much every single person inside Trump’s cabinet and have been trying to get rid of them for months. The only person they seem to like, a person that The Mooch deemed to be a leaker, is Breitbart’s Steve Bannon. Everyone else, from McMaster, to Sessions, to Dina Powell, to Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner, to his CIA appointment, Pompeo, to Mnuchin, to Cohn, to Wilbur Ross to Coates is either ‘deep state’ or ‘the swamp’ trying to take Trump down, according to these paranoid schizophrenics.

Ladies and gentlemen, if it acts like a duck, quacks like a duck…it’s a fucking duck.

These are the people the President chose. This is who he is, like it or not. You know the old saying, judge a person by the people he keeps company with?

The latest freak out is over H.R. McMaster, a man who replaced the beloved Gen. Flynn, who was adored by Trumpers. I’ve read all sorts of crazy things about the former tank commander, who helped us rip glorious holes through the Middle East — which has been fucking us through ever since.

The latest freak out was over him firing Ezra Cohen Watnick. Really people? You’re gonna chimp out over McMaster getting rid of Flynn personnel, in this case someone who was woefully under-qualified for the role?

This is standard operating procedure for anyone wishing to position himself for success. Ezra Cohen Watnick had a rank of GS-13 at the DIA, the equivalent of a major, and had NO BUSINESS being at the helm as a senior advisor inside the NSC.

Trump’s latest pick, General Kelly, is also getting a lot of heat by his fucking paranoid base — who equate the move to a hostile takeover by the military. They’re leveling charges at Kelly for, basically, installing discipline at the White House. For the love of God, shut the fuck up. The White House was a god damned clown circus with Reince Priebus. Hopefully, the 4 star General will root out the traitors and set up makeshift execution gallows for all of the leakers inside that god forsaken White House, rendering both the Washington Post and NY Times back to gossip rags beset with onerous subscription declines.

At the end of the day, this all comes down to whether you have confidence in the President or not. Trump supporters can’t have it both ways. In other words, you can’t say he’s doing 4D double backgammon, blindfolded Armenian handball, and then say he’s so retarded he needs a fat slob (Bannon) to help remind him why he was elected. The government needs competent people running it, not newspaper men. I am unsure about Trump’s cabinet picks and frankly do not worry about it — at all.

If you can’t trust Trump’s generals, then you probably shouldn’t trust Trump.

I think a lot of people will come to realize that electing Trump wasn’t enough. Many of these people are so sick of the corruption and lack of scalability in the middle class, they just want a whole brand new form of government.

Mega cap stocks rose by 0.4%, while small caps stocks under $1b in cap shed 1.5%. That’s a staggering spread, isn’t it? I think we should leave off on that note, in a poetic metaphor that describes both the market and society as a whole.

By golly, I don’t know what I’d do if I was poor, sauntering around in the hot sun with 40 ounces of malted liquor in search of crack rock inside of my housing tenement. It must be a hard life for some of you.

Or, perhaps all of this worldly business is tedious and leads to unhappiness.

Who am I to judge how to live our your days.

I swapped my portfolio for mega caps today, and added TLT to the mix. It was a poor week for me, shedding 0.58%. My biggest loser was EXPE — because it’s an ass.

Off to the beach to get my Chris Christie on.

The two big stories today for trader-fags is the rise and fall of two endeared stocks: AAOI, YELP.

For years, people have been waiting for YELP to do something, smash earnings, gain real traction, get acquired. More or less, holding the stock has been equal to watching paint dry — until today. The company sold Eat24 to Grubhub, which is a win for both companies. YELP earned a handsome profit on the deal and GRUB gets to consolidate their industry.

On the earnings side, the company beat, guided up and announced a $200 million share buyback.

Yelp beats by $0.04, beats on revs; guides Q3 revs in-line; raises bottom end of FY17 rev guidance (midpoint above consensus); approves $200 mln share repurchase program.

Here’s what analysts think.

Needham maintains Buy rating, PT $43. The firm notes advertising growth, particularly self-service, was the key revenue upside driver. The firm sees several revenue growth levers to still pull, including improvements in retention, monetization, sales productivity, as well as ongoing growth in Self-Service and National advertising and marketing optimization.

RBC stays at Sector Perform, ups PT to 36 from 27. The firm believes the key news is Eat24 sale to Grubhub at 2X acquisition price.

Stifel stays at Hold, TGT $35. The firm is encouraged by improving trends in Yelp’s core business and think the Grubhub deal is a rare ‘win / win’ scenario for both companies, as Yelp earned a strong return on the sale of Eat24 and can now focus more of its resources on its core platform rather than capital intensive adjacent businesses. However, the firm thinks Yelp still faces significant challenges to reinvigorating its growth over a sustained period, but the company’s improved focus / stronger balance sheet should boost its chances of success.

On the downside is optical darling AAOI. To condense what this company does for the retards out there, this is a play off Amazon’s expansion into web services. Plain and simple, as the datacenter build out, so does demand for AAOI’s products. The issue here is the dramatic slowdown in 40g technology. This is like when NFLX was citing poor DVD rentals sales, at a time when they were transitioning to streaming. DVDs were still their core business, but streaming was their future. Today, DVDs account for a mere fraction of NFLXs overall sales.

Same here with AAOI, as they transition to 100g products. My main concern is, however, their reliability on just a handful of customers. The concentration of revenue is indeed a significant risk and you should know that when holding the stock into earnings.

Co issues guidance for Q3, sees EPS of $1.30-1.43, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $1.34 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees Q3 revs of $107-115 mln vs. $123.99 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.

“We are pleased with our team’s continued solid execution in the quarter, which marked our ninth consecutive quarter of generating record datacenter revenue. However, as we look into the third quarter, we see softer than expected demand for our 40G solutions with one of our large customers that will offset the sequential growth and increased demand we expect in 100G. We believe AOI has a leading position in the advanced optics market and we continue to expand within our existing customer base as well as engage with new customers for 100G technologies and beyond.”

Here’s what an analyst at BWS thinks.

BWS noes AAOI is citing a slowdown in 40G orders as a reason for guiding third quarter revenue sequentially down. Their thesis has been built on the expectation 40G would begin to decline and AAOI would not be able to sell enough 100G to make up the difference. This seems to be playing out even though AAOI was quick to note it is ramping 100G production. They do not believe that becomes relevant in the short-term since the growth AAOI was being valued for is disappearing. Without any price cuts AAOI asserted it did not have committed orders affirming cautious stance and limited visibility into fourth quarter.

Shares of YELP are +25%, while AAOI is down 25%.

Welcome to earnings season, where fortunes are made and lost in a blink of an eye.

Whenever news people delve into the world of finance, they transform into fucking idiots. Drudge, being one of the most visited sites in the world, by far the preferred portal for news and information for conservatards, has a fake news title up now — regarding the former Fed Chairman’s (Greenspan) warning of an impending collapse in the bond market.

But what the fuck is CNBC’s excuse for this title? They are supposed to be well versed in financial matters. More than that, it was their interview.

Look, in the interview he explicitly said that making forecasts about timing tops is a recipe for disaster.

“It looks stronger just before it isn’t stronger,” he said. Anyone who thinks they can forecast when the bubble will break is “in for a disastrous” experience.”

To be fair to Drudge, he probably just took CNBC at its word, and ran the story based on the CNBC title.

So stupid.