Banks Explode to the Upside, as Wall Street Celebrates Jim Comey’s Testimony

The entire Comey testimony reads like the distraught scribblings of a troubled man, having been sent through the ringer one too many times. I suppose I’ll get into it later, in spite of being sick of the subject. But from a market takeaway, it’s incredibly bullish. While you might hear commentary from people with an ax to grind about Trump being the devil, nothing in the Comey testimony speaks of collusion. Therefore, and this goes without saying, stocks are moving higher.

Most impressively are the banks. And I’m not just talking about GS, MS, BAC and C. The regional banks are the true stars here, up an astonishing 3% for the day — with gains in stocks like UMPQ, SIVB, PB and NBTB. Correlating with that is the energetic rally in ‘Trump stocks’, which leads me to believe the market is pricing in a gigantic nothing-burger for Trump and a possible open door to pro-growth legislation.

Remember, it was the rare oversold call in copper by Exodus that preceded this move. If you’re a member of Exodus and simply using the chat room for your trading, you’re doing yourself a heinous disservice.

The overall market is mixed, with breadth at 50%. The focus of the rally is centered around infrastructure, banks and even nuclear.

UPDATE:

Former FBI Director Comey: "There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever. The Russians interfered in our election." https://t.co/24L1aNphsi pic.twitter.com/lHclQs9w79

— ABC News (@ABC) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

Here's how I leaked my Trump memo after Trump's “tapes” tweet

by: James Comey pic.twitter.com/9Z1QPPdcKD

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

Comey says he understood word "hope" to be a direction. If so why didn't he tell Pres that such a direction w/d be violation of DOJ rules?

— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

Marco Rubio: It seems like everything from your office leaked except the fact that @realDonaldTrump was not under investigation

#ComeyDay pic.twitter.com/hcErf9wkpe

— Klay Volk ?? (@KlayVolk) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

FAKE NEWS: James Comey Says New York Times Article Was False Over Russia Colluding #ComeyTestimony #ComeyHearing #Comey #MAGA #DTS pic.twitter.com/cgBMMssm0q

— DeplorableLeft #MAGA (@Deplorable_Left) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

Comey: "I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took it in" pic.twitter.com/6qOgzCJWH1

— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

"Lordy, I hope there are tapes," Comey says of his conversation with President Trump https://t.co/wAOirl6c5p #ComeyTestimony pic.twitter.com/kkwsNdceEI

— Bloomberg (@business) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

Comey on why he didn't tell Trump their conversation was "wrong": "Maybe if I were stronger, I would have." pic.twitter.com/FUaBzLV5ii

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

Sen. James Risch asks Comey about obstruction of justice

Watch live here: https://t.co/THlNhXekzk pic.twitter.com/REs7GfdKNY

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

Hoping and telling are two very different things, you would think that a guy like Comey would know that. #givemeabreak

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

He did not feel need to document meeting with the idiot Bush, the war criminal. #ComeyTestimony

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

! Comey on why he wrote memos about Trump conversations: “I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting” pic.twitter.com/BJuiqYJH6a

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

Comey: “General Flynn at that time was in legal jeopardy” and Trump asking me to back off the probe was “disturbing” pic.twitter.com/4oWVHAtWAr

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 8, 2017

UPDATE:

Comey: “Those were lies, plain and simple.” https://t.co/AGoO1pLTXa

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 8, 2017

I wanted to be distracted enough to avoid the Comey hearings. Although I do love stirring the pot, providing kicks into wells for retards, I really do not have a keen interest in politics. While I might write about it and discuss the events of the day often, I only enjoy it for the chaos factor. Some of you take this business seriously. I can only surmise they’re all demented and well deserving of an ancient beating on the gibbet.

Now we will eagerly sit here, watching this soap opera unfold. Meanwhile, capital markets will be stagnant, only moving if Comey says anything that might hurt the President. Any damaging statements will be filtered as a negative for the economy. But don’t bet on it.

Early going, gold is dreadful. Stocks are flat. Fuckery is high.

Feel free to discuss the Comey testimony in the comments section.

Live feed

Shares SNAP are barreling towards fresh 52 week lows — after investors finally began to realize that they bought a company trading ~25x sales. There isn’t a world in the multiverse that can justify such a high valuation. Dare I say, this stock will be halved by year end. Even at 12.5x sales, the stock would be richly valued. They’d actually have to perform and begin thinking about the concept of making money. I doubt they have it in them.

When I printed out that chart above, the stock was barely off by 5%. Now it’s down 5.5% and getting worse by the second. Without question, the $18 level will be breached. Both SNAP and TWTR are great products, but shitty businesses.

Shares of JWN are -32% over the past 6 months, but soaring in the pre-market on news that they might go private. Truthfully, I can’t blame them — given the toxic environment out there for retailers. As a whole, the company hasn’t done too bad, with sales still managing to grow, albeit low single digits. Net income is terrific, in the range of ~$350m per quarter — but down in the range of 30-50% from prior years.

Perhaps they need to go private in order to sort their business out, without the undue pressure of having to please shareholders.

The stock is +20% on the news, helping boost the stocks of other retailers too.

Peers moving higher:
Macy’s (M) +3.9%,
Kohl’s (KSS) +3.2%,
JC Penney (JCP) +2.4%,
Dillard’s (DDS) +2.4%,
Ralph Lauren (RL) +1.6%,
Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) +1.4%,
Michael Kors (KORS) +1.3%,
Gap (GPS) +1.2%

Nordstrom’s is a unique property. But if they pull off a going private deal, I could see similar deals for M, JCP and maybe even KSS.

More than 25% of JWN’s float was sold short. Ouch. Roast in hell shorts. Roast in hell.

While everyone is glued to their sets, hoping that James Comey says some outlandish shit, Jack Ma from BABA is finally getting his due on Wall Street. The stock has exploded to the upside after providing much better than expected guidance on what they call ‘investor day’ — saying sales will increase by a staggering +45-49%. This is having a rapish effect on the portfolios of those short BABA, but it’s also boosting ancillary China plays — like BZUN, JD and even YHOO.

Needham weighs in.

Needham raises their BABA tgt to $155 from $140. Firm feels the highlight of the first day of Alibaba’s 2017 Investor Day was FY18 rev growth guidance above expectations. Co’s CFO provided rev growth guidance of 45-49% y/y growth, which was above consensus rev growth of 37%. This is an acceleration from FY17 growth of 44% growth excluding acquisitions. Mgmt expects core China Commerce growth to be the primary growth driver as Alibaba leverages its data assets to lift consumer engagement, driving more traffic to merchants and raising conversions. Given the higher than expected rev growth firm is raising their FY18 rev, EPS, and EBITDA ests.

Personally, the numbers at “the Chinese Amazon” have always been so good, they reminded me of a scam. Perhaps this is the turning point for Jack Ma’s street cred on Wall Street, not that he gives a shit since BABA is already a giant. Nevertheless, there aren’t any companies out there, the size of BABA, growing at +45-49%. Zero.

The stock is likely going to continue much higher, barring an overall market correction.

Constitutional expert and famed Harvard law Professor, Alan Dershowitz, took on Jeffrey Toobin to discuss the ongoing Trump-Comey saga, saying in no uncertain terms that “this is not obstruction of justice.”

He explains, “That is his constitutional power. He has the right to say, ‘You will not investigate Flynn.’ The best proof of that is he could have simply said to Comey, ‘Stop the investigation, I’ve just pardoned Flynn.’”

To back up his assertions, Dershowitz reminded viewers of when Bush I pardoned Casper Weinberger the night before trial. After doing so, no one cried ‘obstruction’ because it was within the rights of the President of the United States to do so.

“That’s what President Bush did,” Dershowitz said, citing the case of Caspar Weinberger. “You cannot have obstruction of justice when the president exercises his constitutional authority to pardon, his constitutional authority to fire the director of the FBI, or his constitutional authority to tell the director of the FBI who to prosecute and who not to prosecute.”

He made the point that impeachment and obstruction are two entirely different things, which reduced Jeffrey Toobin to look like an 11th grade history student learning the constitution for the first time. The President can be impeached for all manners of things, but not for firing Comey and/or asking him to stop investigating Flynn — because it is his right to do so.

“You can impeach him if you don’t like what he did,” he said. “But you cannot say it’s a crime. It’s simply not a crime for the president to exercise his constitutional authority to pardon or to direct the FBI.”

He concluded, “If you and I were expert witnesses in an impeachment trial of President Trump, and we were asked the question, ‘has President Trump committed an obstruction of justice by pardoning Flynn or by firing Comey, or by telling Comey not to investigate Flynn?’, my answer, as an expert on the constitution would be ‘absolutely not, he didn’t commit an obstruction of justice […] it simply isn’t a crime for the President to exercise his constitutional authority.’”

Watch.

https://youtu.be/zCWOSNrCl7Q

It was a gigantic nothing-burger in that nothing was said that could be construed as ‘bad’ for the President. Democrats and deep state shills are angered by the lack of disclosure, the cadence of some voices, even the body language — reading into things that were perhaps not there. Nevertheless, tomorrow is the Comey show and judging by his prepared remarks, there might be some red meat for the left to chew on soon.

Granted, none of this is ‘smoking gun’ quality evidence — but perhaps enough to distract the American public from John Podesta’s affinity for pizza and the sudden murder of Seth Rich, none of which have been adequately explained.

Here are the Comey remarks, who paints a picture of President Trump subtedly cajoling him to be loyal and perhaps drop the Flynn investigation.

JUST IN: Comey’s opening statement for Senate Intel tomorrow: “The President said, ‘I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.'” pic.twitter.com/NRJWo4gi3j

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 7, 2017

This just about sums up the day, with the first video highlighting a CNN panel of leftists, triggered because nothing was said today that could potentially impeach the President. They viewed today’s hearings as ‘painful’ to watch and ‘stonewalling’, when in reality mostly all hearings of this sort are exactly the same. I don’t know what they expected to get from these hearings. Perhaps they wanted the fake news words in the Washinton Post acted out on television, like one of their Broadway plays? In the real world, these hearings are nothing more than red herrings.

There’s a reason why I quarantined all Chinese stocks into one pile dubbed ‘Chinese burritos’ in Exodus. I view them all as one unit, disgracefully mocking markets with their presence. Back in the old days, I’d play ‘chinese lotto’ in an attempt to catch one of these trailblazers before the regulators shut the fun down.

Case in point: WINS

In China, they take their WINS seriously.

Do not bother to wonder what this company does for a living. The stock was $20 a few short days ago and now it’s north of $200. Naturally, the stock was just halted by regulators and everyone’s money will now be held hostage by mysterious forces. Nevertheless, people had fun taking the shot.

The Stocktwits message board is replete with greasy traders grateful for not getting caught in the maelstrom.

WINS is up more than 1,000% over the past 12mos.

You’re all so quick to withdrawing from environmental accords made in Paris or show support for archaic jobs in west virginia shoveling for coal, but how about the good and honest deep water driller? How about the men doing horizontal drilling by way of fracking, trying to scrape enough meat together to make a stew for his family? Those men are dying now — as the price of WTI collapses and their share prices dive even lower this year — now down by more than 35% for 2017.

Tell the workers from CIE, whose share price is down a swift 78% this year, that their kids will have to do without money for the foreseeable future because you felt the country needed more solar panels instead of his companies oil.

I’m back to watching debt/eq levels again. Right now there is approximately $278b in oil and gas debt, associated with share prices with debt/eq ratios higher than 2. It isn’t all that much anymore, considering that the market caps for cryptocurrencies is now in excess of $100 billion. Nevertheless, the entire fate of western oil production might depend on it.

Just 43% of stocks are higher today; but all that counts is the final tally — with both the Dow Jones and Nasdaq barreling towards fresh record highs.

Two of the nations top intelligence chiefs, Rogers and Coats, took the stage today to testify about the Trump witch hunt, currently underway at the DNC and sympathizers of theirs in the intelligence community.

Sadly, they did not deliver the goods. Trump opponents are already out in force proclaiming conspiracy theories, because they hate him and can only respond emotionally.

DNI Coats:

“In my time of service in interacting with the President of the United States, or anybody in his administration, I have never been pressured, I have never felt pressure to intervene or interfere in any way with shaping intelligence in a political way”

Coats' testimony is a nothing burger re: Trump pressure/WaPo story. pic.twitter.com/hZKyRDnXyi

— Marcus Gilmer (@marcusgilmer) June 7, 2017

And Rogers:

?? #NSA Dir. Rogers: I've never been directed or pressured to do anything illegal or inappropriate. pic.twitter.com/wf6KU5Nxua

— Cal Cowboy (@RightWingLawman) June 7, 2017

Comey on deck.