Nazis

Berlin can exercise its legal prerogative to ban Turkish politicians from campaigning in Germany amid a row with Turkey over its presidential powers referendum, Altmaier said.

“We protest strongly against the Nazi comparisons and the grotesque accusations being made,” the head of the Federal Chancellery said in an interview with German newspaper Berliner Morgenpost, published on Wednesday.

“Turkey is always keen to ensure that its honor is not violated. Germany also has honor!” the CDU politician noted.

“An entry ban would be the last resort. We reserve [this] right,” Altmaier said.

On Tuesday, Altmaier’s home state of Saarland introduced a ban on election campaigns on its soil by foreign officials. The southwestern state has become the first to introduce a ban on foreign officials holding political rallies on its territory.

“Turkey’s Internal conflicts have no place in Germany,” Saarland’s state premier, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer of the Christian Democratic Union party (CDU), said, as quoted by Die Welt.

“Electoral campaigns which endanger peace in our country should be banned,” she added.

The row between Berlin and Ankara erupted earlier this month after German local authorities cancelled several campaign events by Turkish ministers in support of the upcoming April referendum on expanding presidential powers in Turkey.

Read more
© Osman OrsalTurkish politicians campaigning in EU make economic aid ‘extremely difficult’ – German minister
While two of the communities cited “security concerns,” another said that the agreement between the demonstration organizers and the town hall excluded any political events.

There are around 1.5 million Turkish citizens with voting rights living in Germany. In an effort to whip up support among Turkish citizens living in Europe, Ankara is sponsoring a series of rallies of Turkish citizens, campaigning for their votes in the plebiscite.

Berlin denied any political involvement in the cancellations, saying decisions were taken exclusively by local officials. Turkish officials did not, however, accept the explanation, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan comparing the cancellations to “Nazi practices.”

“Germany, you have no relation whatsoever to democracy and you should know that your current actions are no different to those of the Nazi period,” Erdogan told a crowd at an Istanbul rally.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on Ankara to stop using Nazi references over the cancellation of Turkish rallies in Germany.

“These comparisons of Germany with Nazism must stop… We will not allow the victims of the Nazis to be trivialized,” the chancellor said in the lower house of parliament (Bundestag) on Thursday, noting that she was saddened by a comparison that is “so out of place as to be unworthy of serious comment.”

“It cannot be justified. Nazi comparisons only lead to misery”

I’ll tell you what I bought later on this week. Out of respect for Exodus members, I won’t tell you my trading ideas in real time anymore. It’s not like any of you shills deserve it anyway.

To the point, everyone is expecting the Fed to hike and talk extreme shit about future hikes. Oil is trending up again and Trump defeated Rachael Maddow and has caused the left to devour one of their own. Ergo, and quite literally, nothing can go wrong.

That’s right, I fucking said it.

Rant forthcoming.

There is nothing but upside from here. All persons long equities stand to make enormous fortunes. The economy no longer concerns me. Trump is now our leader and all is well. Trumpcare sucks, but so does Obamacare. No change on that end. If oil catches a bid and you are short, you’ll end up speeding yourself at highway speeds into a brick wall, CIA style.

I can go on. There’s a litany of reasons why I rationalize my trades with news items and events in order to justify my actions. At the end of the day, it’s me against the machines — fighting the good fight to make financial blogging great again.

Many of you probably don’t know it, but finance blogging used to be fun, exciting and many were doing it. Back in the day, OA and me were two of many prolific traders out there who talked about markets and trades every day. Now there’s only a handful left, because most of them blew themselves to smithereens.

The new traders don’t even know what a blog is and instead opt for ADD styled twitter comments for their followers. In a way, finance blogging has become old hat, sort of like newspapers and black and white televisions. In order to keep finance sites relevant, you have to discuss different topics, which is why I’ve expanded the site to different genres.

It’s called evolving with the times.

But some things remain constant, as I speed chop carrots with my testicles grotesquely displayed atop the counter, furiously mincing and dicing, 100% long 1 stock into the Fed.

The rabbit hole is apparently very deep.

The Morning Shill, Joe Scarborough, has been ranting and raving this morning, making accusations that Trump leaked his own tax returns in order to get Trumpcare and MUH Russia off the headlines. This drew a harsh rebuke from the President’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, which made for good Twitter theatre.

Very nice of Joe to call him Comrade, ahead of what he claims will be a ‘very serious’ Comgressional investigation into Trump’s ‘Russian ties.’

Joe also drew criticism from another establishment shill, CNNs Chris Cuomo, who asserted the fact that Joe had offered zero evidence to support his wild accusations regarding the leaked tax returns. In classic douche form, Joe belittled Chris and chastised him for poor twitter grammar.

Piers Morgan offered some counsel to the conspiratorial sweater from MSNBC.

In a note to institutional clients, Goldman relayed a whim of caution. To retail, they probably sang a different tune. God only knows what the bank really thinks. But one thing is for certain, these two clowns, Mueller-Glissman and Oppenheimer, want to scare you out of stocks here — due to slowing growth and rising rates.

At the same time, they’ve assured us that ‘long term’ things are ok. Europe is doing fine and China seems to be getting their act together. Curiously, however, they now view Yellen as a chief concern — citing weak kneed investors as a risk factor in causing exacerbated moves to the downside — should the uptrend break.

“With growth momentum nearing its peak and rates increasing further with a hawkish Fed, the asymmetry for equities is turning increasingly negative,” Goldman analysts including Christian Mueller-Glissmann wrote in a note for institutional clients. “A slowing cycle makes equities more vulnerable to higher rates and also shocks, e.g. from European politics, U.S. policy, commodities or China.”

“At some point, rising bond yields will become a constraint on equities,” Peter Oppenheimer, a contributor to the report, said in a separate interview. Bond yields are still some way away from normal levels in Europe and Japan, “but in the U.S. we’re getting much closer to that,” he said.

“In the event of a reversal of the trend, these systematic investors are likely to reduce equity exposure quickly, which could exacerbate an equity drawdown and result in a faster and larger volatility spike,” the Goldman analysts wrote.

This is pure rubbish. In other words, rates are rising so be concerned — because once stocks start to head lower — all hell will break loose. Please.

Valuations have been flat for over a year. Moreover, if Fed rate hikes are such a concern, then why not advocate against them? Right, because Goldman wants higher rates to profit from widening speeads. Pardon my conspiratorial hue, but there’s nothing in this report that is meaningful or worth giving a second thought. It’s rank amateur and non-tradeable.

BBG summarizes.

Source: Bloomberg

The analysts suggest investors replace their equity positions with calls, including shorter-dated calls on the S&P 500 and longer-dated Euro Stoxx 50 and Nikkei 225 calls

They are still positive on equity returns longer term, with a 12-month overweight rating for all regions except the S&P 500, which stays underweight

Rising U.S. rates should benefit Europe and Japan even as they become a headwind to the U.S., and there is also potential for a relief rally in the event of a “market-friendly outcome” to the French elections

Goldman is also positive on the Asia-Pacific region, especially China, with the firm returning to an overweight on Chinese stocks earlier this week on mounting evidence of strength in the economy.

All of Jack’s playhouse has been compromised. The entirety of twitter is under assault tonight, which will hopefully lay waste to the share price in a few hours.

Here’s the run down.

#TwitterHack is due to poor security by a third party app. Revoke access to all apps! pic.twitter.com/BcVb21qtlt

— Mike Cernovich ?? (@Cernovich) March 15, 2017

Major accounts are being taken the fuck out, supplanted by Turkish regalia and calling out Germany and the Netherlands for being NAZIS.

They’re using the same tactics of the left. How adorable.

The good Doctor was on Alex Jones for 45 mins today — discussing a variety of topics.

Some of the notable moments were:

We’re in a civil war with the left
The left in the GOP are part of the democratic party
How the family structure was targeted by Marx and now by the left
Soros, Pelosi, Maxine Waters
Healthcare
Taxes
Cuba and Castro
War
His dinner with Trump and his sit down with him over a large bowl of iced cream
He hinted at a class action lawsuit against some of radios ad agencies

Behold. MSNBC just released two pages of President Trump’s 2005 1040.

Essentially, it’s more nothing — literally.

Here are the highlights.

Trump made $150m in 2005.

He paid $5.3m in Federal taxes, incurring a tax rate of 4% thanks to write downs. He had written down $916m in 1995

Additionally, he paid $31m in alt minimum taxes. Overall tax rate was 25%.

The White House releases a statement regarding the leak.

“Before being elected President, Mr. Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the world with a responsibility to his company, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the White House said in a statement. “That being said, Mr. Trump paid $38 million dollars even after taking into account large scale depreciation for construction, on an income of more than $150 million dollars, as well as paying tens of millions of dollars in other taxes such as sales and excise taxes and employment taxes and this illegally published return proves just that.”

Here are the returns, at least two pages of them.

Clean copies of Trump's tax returns pic.twitter.com/exJJZ5QqnG

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) March 15, 2017

Great, more nothing. Leftards BTFO.

Drudge summarizes.

The Presidency has ended, Trumpsters. You had a good two months of power, now it’s time for you and your leader, Donald J. Trump, to be sent to prison for being Russian Nazis ( I realize Russia lost over 30 million soldiers fighting to kill Nazis, but it sounds ominous nonetheless).

At exactly 9pm, Rachael ‘Mad Dog’ Maddow will commit a crime on live television by illegally releasing Trump’s 2005 tax returns, which will undoubtedly prove that he is, in fact, an actual Nazi Russian spy.

DEVELOPING…

After the close API numbers indicated a draw of crude inventories — which is providing succor to crude prices. Otherwise, it has been a dreadful month for oil stocks — with the drillers off by more than 20% in less than 4 weeks.

Devastating losses can be found amidst a sundry of small cap drillers. On the larger capped end, $WLL leads to the downside with a -21% showing over the past month.

In Exodus, our predictive algos are screaming oversold. The sector registered a score of just 2.01 today. The last time the scores were this low was on 11/29/16 at 2.02 and 3/23/16 at 1.97.

Juxtaposing the oversold scores v the energy stock ETF $XLE is meaningful to note. On 11/29/16, XLE closed at $70.46. On the very next day, it closed at $74, moving higher towards $77 within a fortnight.

On 3/23/16, XLE closed at $60.45. Between then and April the 7th, the price stood in a very narrow range, breaking out on 4/8 — eventually moving higher on a daily basis towards $67 by month’s end.

Bottom line: although scary, now is the time to buy the dips in crude. I’ll be opening some positions tomorrow, hopefully into a harrowing margin call.

Back in the 13th century, Hungary was at the front lines of the Golden Horde’s invasion into Europe. It is widely believed that their transformative defensive tactics of building walled cities helped fend off the Mongolians — saving the rest of Europe from an eventual Mongolian occupation.

Fast forward to today, there is a similar invasion taking place, this time from the middle east. To defend the people of Hungary, the country has set up transit zones in order to properly vet migrants — before releasing them.

Hungary’s PM, Viktor Orban, is on record saying he didn’t want more muslim refugees in Hungary — explaining how the muslim invasion represented a tangible threat to Christian dominated Europe.

In a speech given a little more than a year ago, Orban laid out his grievances — calling the EU the ‘enemies of freedom.’

In a referendum vote in late 2016, 98% of Hungarians voted against EU migrant quotas. PM Orban said “Hungary voted to keep its freedom, its right to decide who we want to live together with, and we decided that we won’t give this right to Brussels. We can be proud that Hungarian people were the first to be given the right to express their opinion on Brussels politics.”

Establishing the fact that Orban and the EU were at an impasse, we’re now led to the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg, France — who just ruled that Hungary violated the human rights of two migrants who filed suit. Moreover, they ordered Hungary to pay them, mind you, 10,000 euros a piece PLUS another 8,705 euros to cover their fucking expenses.

What did the court say Hungary did?

The ‘unlawfully’ kept the two men in the transit zone — a place designated by Hungary to properly process and vet migrants entering their nation. In other words, the EU court found Hungary guilty of unlawfully defending their border from invaders.

Source: Reuters
Two Bangladeshi citizens, Ilias Ilias and Ali Ahmed, filed a suit against Hungary in September 2015, shortly after the government put up a fence on its southern borders and created two transit zones for asylum seekers in a bid to curb the number of migrants arriving via the Balkans.

The two men sought to be released from the transit zone and asked for their expulsion to Serbia be halted.

The court ruled that their detention in the transit zone was unlawful under the European Convention of Human Rights, but there was “no violation of the convention in respect of the conditions of detention at the transit zone.”

The Strasbourg court ruling is subject to appeal. The government was not immediately available for comment.

Going forward, some hope this decision will force Hungary into abandoning the idea of minding a border — freely permitting migrants to come to and fro Europe whenever they like.

“This judgment is particularly relevant now in Hungary because the Strasbourg court has found that detaining asylum seekers in the transit zone without any formal procedure and access to judicial remedy is unlawful,” Marta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, which represented the migrants’ case in the court.

“This already ongoing practice of unlawful detention in the transit zone is exactly what the Hungarian newly adopted law foresees for every asylum seeker, so it’s clear: the new law is against the European Convention on Human Rights.”

Earlier this month, the Hungarian parliament approved the automatic detainment of all migrants into the transit zone.  

“Those readying for the journey do not want to live according to our ways and culture, but according to their own – only with a European quality of life,” said PM Orban.