Go Tell Your Friends and Family to Short the Banks

One of my favorite pastimes, back during the financial crisis, was to short the banks. Boy how I miss those halcyon days, the blue mist of cataclysm and the end of western finance. Alas, since then, all has been fine on the bankers front. Worldwide, we’ve entered a renaissance of economic steadiness.

Obviously, some win more than others. Those who dig for coal or clean chimneys for a living haven’t faired too well. But for those of us in finance, software, or legal, this economy has been splendid.

Setting that aside for the moment, it appears the little banksters have gotten ahead of themselves, yet again, and are overdue a stern talking to — a courrection even.

Observe the OB/OS oscillator of Exodus.

Sector: Financial

Industry: Money Centers

Henceforth, you should be barreling into shares of FAZ, inside the FAZmobile, for rapid transit to profit. I was supposed to stop out of this thing at $16. But I am giving it a little rope here, considering how stretched the finnies are at these exorbitant levels.

Markets are basically flat, with all of the gains corralled in oil/gas, retail and foreign banks. Tech stocks are pulling in a bit, which is normal following a big climb.

Not having a catalyst driven idea on the desk now, I am simply buying more XIV. The game plan for this is simple: destroy volatility. Embrace the complacency of a market that seemingly jogs on daily, without a whim or a care in the world.

VIXfags will be destroyed, one way or another. If I dedicated my life to simply buying XIV, by the end of my life, I’d be an extraordinarily wealthy man.

In about 2 hrs, the Apple event will be live. Who’s chomping at the bit to purchase a $1,000 iPhone?

Back in 2000, a good friend of mine who managed a small fund for a handful of clients came to my house in Bay Ridge, NY to show him his paycheck for the quarter. He was ecstatic to have made so much money at such a young age. Both of us were in our early 20s. Back in those days, the brownstones we were living in cost about $400,000, hardly a hot market.

With his small fortune, he bought 2 more brownstones, both to be used for rentals. A few years after that, he bought another home for himself, near the shore, and then a building on 5th avenue to house his business. Fast forward to today, he’s a rich man — all through his real estate holdings.

I grew up in Brooklyn, when it was a fucking shit hole. You could not travel to neighborhoods like Bedford Stuyvesant without getting robbed or shot. It was really that bad and I went to all of the worst neighborhoods — having grown up in East Flatbush.

I was perusing Bed Stuy’s real estate values this morning and was shocked to see brownstones fetching for $3 million, upwards of $900 per sq ft.

Across the board, Brooklyn’s real estate market is ebbing towards equanimity with Manhattan, by the square foot.

The best neighborhood has been Park Slope, a place of ill repute when I was cavorting there in the 90s. It was filled with gangs and people who wanted to punch you in your face. I recall being accosted by a lad with a group of 10, accusing me of being with a group of teens the week prior and beating up his friend. I was seconds away from being pummeled to death when I managed to convince them I was a man of extreme repute and honor. Then I bribed one of them with my 40 ounce of malted liquor and we quickly became friends. Back in those days, sharing a 40 ounce of malted liquor, with total strangers,  was something to be cherished.

Here is the real estate values of the now gentrified Park Slope.

Sandwiched between Park Slope and Bay Ridge is a neighborhood called Sunset Park. I spent much of my teenage years hanging out there, with most of my girlfriends domiciled in that locale. It is, without question, an interesting neighborhood, filled with drug dealers and people who run around at night beating up people for cash. It’s a mostly hispanic neighborhood with strong ties to the Puerto Rican community. It is vibrant and fun, providing you can avoid getting razor bladed to your face. I once recall being accosted by two gents who attempted to kill me with a mallet.

Real estate values for Sunset Park.

Juxtapose those values against where I live now and it’s not even a contest. Suburban and rural areas in the United States have been BTFO over the past decade, beset with stagnant prices. Aside from the elite zip codes, all of the appreciation has taken place in urban areas. I suppose there is justification for that, since that’s where the jobs are. But is the suburban dream of a 2 car garage, pool, and 4 bedroom house dead?

UPDATE: Apple: Morgan Stanley raises bull-case thesis to $253 from $203 on AAPL ahead of iPhone event; Overweight, $182 tgt

Good morning Mates. Fly here and I woke up with an Australian accent. I had myself a spot of Vegemite this morning and now I’m back to preparing myself to kick older men than me down empty elevator shafts, throwing bottles of mustard at them on their way down.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Theresa May’s BREXIT bill is facing immense criticism and there are calls for her to rewrite it. This might have something to do with the fact that the pound is higher v the dollar by 0.84%.

I think we can be clear now on Lab Brexit policy; there is no policy. Lab will adopt literally any position it thinks may bring down the Gov

— Patrick O'Flynn (@oflynnmep) September 12, 2017

European markets are higher by 0.79%, with exception to Britain, who is down 0.25% — likely due to its curreny popping higher.

Dow futures are higher by 51, NASDAQ +13.

Both gold and silver are weak again, off by 0.5%. And copper is down 1%, which might lend weakness to Chinese related stocks. By the way, there are a slew of Chinese IPOs coming public soon. WTI is higher by 0.4%.

ETH and BTC go higher, no matter what. The former is higher by 4.6% and the latter by 3.4%.

Govt bonds are slightly weaker, as the tape takes on a risk on aspect to it.

Here are some other headlines, from my fucking Twitter feed.

Gapping up:
RADA +13.5%, TEVA +7.6%, LAYN +7.1%, CTIC +5.2%, TTD +4%, EYES +3.9%, BVXV +2.6%, PPHM +2.2%, GPRO +2.1%, WDC +1.3%, MU +1.3%, AMD +1.3%, QIWI +1.1%, AAPL +1.1%, JD +0.6%, NVDA +0.5%

Gapping down:
SAGE -24.3%, HIIQ -22.3%, LMNR -9.7%, BCRX -8.7%, BIP -4.8%, PTLA -2.6%, FDC -2.1%, MRNS -1.9%, EFX -1.7%, MZOR -1.7%, CPT -1.2%, ADXS -1%

There are some people who apologize for Trump for virtually every single thing he does. They like to blame the usual cast of villains, including Dina Powell, Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, Gen. McMaster, Mattis and Kelly — even his own daughter Ivanka Trump. It’s easy to get swept into drama-filled theories of palace intrigue — depicting a cabal of evil people, all with ties to George Soros, trying to take down Trump.

But if you followed that logic all the way down to its root, it would suggest that Trump was, in fact, an idiot — unable to manage his affairs, permitting horrible people control and manage him, even isolate him from the grandeur of the alt-right media. None of this is conducive with the overarching theory by his sycophants that the President is always playing 3D intergalactic speed fencing championship tier chess — so they resort to blaming others for isolating the President.

Case in point. During today’s broadcast of the Alex Jones show, Roger Stone made the outrageous implication that the President was being drugged — as a precursor to a coup. He segued into that after discussing the resignation of long time Trump bodyguard, Keith Schiller. Stone said that Schiller had always been ‘the canary in the coal mine’ for the President and that with him out of the way, forced out by Gen. Kelly, the President’s life was in danger.

This all makes for a good radio show, drives up the click views on the website — but it cannot be substantiated, aside from a few ‘unnamed sources.’ Stone even said that McMaster made disparaging remarks about Trump while dining with the CEO of Oracle recently, with Jones chiming in that the behavior was in fact ‘treasonous.’

All of this rhetoric was checked and flushed down a Floridian toilet bowl when Jones called up Dr. Pieczenik to get his take on this ‘bombshell’ news. Starting off the conversation, Dr. Pie chastised him thricely for not being polite enough to ask how he was fairing during Hurricane Irma — then he laid waste to Jones’ conspiracies, pointing out that the President wasn’t a child and was smart enough to manage his own affairs.

I’ve never seen these two clash. Watch.

If you research Tungsten mines, you’ll find that they’re often overseas — in fucked up places in the world like Africa, China or S.America. Primarily used to Harden steel, used for ballistic missiles and drill bits, Tungsten is all the rage these days — especially with the specter of war casting its ominous shadow.

The real driver for tungsten is China today is fear of Chinese cutbacks. Approximately 80% of world wide tungsten supply comes from China. Like rare earth minerals, they literally control the market.

Source: Bloomberg

“The Chinese have been trying to impose control over the production in tungsten,” said Mark Seddon, senior manager at Argus Consulting (Metals). “They’ve used environmental policy to clamp down on non-quota production.”

The price of tungsten in Europe has jumped 52 percent since early July, according to Metal Bulletin Ltd. The advance has beaten all 22 major materials in the Bloomberg Commodities Index. Tungsten has gained for six straight months, the longest rally since 2012.

The European Union classes tungsten as a “critical” commodity and the British Geological Survey places it at the top of its supply-risk list of materials needed to maintain the U.K.’s economy and lifestyle. In 2012, it became a flash point when then U.S. President Barack Obama filed a complaint to the World Trade Organization against Chinese supply curbs.

China limits supply to about 91,300 metric tons a year, but routinely breaks its quota by as much as 50 percent, partly because a lot comes as a byproduct from mines that produce other metals such as molybdenum, Seddon said.

It seems that tolerance has gone, at least for now. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued an edict on June 6 saying producers should stick to output quotas and that those without quotas, or which exceed the quotas, should halt production. Quotas also shouldn’t be granted to firms that infringe safety or environmental rules.

“The government wants to have control,” said Seddon, who has covered the industry for at least 15 years. “Whether this carries on into next year is more difficult to predict.”

Look at the subsequent appreciation.

Aside from the all important missile industry, the auto industry males up 25% of demand — mainly for cutting and machining tools. All of the publicly traded plays are abroad, with exception to one: KMT.

A few years back, they purchased a Tungsten mine in Bolivia, the first largest producer of tungsten. Not knowing much about the company yet, I do see their revenues and earnings have taken a recent uptick for the first time in years. Their share price is has risen by 17% this year and on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the best, Exodus ranks it a 4.75.

I’ll do a little more research on this over the next few days. If any of you have any insight into this industry, feel free to share. Or do all of you simply genuflect to the retarded and illiterate church of technical analysis? It must be nice being you, living life without every having to think — simply reacting to things like a fucking savage animal.

Today was the knee-jerk trade, which is why you should’ve taken profits, or closed out any positions that stood to benefit from a weaker Irma. In the coming days and weeks to come, we will begin to get a better idea what the storm really did, in terms of damage to property and Florida’s agriculture.

According to the Commodity Weather Group, Florida’s citrus crop might’ve sustained damages up to 20%. Moreover, the all important sugar crop, which Florida makes up half of US production, might’ve taken a 10% hit, or 5% of overall US production.

Worse than that, the grapefruit crop, breakfast of grandfathers everywhere, stands to take a 30% hit — thanks to 80mph winds and at a time when the crop simply wasn’t ready to be picked.

During today’s session, ag stocks took off, as optimism set in. The worst case scenario didn’t pan out, so shares of ALCO, LMNR, SQM, IPI, AVD, MOS, UAN and POT took off.

I have no sense or special insight into this industry, but can only hope and pray that sugar costs spiral out of control — forcing the great and evil Pepsi to buyout FIZZ, whose fashionable and delicious La Croix beverages consist of zero grams of sugar — just sparkling and refreshing water with the essence of all natural fruit juices.

The entire downtown area of Charleston, SC is underwater.

More nothing-burgers. They taste stale.

Here on Wall Street, we’re flooded with profits — benefitting from a lack of serious damage done to the banks and the insurance sector. For a moment there last week, people were getting nervous about property damage, from the perspective of a banker who’d be forced to pony up to policy holders. Assessing the damage today, those fears were grossly exaggerated.

Property insurance stocks have risen from the dead and are eating the faces of short sellers.

My only moves today was profiting from my UVE and AEL positions and purchasing an initial spot in XIV.

Talk about a dick headline. How about that one?

Mostly everyone expected Irma to knock down all of the skyscrapers in Miami, killing and maiming people all across the peninsula, all the way to Iowa. But since Irma ended up to be nothing less than a dud, those pro-apocalypse stocks are pulling back here. Perhaps a buying opp?

I think not.

LL -7%
USG -5%
PGTI -4%
KIRK -3%
Gold sector -2.2%
OC -4%
MLM -3.6%
TPX -3.6% — because people were going to need new fucking mattresses.

While I get the profit motive for many in my field, I can’t help but think most of you are evil people. I don’t mean that in a bad way, per se. It’s not like you’re heading out at night, like Jack the Ripper, and killing hookers. But you’re all just a bit off, lacking empathy, and entirely greedy. If there is a God, he will surely send you to hell upon reaching the gates of heaven.

Personally, I just want to raise the kids in the nice northeastern lifestyle, then head out west with my fortune to cavort amongst liberals in Santa Barbara or maybe Monterey. I don’t have an interest in moving to conservatard towns down south. More or less, they lack artistic talents and are dullards.

Prove me wrong.

It’s over, weatherfags. I sold out of UVE and AEL — because some idiots thought it was a good idea to bet against a midwest life insurance stock because of thunderstorms in Florida. Both FIZZ and UVE have been fulfilling, but AEL was probably the easiest money I’ve made in years.

Markets are up bigly — there is nothing out there for you to play. If you want to dive back into LOW, LL and PGTI — go ahead and be my guest. But there isn’t the explosive money to be made in those, not yet at least. Bear in mind, the hurricane season is just getting started. People in Texas and Florida are gonna need those hurricane proof windows, if they’re interested in keeping those gusty winds out of their drawing rooms.

The only thing left to do, something I did a short while ago, is to dive back into the best investment over the past 5 years. The ETF that has returned over 500% by simply jogging on. It is the quintessenatial token of leisure, the windcock of Wall Street that serves as a reminder that the bull market can never be stopped. I am talking about fading volatility, via XIV.

Prove me wrong.