I don’t get it. Often times, the market is a mystery, which is why we’re all entranced by it.
Candidate Trump said he was gonna make coal great again. We were gonna have coal powered space shuttles shooting to Uranus. Instead, President Trump has done nothing for coal. We’ve yet to fly to Uranus. And, solar stocks are leading the charge — as green energy stock plays continue to outperform.
Year to date, VSLR is +121%, ASYS +99%, SEDG +77%, SPWR +48% and a sundry of others are up more than 30%.
Over the past 3 month, the largest solar company in America, FSLR, is up more than 47%. Clearly, I’m missing something here, so I’ll ask you fucking mutant mutes who only seem to crawl out of your fucking holes when I mention Donald Trump or some other politically charged post.
Why is solar doing so well this year and when will Trump make coal great again?
If I were a republican, this Senator Graham fellow would drive me nuts. Here he is accosting the future director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, repeatedly trying to get him to say negative things about Don Trump Jr. and then segueing that into a juvenile conclusion by trying to get the new FBI director to call Russia ‘an enemy’ of America for disrupting our MUH elections.
All jokes aside, men like this will get us all killed.
“Is Russia our friend or our enemy?”
“Do you think they’re an adversary of the United States?”
“Do you think the Russians did it, when it comes to the hacking of the DNC and Podesta emails?”
Please be world ending. Please be world ending. Please be world ending.
Finally, something that could bring us all together, a gigantic fucking iced-berg the size of Delaware just broke off Antarctica and is now barreling towards the continents, in a move that is sure to destroy the planet.
Nah, I was kidding about the last part. Chalk it up to a little fake news for the morning shitpost.
One of the biggest icebergs on record has broken away from Antarctica, scientists said on Wednesday, creating an extra hazard for ships around the continent as it breaks up.
The one trillion tonne iceberg, measuring 5,800 square km, calved away from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica sometime between July 10 and 12, said scientists at the University of Swansea and the British Antarctic Survey.
The iceberg has been close to breaking off for a few months. Throughout the Antarctic winter, scientists monitored the progress of the rift in the ice shelf using the European Space Agency satellites.
“The iceberg is one of the largest recorded and its future progress is difficult to predict,” said Adrian Luckman, professor at Swansea University and lead investigator of Project MIDAS, which has been monitoring the ice shelf for years.
“It may remain in one piece but is more likely to break into fragments. Some of the ice may remain in the area for decades, while parts of the iceberg may drift north into warmer waters,” he added.
Antarctica is a fascinating place. I’ve seen several documentaries on it and I am certain the government hides a bunch of secret shit there. God willing, the entire thing will melt the fuck down — raise the sea levels around the world, and make the earth quiet again. Personally, I wouldn’t mind reverting back to the times of the Wooly Mammoth — hunting and gathering with a spear in tow — pistol on my waist.
Stocks are liking this new Yellen, the merciful — as she hands out butterscotched candies to traders. According to Yellen’s testimony, the Fed is running out of room to raise rates and will focus on ‘appreciably’ reducing the balance sheet. It’s worth noting, Yellen is coming around to Fed’s Kashkari’s way of thinking, who rejected the idea that we needed to quickly raise rates in favor or reducing the $4 trillion balance sheet.
It’s an astonishing turn for Yellen, an attestation to Kashkari’s persuasiveness at the Fed.
Because the neutral rate is currently quite low by historical standards, the federal funds rate would not have to rise all that much further to get to a neutral policy stance.
because we also anticipate that the factors that are currently holding down the neutral rate will diminish somewhat over time, additional gradual rate hikes are likely to be appropriate over the next few years to sustain the economic expansion and return inflation to our 2 percent goal. Even so, the Committee continues to anticipate that the longer-run neutral level of the federal funds rate is likely to remain below levels that prevailed in previous decades.
Source: BBG
On inflation, “it appears that the recent lower readings on inflation are partly the result of a few unusual reductions in certain categories of prices,” she says in prepared remarks to the House Financial Services Committee. She and the FOMC expect “the economy will continue to expand at a moderate pace over the next couple of years, with the job market strengthening somewhat further and inflation rising to 2 percent”
On domestic and foreign economic growth “should increase resource utilization somewhat further, thereby fostering a stronger pace of wage and price increases”
On uncertainty in the outlook: “There is, for example, uncertainty about when — and how much — inflation will respond to tightening resource utilization”… “I see roughly equal odds that the U.S. economy’s performance will be somewhat stronger or somewhat less strong than we currently project”
On monetary policy: “Because the neutral rate is currently quite low by historical standards, the federal funds rate would not have to rise all that much further to get to a neutral policy stance. But because we also anticipate that the factors that are currently holding down the neutral rate will diminish somewhat over time, additional gradual rate hikes are likely to be appropriate over the next few years to sustain the economic expansion and return inflation to our 2 percent goal”
On the balance-sheet runoff plan: “The Committee currently expects that, provided the economy evolves broadly as anticipated, it will likely begin to implement the program this year”
The Down is +160, Nasdaq +50 and the SPY +17. Crude is loving this news, +2%, gold +0.5% and the dollar is suprisingly higher by 0.44%.
The real action is in the bond market, with the 10yr down 5bps to 2.31%. European markets are all celebrating like they just won a war — higher by 1.5%.
Unfortunately, the smoking gun evidence of Trump Jr. meeting with a Russian lawyer isn’t a crime, according to Robert Driscoll, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Chief of Staff, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice.
This man’s integrity and mastery of the law cannot and will not be repudiated. All of you crackpot internet lawyers need to shut up and take those nooses that were made for Trump Jr. and save them for Comey. More on that in a minute.
“I think people will make hay over the willingness to have the meeting. At the end of the day, it’s still very vague as to what statuary violations there would be. Collusion, in and of itself, isn’t a crime. There would need to be conspiracy to violate another law. And so this notion that there was a meeting, it may be politically unpalatable, but it’s certainly not a crime to say ‘ok I’ll listen.’ If you wanted to piece together a legal theory of criminal activity… I haven’t seen anything, other than esoteric campaign finance theories that don’t make a lot of sense.”
On the matter of Comey, inquiring minds want to know why he was seen walking into the NY Times building on June 22nd, 2017. The official story was Comey’s attendance of nice charity event. But that easily could’ve been arranged by the Times as a cover to meet with him.
Disgraced Former FBI Head, James Comey, heading into NY Times, most likely in tow with Rod Goldstone emails
While everyone is fixated on the contents of the Trump Jr. emails, which of course are important, I think more energy should be directed into finding out who leaked them. After all, these leaks are far more serious than the Wikileaks that the democrats bemoan over. They were used in an effort to derail a reviled and corrupt Presidential candidate, whereas these leaks are meant to destroy and take down a sitting President. The implications of the latter could have profound effects, including loss of life, should the schemes bear any fruit.
Enter Ben Wittes, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a close friend of James Comey.
Shortly after Comey got fired, Wittes told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Comey ‘had a story to tell’ and that the President should be scared.
I want you to pay attention to the following timeline, illustrated beautifully by Zerohedge.
On May 16th, Wittes tweeted this, just before the contents of Comey’s memo contents were leaked to the NY Times.
Perhaps he’s just a shitposter and this is all one big odd coincidence. Or, on the maniacal side, he’s a sociopath who cannot help but attract attention to himself by blurting out cryptic messages to his sycophantic fans regarding illegal intelligence leaks.
Here’s an amusing sidebar to the Trump Jr.-Russian meeting scandal. A former contributor to the NY Times, independent journalist, Jared Sexton, vented on Twitter today that he had been pursuing this story for a year — desperately and fiendishly tracking down leads — which all led him to nothing. Nevertheless, he was flabbberghasted (with an extra B) that Trump Jr. had just carelessly tweeted out all of the evidence, which proved that he had some contacts with evil Russians.
The son of the president just released the smoking gun and the people are laughing about it on the news.
I do feel bad for the guy, in spite of the fact that he literally works for evil and dark forces. Nevertheless, the game of investigative journalism is more of a gotcha game of ill repute. Even though most of these crackpots claim to be loyal liberal retards, they’d gladly sell out Hillbot or King Obama for a headline story, so there’s that.
The mood on the left, is as expected. They’re gleefully masturbating on the tombstone of Trump Jr., as he circles the wagons of death and into the DC vortex of moral high ground and hypocritical laws of the land designed to inflict punishment on political outsiders.
“Only an idiot or a traitor would seek to form an alliance with Russian intelligence and hope it ends positively.” https://t.co/WSB1JXcCqM
Dan Rather: “We the American people deserve to know what in God’s name is happening … Which side of history will you be on?” pic.twitter.com/pM8aJXK34H
In other news, Don Trump Jr. is set to give an interview to Fox’s Sean Hannity at 10pm. Here is the preview.
Donald Trump Jr. admits “in retrospect I probably would have done things a little differently,” telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he did not tell his father about the meting because “It was just a nothing. There was nothing to tell.”
“In retrospect I probably would have done things a little differently. Again this is before the Russia mania, this is before they were building this up in the press. For me this was opposition research, they had something you know maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I’d been hearing about, probably under reported for years not just during the campaign so I think I wanted to hear it out. But really it went nowhere and it was apparent that wasn’t what the meeting was about.”
“Honestly, my take away when all of this was going on, is that someone has information on our opponent. Things are going a million miles per hour. You know what it’s like to be on a campaign. We just won Indiana, but we’re talking about a contested convention. Things are going a million miles per hour again and hey, wait a minute, I’ve hear about all these things, but maybe this is something, I should hear him out.”
“I had been reading about scandals that people were probably underreporting for a long time so maybe it was something that had to do with one of those things. I mean this was her perhaps involvement with the Russian government…so, you know, again, I didn’t know if there was any credibility, I didn’t know if there was anything behind it, I can’t vouch for the information…someone sent me an email! I can’t help what someone sends me. I read it, I responded accordingly, and if there was something interesting there, I think that’s pretty common.”
“No. It was just a nothing. There was nothing to tell. I mean, I wouldn’t have even remembered it until you started scouring through this stuff. It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame.”
Being ignorant to the laws of the land which pertain to these sort of things, what exactly was done wrong here, other than the obvious fact that he withled information regarding this meeting? Hang on a second. Doesn’t the DNC regularly receive information from UK spies, opposition research from the faggots in the Ukraine or wanton amounts of funds from Saudi Arabia and/or other nations? I get the fact that this was a fishing expedition for dirt on Hillary Clinton, which might’ve been sourced by a foreign government. But what about the funds that are given to political candidates, sourced from other nations? Do you mean to tell me that those funds cannot affect the change of a political election?
Once the war starts with Russia, crude supplies will be reduced. Ergo, traders are getting ahead of that event and buying up WTI, currently higher by 1.6%.
As the news flow paces frantically, markets are relatively calm. It’s haunting, really. The Dow is +15 and the Nasdaq +11. The dollar is off by 0.7%, a notable decline, although benign.
I’m up 0.2% for the day, and even bigger gains can be found in the beaten down commodity sector.
To be honest, there’s no logic or edict that could be followed to game the tape, except the following.
1. Retail is dead, dead, dead, but no one cares.
2. Large cap tech outshines all, in spite of the expensive nature of their prices.
3. Mean reversion is playing an important role in determining swing trades in the commodity sector.
Also, and most inconspicuously, Chinese stocks are crushing all sectors this year. I’m probably the only person in the world to quarantine all Chinese stocks into one group dubbed ‘Chinese Burritos.’ Analyzing those stocks with market caps above $1b netted a surprising result. The median return for the 42 companies in the group is +35% for the year. That’s an outrageous return, one that is rarely discussed anywhere in the media.
Trump is truly a great friend to silicon valley and China.
^^^ That my friends is the definition of a Costanza trade. Here is a refresher for the uninitiated.
In an article published today, NY Times columnist, and damned good writer, David Brooks, actually published this.
It’s no wonder that 70 percent of the students in the nation’s 200 most competitive schools come from the top quarter of the income distribution. With their admissions criteria, America’s elite colleges sit atop gigantic mountains of privilege, and then with their scholarship policies they salve their consciences by offering teeny step ladders for everybody else.
I was braced by Reeves’s book, but after speaking with him a few times about it, I’ve come to think the structural barriers he emphasizes are less important than the informal social barriers that segregate the lower 80 percent.
Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican.
American upper-middle-class culture (where the opportunities are) is now laced with cultural signifiers that are completely illegible unless you happen to have grown up in this class. They play on the normal human fear of humiliation and exclusion. Their chief message is, “You are not welcome here.”
Fucking high school rubes. Why don’t you know the names of Italian meats? My grandfather only graduated junior high school and knew all of those meats. He was, however, Italian and spoke the language fluently.
David’s main point was lost in his unintentionally hilarious sandwich sidebar. The class structure in America has never been more divided. There is a lurid form of eugenics taking place in plain sight. The very brightest are corralled into a select few universities. More often than not, the students attending those universities come from affluent families, who had the resources to send their children to private schools. Public schools in America are complete shit. Anyone with kids knows it.
Then, these nice people at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford cavort with one another, establish friendships, marry, spit out a few kids. The offsprings are raised in a similar fashion and the American aristocracy expands, uninterrupted.
The offsprings of the plumbers and electricians travel a different narrative. Every once in a while an outlier emerges and accomplishes great things — a regular rags to riches story — providing the plebian class an inspirational story. Some of these tales are woven into Hollywood films, or documentaries, so that others might aspire to replicate the aforementioned success. It’s almost akin to striking the lottery or being struck by lightening.
I have no problem with the emails being public, just like I had no problem with the Wikileaks. However, inquiring minds want to know, how did the NY Times get those emails? Clearly, the source of the emails, Rob Goldstone, was not the leaker. In a recent statement to the press, Goldstone said of the infamous meeting, ‘it was the most insane nonsense I ever heard. And I was actually agitated by it.”
Benjamin Wittes, a repulsive man and staunch ally of James Comey, has been offering his followers on Twitter smoke signals regarding deep state leaks and attacks on Trump to the media. Zerohedge did a fine job documenting them.
Immediately after Comey was spotted entering the NY Times building, Wittes tweeted this gem.
So who is this Goldstone fellow that might bring down the Trump Presidency? He’s a tabloid shill in the UK, flamboyant and a total tool.
On the day of the Trump meeting with the Russian lawyer, Goldstone checked in on his Facebook account. That’s a very convenient data point for the FBI and NSA to cross reference — perhaps leading to the hacking of his account.
He lamented over the DNC, saying he wished to be back in Moscow.
And he even wears shirts that read ‘Russia’ on them. If you tried to make this stuff up, you couldn’t. It’s too cartoonish and unbelievable.
So where is the connection between Trump-Goldstone-Russia?
He is the PR agent for a Russian pop star, Emin Agalarov. Emin’s father is Aras Agalarov, a Russian real estate developer who was Trump’s partner in the Miss Universe competition in Moscow.
Here is Donald Trump, featured in a 2013 Emin Agalarov music video.
Trump featured in Emin Agalarov’s 2013 video. The artist is a client of Rob Goldstone — the unwitting source of the Trump Jr. emails. pic.twitter.com/358Z55evMY
Based off his social media posts, Goldstone visited Russia 19 times since 2013. He even posted about Trump’s intentions to run for the Presidency, before it was announced.
Source: Guardian
Goldstone’s posts indicate that he was in Moscow 10 days before the 9 June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, and then returned to spend most of that July in Russia and Azerbaijan. When Trump announced his campaign for the US presidency in June 2015, Goldstone claimed to have already been briefed on Trump’s intentions during a meeting he and Agalarov enjoyed at Trump Tower the previous month, writing: “He talked about his planned run for President of the USA – which became official today!”
What does this all mean? At a minimum, Goldstone is a Russophile. Worst case scenario, the Trump team wittingly used this catamite as a conduit to the Russian government. But none of that has been proven. Again, this all circles back to the Podesta emails and Wikileaks. If Russia was indeed the source for the Wikileaks, we’ve yet to see evidence of that, aside from CIA/FBI/NSA assurances.
Remember when I warned about potential geo-political events disrupted this rally, one or two posts ago? Well, the market seems to believe this Trump Jr.-Russian meeting story has legs. Stocks just dumped out after Tim Kaine announced the Russian investigation might include treason.
In response to the NY Times reporting on the matter, Don Trump Jr. just released his entire email thread. The one damning aspect of these emails, especially in this anti-Russian environment, is the part where it says the Russian government supported Trump. This is likely to cause a new round of seizures on the left.
Here is the money shot, where it literally says the Russian government supports Trump.
