BITCOIN BURNS, MARKETS TOPPING OUT — TIME TO HEDGE

Hedging my portfolio of absolute shit, I bought some SOXS — shorting semis 3x. Also, I banned my first person on iBC in over two years, not because he was annoying or stupid, but because he exhibited signs of acute mental illness.

If there’s one thing I will not tolerate in these hallowed halls it is acute mental fucking illness.

However, now that the genie is out of the bag again, I am optimistic that I can begin banning people in earnest — for any reason at all. Look at me sideways…BAM — fucking banned. Leave a bad stock pick in the comments section…BAM — you’re fucking out of here.

The golden era of iBankCoin is happening now and I am befit with an immense amount of verve and talent, coupled with a venomous attack mode that was designed, by nature, to discard the weak bodied out from my sphere of influence. Beta males aren’t welcomed here — we punch your jaws loose for sport.

Markets look soft, so I stepped in and bought a REIT that was, previous to today, destined for the trash heap of society.

I bought RAS at around 50 cents, with throw away money — speed chopping carrots with my testicles on the kitchen counter.

So I got to thinking about common narratives and what’s been working in this wacky market. Believe me, it has been easy to make money — but not as much money as I’ve been making. You peasants are merely picking up crumbs that fall from my table. Over in Exodus, we are eating whole loaves of fucking bread — drenched in olive’d oil — topped with french’d fries.

At any rate, not to get distracted by the food reference, Chinese stocks that switch on over to the blockchain is where we want to gamble. The key is to get in BEFORE the announcement, like we did with RCON and NCTY.

After doing some careful studying, I think I’ve got the next one: AMCN

It’s a shitty advertising company, Chinese in nature and in actuality. There are lots of advertising companies on the blockchain, so why not add another.

It has a gap to fill and we all like it very much, indeud.

Full disclosure, I am long from $1.29.

Here’s the shitty chart. You know it’s gonna go.

I rarely do this, but I feel his trading has been too on point not to mention him. Here on iBC, he goes by Badduck, but in Exodus he is TGiR the Immortal. He’s the one who gave me LFIN at $11 before it went apeshit to the upside. Inside Exodus, he’s been responsible for innumerable successful trades, playing alongside me in the wonderful quest to find the next SHITCHAIN play.

Today he fucking nailed RCON. I sold this stock last week, for no reason whatsoever. My profit was modest, but I mainly sold out of boredom. Today she’s up 200% — and TGiR was buy lots in the $1s.

Much respect.

All we’re doing it playing the game — the crypto game — a time and place when people assigned value to blockchain announcements. It’s new and mysterious; ergo, it captivates people and causes prices to spiral higher.

No one is better at this game than me. Prove me wrong, faggots.

Booked NCTY +74%%
Booked IKEA +43%

On to my next kill.

Congrats to those who held onto RCON. I sold too early.

I got in this stock under $5 because of the CEO had been tweeting about crypto-currencies. They hadn’t announced anything regarding the MUH blockchain yet, but it was due to a little due diligence and zeal that I was fortunate enough to get long at much lower prices.

You can peruse Ted Murphy’s twitter timeline and see all of the crypto posts — obviously he was a fan of the asset class. It was a waiting game as far as I could tell. Apparently, the wait it over today and IZEA is +35% on alt-crypto mining news — pressing my gains to +70% from my basis.

Here’s the presser.

IZEA, Inc. (NASDAQ:IZEA), operator of IZEAx®, the premier online marketplace connecting brands and publishers with influential content creators, today announced IZEA Crypto™, a multifaceted initiative focused on incorporating cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies into the broader Creator Economy. The company anticipates making these new technologies an integral component of ongoing operations. IZEA seeks to make cryptocurrency mining and blockchain easily accessible for the average computer user, and to explore new lines of business that can leverage IZEA’s existing technology infrastructure and marketplace resources.

“Since IZEA’s inception, our mission has been to help our network of Creators monetize their various assets,” said Ted Murphy, Founder and CEO of IZEA. “One of their most expensive and underutilized assets is their computer, which many of them only use 8 hours a day – but leave turned on and connected to the Internet 24 hours a day. We intend to explore, identify and create a platform to turn that 16 hours per day of computing capacity into a revenue stream for our Creators and IZEA.”

“Our goal is to make cryptocurrency mining mainstream in the same way we made Influencer Marketing mainstream,” continued Murphy. “We endeavor to do so by removing the current technological knowledge barriers, operating as a NASDAQ-listed public company that people can trust, and leveraging our network of influencers to spread the word.”

IZEA anticipates rolling out cryptocurrency and blockchain initiatives in phases starting immediately.

IZEA Mining Operations

IZEA has commenced initial cryptocurrency mining operations focusing primarily on “alt-coins” that can be profitability mined with CPU and GPU hardware to mirror the IZEA network. Mining operations will serve as a foundational layer for IZEA’s future cryptocurrency related endeavors.

“Our approach to mining cryptocurrency is agnostic by design,” continued Murphy. “We are not aligning our offering to one specific coin – rather we are investing resources into our belief that blockchain and the networks of computers that support blockchain will be instrumental as the Internet continues to evolve.”

IZEA Pools

IZEA plans to establish and maintain cryptocurrency alt-coin mining pools (“IZEA Pools”), which, prospectively, would be open to more experienced cryptocurrency miners. Mining pools utilize the shared processing power of a network and split the reward equally, based on the amount of resources contributed to the probability of finding a cryptocurrency block. IZEA Pools would leverage IZEA’s own mining operations to increase pool hash-rate and overall mining effectiveness for participants.

Sponsored Mining

IZEA intends to explore ways in which new cryptocurrency issuers can partner with IZEA to simultaneously launch both marketing and initial mining operations utilizing IZEA’s influential network of content creators, through engagements that, prospectively, would help issuers springboard adoption.

IZEA BlockMiner™ App

IZEA is in research and development stages of BlockMiner™, a cryptocurrency blockchain mining application, that would be designed with a goal to run on consumer-grade Windows and Mac desktop hardware and to take advantage of a user’s spare CPU and GPU cycles to mine cryptocurrencies in the background or while the user is away from their computer.

“As a long-time blockchain enthusiast I am excited to spearhead IZEA’s formal entry into the space,” continued Murphy. “Blockchain is revolutionizing the way we transact and store data, and represents numerous business opportunities for a company like ours. This initiative takes advantage of some of IZEA’s greatest assets – our network of influencers, our software development expertise, and experience completing nearly four million online transactions.”

Q4 2017 Bookings Update

IZEA also announced total net bookings for Q4 2017 were $5.2 million compared to $8.1 million in the same year-ago quarter. “While we would have preferred some of our key renewals to have a 2017 signing date, several of our larger renewal contracts that normally sign in Q4 were delayed into 2018 partially due to a significant increase in annual commitment from those customers,” said Murphy. “We believe this to simply be a timing issue and have already closed on some of that business in the early days of Q1 2018 with the remaining commitments expected to come later this quarter. Our outlook remains strong for the FY18 calendar year, with double digit revenue growth.”

Do I give a shit about any of this? Absolutely not. I’m moonlighting — here for a quick buck and then I’m gone. Congrats to those who played along in Exodus.

BONUS:

Dow futures are elegant higher, a touch above 225 points. Over in Europe, land of the cuck, stocks are cheerfully exhibiting stamina, led by the DAX — which is +1% to the good. Oil is off by less than 1% and life as we know it is generally good and easy. Over in crypto land, PRICES ARE FUCKING PLUNDERING LOWER.

Malformed men are taking toilet bowl plungers to their faces, pleading with the Gods for mercy — but he’s having none of that shit today. Total market cap is now below $600 billion for the first time in week. Bitcoinfaggots are committing suicide at an industrial clip, off by 12% and about to break $12,000 to the downside. Other crypto coins are fairing far worse, such as Verge, Medibloc, fucking Smart Cash is off by 30%. Blood is everywhere and children are being dragged into sewer drains. You’d be wise as to avoid the sewer drains today and keep your two feet on the sidewalk, heading towards Wall, for the digital cash people are having their moment today — a seminole moment to be remembered for all time.

In other news, I’m about to have a popped tart, cherry flavored. Their quite good.

Finisar downgraded to Sell from Neutral at Goldman
Curtiss-Wright upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Wells Fargo
Campbell Soup upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Citigroup
Rockwell Collins downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at Wells Fargo
Ciena upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Goldman
CNOOC Ltd upgraded to Buy from Neutral at BofA/Merrill
ASML upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse
ADTRAN upgraded to Neutral from Sell at Goldman

You were never buying into a rebellious asset class, but instead one that was jimmy rigged by a VC, then picked up by absolute faggots. Tonight the crypto universe is being greeted with a most acrimonious sell off, partly due to China blocking crypto currency platforms, and partly because prices are overdue a severe lashing.

Might I remind my market veterans out there — do not fear the lash — become it.

Tech Crunch is reporting on a recent study that was done which proved wanton chicanery took place in Bitcoin, from $150 up to $1,000. If you recall, during that time the VC world was just getting involved and buying dips and having a grand old time. This is called manipulation.

To many it’s been obvious that the Bitcoin markets are, at the very least, being manipulated by one or two big players. “This paper identifies and analyzes the impact of suspicious trading activity on the Mt. Gox Bitcoin currency exchange, in which approximately 600,000 bitcoins (BTC) valued at $188 million were fraudulently acquired,” the researchers wrote. “During both periods, the USD-BTC exchange rate rose by an average of four percent on days when suspicious trades took place, compared to a slight decline on days without suspicious activity. Based on rigorous analysis with extensive robustness checks, the paper demonstrates that the suspicious trading activity likely caused the unprecedented spike in the USD-BTC exchange rate in late 2013, when the rate jumped from around $150 to more than $1,000 in two months.”

The team found that many instances of price manipulation happened simply because the market was very thin for various cryptocurrencies including early Bitcoin. “Despite the huge increase in market capitalization, similar to the bitcoin market in 2013 (the period examined), markets for these other cryptocurrencies are very thin. The number of cryptocurrencies has increased from approximately 80 during the period examined to 843 today! Many of these markets are thin and subject to price manipulation.”

The manipulation happened primarily via two bots, Markus and Willy, that seemed to be performing valid trades but did not actually own the bitcoin they were using. During the Mt. Gox hack a number of these bots were able to create fake trades and make off with millions while manipulating the price of BTC.

In the real world, Dow futures are +186.

Dow futures are +160. How stupid do you feel for selling last week? Also crude is approaching $65, which means we’re one step close to the $1,000 tomato.

Frankly, traffic is onerous and prohibitive. I’d like gas to spiral up towards $10.00 per gallon, in order to shuffle more normies onto public transport. At $10 per gallon, the roads will be designated for King’s only — a perverse form of auto-mechanic eugenics that expels fuckheads from the road and keep them on the rail.

Our friends at Zerohedge claim markets are most overbought in 120 years. I’m not so sure about that interpretation and seriously raise eyebrows at Mr. Hedge’s bias.

Over in Exodus, our 12 mo algos are indeed overbought; but that doesn’t mean stocks are heading lower. Your textbooks might imply ‘overbought’ is synonymous with about to head lower — but your textbooks were written by absolute novice fuckballs. Truth is, overbought is simply a condition and is data dependent. In this regard, I can conclusively tell you our overbought triggers are synonymous with heading higher.

Sometimes I wonder why most of you don’t drown yourselves inside storm drains. We’ve been doing this shit together for more than a decade. You’ve seen me talk about seasonality so much over the years, it must be ingrained into your thick skulls. Alas, here we are again, two weeks into the new year, and the lot of you are just catching onto the rally in crude.

Here, I’ll remind you again of the seasonality in crude. Take a look at the chart. It has pretty colors.

Airlines are also ripping higher, likely the of a very wealthy America combined with a weakening dollar.

Auto parts stores, investment banks, drug stores, and residential construction all higher, all doing quite well — indicative of an economy in a sweet spot. As batshit crazy as Trump is, the markets love it.

Because rates are spiking, REITs and utilities have been dreary losers. Any reasonably diversified portfolio has yielded +4% thus far. If you’re portfolios haven’t done at least that, you should be making adjustments now.

My GARP portfolio is +5.5% and Quant +4.5%. My discretionary portfolio is up too much for me to discuss here in this forum. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

Heading out into the warmer climes, I expect oil stocks to increase their gains. I am targeting leveraged names, around 2-5x debt/eq — thinking market appreciation will save these companies from destruction. If you’re not playing heavily burdened oil stocks, you’re simply not a serious man and should relegate yourself to the golf course and not buying and selling equities for profit.