The Best Market Timing Indicator (sans Exodus): My Blog Traffic

As some of you know, I’ve been blogging, in one form or another, since 2003. I’ve always had an impetus for the written word and I’ve been at the forefront of financial blogging since 2006. Over the years, markets have undergone tumultuous pops and drops, to borrow a phrase. As the proprietor of one of the most widely read financial blogs in North America, I am privy to see, first hand, important trend shifts, such as demographics of the reader, the device from which they access the site, locality, and most importantly– if they bother to come at all.

Anyone in the digital media business will tell you that when traffic is all new highs, people are wrought with an overwhelming sense of remorse for being long equities. Hence, they visit the site all day long, in great numbers, to get insight into whatever the hell is haranguing the market that day. During periods of hedonism and excess, the idlers of the reader class are out drinking champagne over Delmonico steaks, laughing it up, throwing mashed potatoes at those professing caution.

I will have you know, during these insatiable periods of wanton ecstasy, traffic at the site plunges, causing everyone who writes here to become apathetic and to idle a bit more, just like the reader.

There is a concatenation between these two things, traffic and the direction of the market, and it is predictive.

BEHOLD the traffic on iBankCoin during the week of February the 8th, 2016, also known as the recent bottom in equity and commodity prices. I compared it to the same week last year, to give you a point of reference.

Now look at traffic from last week, the week of May the 30th, 2016.

Notice how the traffic sucked wind, in spite of the fact that yours truly brings the fire every single day? Indeud.

Now have a look at the VIX index, which measures volatility. This is a fancy way of saying when the shit hits the fan, this thing goes up. The high point of volatility correlates perfectly with web traffic, a concatenation indeud.

Now that volatility is low and markets are high, a great majority of people are, irresistibly, drawn to the market–like flies to a black light behind an electrically charged metal grid. This process will repeat itself until the end of time, with mawkish redundancies. Resist the temptation of comporting yourselves like the bipedal primates that you are.

Board the ark or get in the gold mine.

Always a crowd pleaser because he keeps it real, Art Cashin gives his take on the current events, touching on Soros, Icahn to ECB fuckery and JGB chicanery.

B. Gross, tweeting out from his corporate account at Janus, is talking real greasy this morning, bringing supernovas and record 500 year low yields into the discussion. Mario Draghi most certainly doesn’t appreciate this shit. Hey, the Fed wants to hike rates, thought. Right?

Yields have been crushed lower again.

My core thesis was to be long TLT until the yield curve inverted. Right now, the spread between the 2s and 10s is 90bps, the lowest since 2007.

If you take into account the .26 dividend TLT has paid on a monthly basis, it’s currently at record highs. The ark has never been sturdier, weathering the choppy seas of global central bank over planning.

Over in Europe, the ECB bought Volkswagon bonds today, in the 2nd day of corporate bond buying action. The British gilts and German bunds are at record low yields. The crushing of the income oriented investor is at hand. The indelible march towards helicopter money is ongoing, presently vigorous and without abatement.

Gold is where money should be allocated. In this batshit environment of zero percent corporate bond offerings, I can’t help but to imagine the stampede of money that will be flooding into gold when this all comes to a head. And it will, rest assured.

Enjoy your stocks. “The Fly” is content playing the slow game here, methodical and with purpose in mind. For now, I am allocated 25% TLT, 25% gold and gold miners, 50% cash, awaiting oversold signals in Exodus in order to allocate money into equities.

Fascinating discussion on Bloomberg, with the co-head of Asian economic research, Frederic Neumann. Some of his key points were the deleterious condition of the Korean economy. China’s main concern being stability, on a month to month basis. And, Japan being out of tools to control their currency, essentially relying upon prayer to bail them out.

Lastly, given all that he’s seeing in Asia, he doesn’t think the Fed will move any time soon, with regard to interest rates.

China, China, China.

He said it about 100 times in 3 minutes. I am pretty sure China gives Carl nightmares. He said he’d buy Apple back if he felt better about…(you guessed it) China.

Additionally, the king of making companies initiate share buybacks said he’s not a fan of buybacks. I guess this is Carl the human being talking and not Carl the hedge fund manager.

There’s no reason for me to keep posting D. Gartman content, since no one really gives a shit about him except me. I have a penchant for certain teevee personalities and I’m always interested in what anyone has to say. In spite of the fact that the majority of these people have the intelligence quotients slighty higher than an ameba, I find strongly worded opinions interesting, nonetheless.

Gartman thinks Europe is going to start doling out ‘helicopter money’ in Europe.

What is helicopter money? Essentially, it’s giving money away to people in the hopes they will spend it and cause inflation. To be honest, they’re already doing that, via the purchase of corporate bonds. Yields depress and companies are able to buy all sorts of shit with the free money they’re borrowing. Look at Japan and how companies are able to borrow hundreds of millions without any interest rate. FREE MONEY.

In the truest sense of helicopter money, the government will give money away to everyone, not just corporations. They can do this in the form of a one off payment, or a tax rebate.

Fun times.

I am long gold.

For the record, I am not George Soros. It was merely a coincidence that I announced my longs in gold and gold miners on the same day as my dear friend, George.

Having said that, the most diabolical investor since Jay Gould, the King Maker, George Soros is out with bearish views tonight, in a Wall Street Journal interview.

Amongst his chief concerns are China’s capital flight, Europe’s migrant crisis, BREXIT, just to name a few. He’s sopping up gold and gold miners, as well we taking derivative bets against stocks.

“China continues to suffer from capital flight and has been depleting its foreign currency reserves while other Asian countries have been accumulating foreign currency,” Mr. Soros said. “China is facing internal conflict within its political leadership, and over the coming year this will complicate its ability to deal with financial issues.”

Mr. Soros worries that new troubles will arise in China partly because he said the nation doesn’t seem willing to embrace a transparent political system that he contends is necessary to enact lasting economic overhauls. Beijing has embarked on overhauls in the past year but has backtracked on some efforts amid turbulent markets.

Some investors are beginning to anticipate rising inflation amid recent wage gains in the U.S., but Mr. Soros said he is more concerned that continued weakness in China will exert deflationary pressure—a damaging spiral of falling wages and prices—on the U.S. and global economies.

Mr. Soros also argues that there remains a good chance the European Union will collapse under the weight of the migration crisis, continuing challenges in Greece and a potential exit by the United Kingdom from the EU.

“If Britain leaves, it could unleash a general Exodus, and the disintegration of the European Union will become practically unavoidable,” he said. Still, Mr. Soros said recent strength in the British pound is a sign that a vote to exit the EU is less likely.

“I’m confident that as we get closer to the Brexit vote, the ‘remain’ camp is getting stronger,” Mr. Soros said. “Markets are not always right, but in this case I agree with them.”

Other big investors also have become concerned about markets. Last month, billionaire trader Stanley Druckenmiller warned that “the bull market is exhausting itself” and hedge-fund manager Leon Cooperman said “the bubble is in fixed income,” though he was sanguine on stocks.

Mr. Soros’s bearish investments have had mixed success. His firm bought over 19 million shares of Barrick Gold Corp. in the first quarter, according to securities filings, making it the firm’s largest stockholding at the end of the quarter. That position has gained more than $90 million since the end of the first quarter. Soros Fund Management also bought a million shares of miner Silver Wheaton Corp. in the first quarter, a position that has increased 28% so far in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, gold has climbed 19% this year.

But Mr. Soros also adopted bearish derivative positions that serve as wagers against U.S. stocks. It isn’t clear when those positions were placed and at what levels during the first quarter, but the S&P 500 index has climbed 3% since the beginning of the second period, suggesting Mr. Soros could be facing losses on some of those moves.

Sleep tight longs.

This is the most pornographic clip I’ve ever laid my eyes upon. Believe me, in my days, I’ve gazed at lots of bear porn and I’ve never seen anything like this before.

Peter Schiff, from some stupid firm that buys a lot of gold, went to work by scaring the shit out of the viewers of Fast Money today. Much to Tim Seymour’s credit, he took Schiff and his porn schtick to task, calling him out on what he believed was supreme bullshit of the very first magnitude, uninvestable horseshit flung upon a depraved audience in order to ‘sell more books.’

One of these gents was the villain, the other the hero. Can you guess who was who?

I was very much delighted by this back and forth, as P. Schiff usually gets away with his moronic design without a rebuttal. Thank heavens Melissa Lee broke up this exchange before the fistacuffs came out.

Even still, deep in my bones, I believe Schiff is correct, but not in the way he thinks. World currencies will crash in harmony, not just dollars. Moreover, I believe if this end game plays out, you and I will be much more interested in killing thy neighbor for fresh water supplies than to worry about the value of stocks.

The grim scenario that Schiff lays out is one of the black swan varietal. He delivers his sermon with extreme confidence, which makes his words sound all the more believable. But he’s guessing, just like everyone else. Although I am bullish on gold and treasuries, I do not believe the end is near, at least not yet. Governments can do a lot more, stringing this out for another decade or so, before the default of all of the sovereign debt occurs. I’ve said this before, we are merely in the 2nd inning of the end game, the final game the stock market will ever play.

Watch the Schiff v Seymour Battle Royale here, LIVE!

I guess UBS is tired of paying asshole financial advisers 300% of their trailing 12 to join their ranks. In addition to firing a bunch of TPS report writing misfits, they’re reducing adviser recruitment by 40%. This is horrid news for all of the headhunters out there who prey on both advisers and employers to provide them with the money they need to shovel potatoes into their fat mugs.

It’s worth noting, UBS is taking a totally different approach than other large investment banks, who are cleaving their bond and investment banking departments, in order to make room for a most ridiculous people on the face of the earth: brokers and advisors.

The headcount reduction will mostly hit middle and senior managers, including some at the unit’s main offices in Weehawken, New Jersey, and New York, Tom Naratil, president of wealth management for UBS in the Americas, said in an interview. UBS declined to provide a specific number of cuts. The role of regional manager also will be eliminated, with some promoted and others reassigned, the Zurich-based lender said Wednesday in an internal memo.

The Swiss bank plans to decrease by 40 percent the number of financial advisers it recruits from competitors and how much it spends on those efforts starting this month, Naratil said. UBS declined to give current recruiting figures. The bank scooped up dozens of advisers last year when Credit Suisse Group AG exited U.S. wealth management.

“We took advantage of that,” Naratil said. “That’s one of the reasons why we can step back from the recruiting table.”

The Swiss never lose, unless of course you count the 50% drops in both UBS and CS shares as ‘losing.’