My Bubble Basket is Collapsing Again

I created the Bubble Basket in 2014 after the tech wreck that harangued markets from February through April. Truth be told, I got the idea from David Einhorn’s basket. I did my best to model after it and have updated it with fresh picks every 6 months.

The basket is designed to represent the riskiest stocks in the market. These aren’t penny stocks, but instead liquid high valuation growth and biotech names that people love to blow themselves up in.

I’ve found it to be an excellent harbinger of doom and risk acceptance. People sell these stocks when the horizon is bleak. They buy them with the fever of rabid dogs when decadence and splendor rules investor sentiment.

Bear in mind, this is a portfolio of 35 stocks. Year to date, it’s down 23% on a median basis. Moreover, it’s down 2.5% today and -10% over the past month.

The market isn’t as genteel as the catamites on the teevee would lead you to believe. More importantly, the market is screaming SELL, something that is also not being reported by the catamites on the teevee.

Lucky for you, yours truly is on the ark, always on the lookout for a storm.

I am 75% cash, 25% ark aka TLT.

NOTE: The components of the Bubble Basket, as well as other portfolios that I maintain, can be found in Exodus. We’re running free trials now through Sunday, so go check it out.

Most of you are too busy idling on porn sites to know the history of Zimbabwe and how this country managed to fuck itself.

Back in 2009, they were so fucked via inflation, they printed 100 trillion notes. Since then, they switched to the U.S. Dollar and South African rand and everything was going swimmingly until trade deficits and wanton savagery began to take its toll.

Now the country is completely fucked, out of cash again.

The only thing left to do, naturally, is TO RESUME THE PRODUCTION OF THE “U.S. DOLLAR”, so that people can buy groceries and pay rent.

A recent shortage of foreign notes led Reserve Bank Governor John Mangudya to unveil a raft of radical measures on Wednesday, including limiting withdrawals to $1,000 or 20,000 South African rand per day.

Mangudya said that the central bank would also print its own dollar-equivalent bond notes – “which are currently at the design stage” – to ease the cash crunch.

Mangudya denied the new banknotes were a step towards re-introducing the tarnished Zimbabwe dollar, but the plan was still criticised by some experts.

“This is extremely damaging to the interests of everyone and very dangerous to the economy,” independent economist John Robertson said in Harare.

“It won’t be long before this becomes another inflation story. People will refuse to be paid their wages in bond notes.

“Shops will not accept them as they cannot be used to restock [from abroad]. I am hoping that the government can be talked out of it.”

Bond coins were introduced in Zimbabwe in 2014 to tackle the problem of small change.

The new notes in denominations of $2, $5, $10 and $20 will play a similar role, acting as tokens.

All men were created equal, some more equal than others.

Trump is taking the opposite view of Obama and is urging England to exit the EU, something that is up for a vote in mid June.

Naturally, the globalist cabal are freaking out over the specter of Britain’s exit from the EU. It would serve as a major blow to the alliance and might lead to other exits in the future. Greece comes to mind when thinking about who might be next.

“I would say that they’re better off without it, personally, but I’m not making that as a recommendation — just my feeling,” Trump said Thursday in a Fox News interview. “I know Great Britain very well, I know the country very well, I have a lot of investments there. I would say that they’re better off without it, but I want them to make their own decision.”

‘Horrible Thing’

Trump cited immigration as a reason why Britain would be better off outside the EU.

“I think that migration’s been a horrible thing for Europe,” Trump said. “A lot of that was pushed by the EU.”

This fire is out of control. The entire city of 88,000 has been evacuated, in an area which houses Canada’s largest oil production, filled with filthy tar sands.

As a result, up to 1 million barrels of Candian crude are off the market, providing succor to an already stressed oil market.

Firefighters continue to battle the huge wildfire in Alberta, Canada, which has unfortunately spread

Thousands more have fled hundreds of miles away as a result
This fire starts on Sunday

It’s affecting oil production in Western Canada’s oil sands… something over 500,000 barrels of oil production per day, to as much as 1 mln barrels per day, have been cut

And even more output could be cut as a result of this wildfire
Suncor Energy (SU) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) are two companies that have cut production in the region
Fort McMurray is in the heart of Alberta’s oil sands
Alberta oil sands has the third largest oil reserves in the world, after of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia

The gold bugs think the economy is falling to pieces. As such, they’ve resorted to ripping out offers, sending the ancient metal through the roof.

Look for an insane rally in gold stocks today, who are, by far, the best performers of 2016 thus far.

These companies do not give a shit about the price drop in crude. They believe it to be a joke. They walk around in their 10-gallon hats with peevish, smug, confidence–convinced the spot prices will recover very quickly. They are to be rewarded when crude plants itself back at $100. All of the real estate in Sugarland Texas will be occupied by mega-mansions, owned by genius executives who had the courage to lever up into a massive drop in the price of crude.

The fact that this company, although smartly hedged at higher crude levels, levered up and increased production by 44% since last year is an abomination, an extreme dereliction of duty to its shareholders.

Via briefing

• Reports Q1 (Mar) loss of $0.89 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.78 worse than the Capital IQ Consensus of ($0.11); revenues fell 37.2% year/year to $90.8 mln vs the $151.14 mln Capital IQ Consensus
• First quarter 2016 production increased 58% to 4.6 MMBoe, or 50,216 Boe per day, compared to 2.9 MMBoe, or 32,162 Boe per day, in the first quarter of 2015
  • The increase in production over the first quarter of 2015 was primarily due to continued successful execution of our horizontal development program in the Wattenberg Field
• The co estimates production for the first quarter of 2016 was impacted by nearly 100,000 Boe as a result of a severe late-March snowstorm that resulted in wide-spread downtime in the Wattenberg Field
• Crude oil production of 20,965 barrels per day, a 44% increase year-over-year and representing 42% of total production

Operations Update:

• The co turned-in-line 47 gross operated wells in the Wattenberg Field during the first quarter of 2016 and produced 47,840 Boe per day, an ~64% increase from the first quarter of 2015
• As expected, due to the timing of both fourth quarter 2015 and first quarter 2016 turn-in-lines, average sequential production from the field decreased slightly. PDC’s average wellhead oil differential in Wattenberg was ~$6.70 per barrel for the first quarter of 2016
• The co’s realized NGL price in the first quarter of 2016 was ~21% of NYMEX and its natural gas price was ~67% of NYMEX. In the Utica Shale, first quarter 2016 production was 2,376 Boe per day

You’re just gonna have to give recession a chance. On the bright side, because the economy is in the tank, missing payroll data by huge amounts, corporate earnings missing largess, the Fed should be on hold for a June rate hike.

Futures are diving lower. Let me remind you of the mental instability of Fed’s Mester and Williams. Those sick bastards might still advocate Fed rate hikes into the teeth of a deleterious recession. After all, it is by design that the economy tanks before each new President.

Asian markets are down tonight, getting lightly browned ahead of the American NFP numbers. But you and I both know that this has nothing to do with that, right? The market is topping out. Seasonally speaking, we are supposed to yearn for better days, right about now. Even an idiot knows to steer clear of high beta stocks after the SOHN conference.

Why?

I realize some of my readers are young punks, addled by psychotropics. So, let me explain.

After the SOHN conference, the Wall Street aristocracy get inside of their calashes and feverishly whip their horses, so that they will run faster (duh), in order to race towards their destinations. Mostly, these elite arch-nemesis type characters head towards sandy beaches and places of great privacy, in order to consume gorilla sized amounts of alcoholic cocktails and bags of cocaine.

For the most part, their funds are left to be managed by skeleton crews, the very lowest of the low. These people are practically scraped off the pavement to man the turrets during the summer months. This is why unforgivable  accidents occur from May through September, flash crashes and market malaise. It’s because they’re not really permitted to take on risk; otherwise, they’d get beaten about the chin with a cow-prod. Also, and additionally, for the most part, these junior reps have no idea what they’re doing.

This is all fact, practically scientific.

So that’s why Asian markets are getting fried rice’d tonight.

Why did Dr. C. Wright reveal himself to be the architect of terrorist internet money in the first place? If he’s truly the BitCoin creator, he should be rich as fuck (RAF), jetskiing about tropical islands, having his harems stocked with new exotics on a weekly basis. Instead, this guy is writing blogs and bitching about people talking shit about him. He announces to the world that he is, in fact, a coward of the first magnitude, unable to handle the pressures of being a true bossman, afraid and scared of being tethered to greatness.

“I believed that I could put years of anonymity and hiding behind me,” he blogged.

“But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot.

“When the rumours began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this.”

Pussy.

Dr Wright’s claims had initially been bolstered by the fact that two senior members of the Bitcoin Foundation – an organisation set up to protect and promote the virtual currency – had said they were convinced he was indeed behind the technology.

Dr Wright had shown Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis other evidence in private.

He apologised to the two men in his latest blog.

“I know that this weakness will cause great damage to those that have supported me, and particularly to Jon Matonis and Gavin Andresen,” he wrote.
“I can only hope that their honour and credibility is not irreparably tainted by my actions. They were not deceived, but I know that the world will never believe that now. I can only say I’m sorry. And goodbye.”

The fuck out of here. Dr. C. Wright is not the creator of bitcoin. He is the profligator of rakish cowardice.

The estimate is for 200,00 jobs added in the month of April. Should it come in hot, people will view that as a sign the Fed will have the runway to reduce the economy to tatters with a June rate hike. Understand something, the only reason why the Fed wants to hike rates is to destroy the economy, at least temporarily.

On the other hand, should the numbers come in too weak, people will view it as a sign that the wheels are truly coming off the chuck-wagon, supported by the large earnings shortfalls from a wide array of companies this quarter.

In other words, damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenarios looms in the immediate term.

Cramer’s take.

My best guess, as always, inexorably lower.