Moody’s Warns of a Deteriorating Russian Economy

I am guessing Moody’s hasn’t seen pictures of Putin riding atop black bears, or swimming with real sharks. Also, I am sure they haven’t seen Putin, bare chested, walking through fields of wheat in the Crimea.

“What once has been the country’s strongest asset, which was the government’s very strong financial position, is now under significant pressure,” Kristin Lindow, senior vice president at the credit-ratings company, said Wednesday in an interview in Moscow. “It doesn’t have a lot of debt, but it also is actively depleting its saving buffers, with very littleprospect in the medium term of rebuilding them.”

It’s worth noting, Russia can run dry of their reserves within two years.

To make up the bulk of next year’s shortfall, the Finance Ministry plans to use 2.1 trillion rubles from one of Russia’s two sovereign wealth funds, and may tap an additional 500 billion rubles from it if needed. Russia may exhaust both of its funds in 16 months to two years if it continues to rely on the $144.2 billion reserves without scaling back budget spending, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has warned.

Either oil has to skyrocket over the next two years, or Russia really needs a big war. Which do you think is most likely to occur?

Stocks reasserted themselves today, soaring more than 200. This, of course, was predicted by the Exodus algos, which all of you have the priviledge to try now. Email [email protected] for a trial.

In a little more than 1 week, iBankCoin will be hosting a conference, in NYC. We will have guests, people of interest, food, booze, and lots of hot hot coffee.

I’ve also taken liberties to hire live music for the cocktail party, along with Yale Club’s best, highest shelf spirits.

Reserve your place amongst greatness now.

For the day, I made close to 2%, led by the liars at BIDU. My only purchase today was NK.

I added to my NK position.

I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, there wasn’t any trick of treating taking place in my neighborhood. We’d put on Jason masks and fill book bags with dozens of eggs and then attack other blocks with a maelstrom of poultry embryos that were so plentiful: they’d blot out the sun.

We’d also take shaving cream bottles and attach RAID bug spray caps to them, or aerosol caps, to make the shaving cream spray far and wide, so that we could destroy people with it. Back in my days (extra 80s), eggs were cheap. We didn’t give a shit about them. We’d hit people in the heads with them, and then laugh.

Nowadays, eggs are like caviar, expensive and rare. Thanks to exotic animal diseases, effectively wiping out 50 fucking million chickens this year, egg prices are through the roof– up 52% from the lows of 2015.

Get this, egg prices rose 32% in June alone, and now stand at the absurd price of $2.97 a dozen.

Fuck.

If I was a kid preparing for halloween now, my mother would smack me in the mouth if I asked for 3 bucks so that I could crack some eggs over Joey’s face.

The best way to play this is via CALM. Look at the profit ramp.

Stay $CALM and eat eggs. Sorry I had to say it.

It’ s the country we love to hate. We teach our children to want to fight wars with them, to conquer their ancient cities. Now we are going to buy their stocks.

According to the Gods of Seasonality, there is no better month than October to be long Chinese stocks. Have a look.

See, only eccentrics like me have this data, because I cordoned off ALL chinese stocks and created my own basket: the Chinese Burritos. I did this years ago…before it was popular. Inside Exodus, all members are entreated to view, and to trade at their leisure, the burritos. I usually conjoin my trading of the burritos with a few wanton lies, just to set the mood, to be more authentic with the host country.

Here are most of the stocks, sorted by market cap.

Naturally, my top pick, as well as largest holding, is BIDU– “the Chinese Google”. (lolz)

The EIA just came out with a report that said wee enjoyed a build of 7.56 million barrels of oil, FOR THE WEEK. Consensus was for 2.2 mill.

We all accept this news as par for the course. Which fucking course are you living on? In my world, I can’t fathom who is collecting all of this oil, and why?

Clearly demand isn’t this erratic, so it means the oil was over-supplied. Well…why?

I’ll sit here and wait for answers.

In the meantime, stocks are up. My BIDU is looking good.

iBankCoin has dedicated itself towards the dissemination of news and opinion since 2007. Over the years, I’ve permitted my caprices with the written word to take me off track from time to time, in order to indulge myself and vent and laugh and cry. With the new redesign of the site, I’ve decided to redouble my efforts in provided news and opinion that I would want, providing I wasn’t so damned jaded.

I am sure you’ve noticed a great change in the amount of content coming out of iBC. The bloggers are working tirelessly, toiling away in dark dungeons, to provide you, the reader class, with information that you can use to eventually bankrupt yourselves. On the front page, you will notice a “Breaking News” box filled with headline news. That station is manned by myself and two others, pretty much 20 hours per day. You can follow it on Twitter @iBC_FN, or keep refreshing the screen here at iBC. It’s free and does just as good a job as many paid services.

Markets are higher, early going. But I don’t trust it. The dollar is strong. Crude is weak. And the Yen is tricky.

Nevertheless, Exodus flagged oversold yesterday, so I’m inclined to bet we bounce hard soon.

Get your Exodus free trials now. Email [email protected] for an unfettered look under the hood of the single best market intelligence platform on the market today.

This is unbelievably ridiculous. The GOP are 100% hell bent on destroying the country…in order to “save it.”

“The trend in our projected net resources has continued to be negative,” Lew said. “I respectfully urge Congress to take action as soon as possible, raise the debt limit without delay, and remove an unnecessary threat to our economy.”

According to Lew, the government is pulling in far less money than previously expected (extra recession), which is why the deadline has moved up. After the deadline is reached, the government will have about $30bill left in the bank, far less than what is needed to run the government on a day to day basis.

Daily governmental expenditures often reach $60bill per day.

Great, mark that date on your calender boys and girls. Fucked.

Futs up 13, Europe through the fucking roof, dollar up 0.58% v euro, oil down, gold up, any questions?

Higher

Earnings on roids: DXCM +13.9%, TTM +6.9%, XLNX +5.1%, UN +4.9%, MTG +3.2%, PM +1.8%, UNH +1.2%.

Euro-trash stocks trading up: SNY +3.5%, GSK +1.4%, SHPG +1.4%… Other European names higher with strength in overseas trading: SDRL +4.4%, ARMH +3.5%, ASML +2.1%, SAP +1.4%.

Enter the Casino, the House Always Wins: LVS +4.7%, WYNN +4.3%, MGM +3.5%

TTHI +30.6%; reports study for Alzeimer drug), RXII +11.1%; phase 2 nonsense, FBP +10.5% (mystery), GSVC +9.6%; this company is a total piece of shit, BOFI +8.9%; after 30% decapitation, it bounces),MBI +5.5%; the Puerto Ricans talk to treasury over a plate of plantains, OPK +3.9%; CRAMER PUMP, UTEK +3.2%; who cares?, PBR +2.8%; executive board shenanigans, ZFGN +2.2%; applying vise to short sellers, CCL +1.9% (mystery), OFG +1.9%; Puerto Ricans talk to treasury over plate of pastelles, AFMD +1.6%; investor bought more, UTHR +1.6%; board approves to waste $500mill on buy back,  SNDK +1.5%; momo, MXIM +1.1%; merger rumors

C up 3%; crushes estimates

Analyst horseshit: AZN +1.6% (added to Europe strong cock List at BofA/Merrill), NMBL +0.9% (initiated with an totally erect at Barclays), FB +0.9% (upgraded to hard from flaccid at Argus), CSCO +0.6% (initiated with an Fantastic at Barclays), AAPL +0.4% (initiated with an This is a Good Company at Barclays.

Lower:

Abysmal earnings, truly shameful: IMPR -25.8% (every bank under the sun downgraded these clowns), QUIK -15.5%, MTW -12.6% (also downgraded to piece of shit at Stifel, to OMG this sucks at Robert W. Baird), GRMN -10.6% (no one buys their crap anymore; this isn’t 2005), HCA -10% (Obama-care fail) NFLX -4% (blame it on the rain), GS -1.5%, JAH -0.7%, (share offering).

CXRX -10.9%; the news is they suck,  THC -9.5% (Obama-care still sucks), VRX -7.5% (discloses it recently received a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for ripping off sick people), CYH -6% (Obama care still sucks), YGE -3.6% (chillaxing after yesterday’s 25% rippage), LSCC -2.6% (shitcanning a bunch of people), TEX -1.5% (because MTW sucks), WMT -0.9% (everyone hate them, literally)

Analyst circle jerk: XRX -0.8% (initiated with an offal at Barclays), NTAP -0.4% (initiated with an garbagio at Barclays

That title came off a little racist, calling them “The Asians.” But I promise you, I meant it in the least hostile of ways. After all, some of my largest positions are Asian (BIDU).

Following America’s shit-filled session, Asia took the torch and burned down the fucking short sellers with it.

China is +2%, Hang Seng is up 2%, NIKKEI is +1.2%. It’s a good day to be Asian today.

Both European and U.S. futures are up 0.6%. But you know how that shit works, men lazily clad in pajamas fucking around with the computers, making things go crazy. I’ll believe the U.S. market will go higher after I see it close higher.

Of course the big story is the dollar, weaker again versus the euro. Should it break $1.15, I suspect you’ll start to hear rumblings about it, which might stoke the flames of many a beaten down commodity stock.

REMINDER: We are doing free trials for Exodus this week. Email [email protected] for access.