ICAHN IS ROASTING ACKMAN’S BALLS IN HELL

HLF Herbalife beats by $0.23, beats on revs; guides Q3 EPS below consensus, revs in-line; guides FY13 EPS above consensus, revs above consensus (60.57 +2.12)Reports Q2 (Jun) earnings of $1.41 per share, $0.23better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $1.18; revenues rose 18.2% year/year to $1.22 bln vs the $1.16 bln consensus.

Co issues mixed guidance for Q3,sees EPS of 1.09-1.13 vs. $1.16 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees Q3 revs growth of 11.5-13.5% (Approx $1.13- 1.15 bln) vs. $1.15 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate. Sees Volume Point Growth in the range of 11.4-13.5%; Net Sales Growth 16.5-18.5%; CapEx in the range of $40-50 mln.

Co issues upside EPS guidance for FY13, sees EPS of $4.83-4.95 vs. $4.80 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees FY13 revs between 16.0-18.0% (approx $4.72-4.80 bln) vs. $4.63 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate. sees Volume Point Growth between 11.5-13.5%; Expects net sales growth in the range of 16-18%; Sees CapEx in the range of $165-185 mln.

$HLF up to $63.20 at the time of this post.

About 70% of stocks are lower today. For those of you who aren’t long the beguiled uranium sector, which has now caught fire to the maximum extreme, today is a boring day. I look at the charts of URRE and USU and ask myself ‘why?’ I don’t have any unique insights on the subject, but can only tell you this pattern repeats itself over and over again.

A sector gets so cold, it gets hot. Everyone who was leaning short, covers and the stock prices soar. This isn’t going to last very long, unless of course we are discussing a fundamental shift, like what took place in the solar sector.

I am going to chill, give myself time to feel comfortable with entry points. When I am trading, I am a vagabond. When I am investing, I have a purpose and feel good about that. Trading is fun and profitable, but I need more. I cannot just move from stock to stock, like some sort of financial locust.

Let them come in and then I will buy them. If they do not come in, I will be forced to keep trading.

Nuclear is the hot buzz word now. I‘ve thought about this long before any of you clowns even knew about these stocks, and have an industry dedicated to it inside of The PPT.

SKS, ELN and PUBGY were acquired this morning. There are so many people who were short SKS, thinking the old high end retailer was in over their heads. I realize the market needs to cool off sometime. Typically, August is a good time to do that. But how can anyone think about selling short when corporations are flooded with cash?

You are playing with fire.

The only way to hedge yourself is via puts or inverse ETF. Trying to be clever with individual stock sales is a high beta trade and opposite of what one who cares about his/her fiduciary responsibility should be doing.

Yes, good morning to you too, pikers. Le Fly has been up since 6, partaking in physical exercises, prepping for the inevitable destruction of the planet earth. I’ve also thought about my 50% cash position and the fact that IMMR is reporting earnings this week. Then I stopped thinking about it.

I am going to plan a trip today, head down south in an attempt to retrace the good steps of a certain General Sherman, whilst flinging lit matches from my automobile.

Everything else is folly.

Futures are lower, but we’re going up again.

I’m not in a very good mood today. I haven’t been my jolly self for more than a week. I find myself brooding amidst the house for no reason. I am sure it’s related to cabin fever, the in-laws staying over, and a variety of work related issues. One thing is for certain, I am never content.

Speaking of which, don’t forget to make my god damned logo. I will pay you for your stupid time and make sure to give your idiot web design firm its proper publicity.

Futures are flat, so I have nothing to say to you–nothing at all. Would you like me to concoct some scenario for you? I will not.

Tomorrow I am sanctioned to participate in redundant crap, away from work. I will get to look at my 50% cash position for half a day, then I’ll be off into the god damned automobile to shuffle around. After that, I’ve decided to begin taking old school steroids, hit the gym, and punch a bag about a million times until my hands bleed and my knuckles break.

When I was a teenager, my best friend and I used to kick each other in the shins as hard as we could, with boots on, just because we were stupid and drunk. Sometimes we’d elevate it to outright punching of the face and chest, leading to black eyes and bloody noses, all the while laughing like two maniac leprechauns. Ah, the good ole’ days.

Okay, this is all I have for you tonight. I am looking at mega-cap stocks that are down more than 10%, YTD.

ABX-48%

NEM -33%

TCK -31%

VALE -29%

LFC -26%

ISRG -22%

IBN -20%

CAJ -19%

BBD -19%

EC -18%

TI -17%

BRCM -17%

PTR -16%

AAPL -15%

CEO -15%

TTM -13%

BSMX -13%

AGU -10%

Distinguished gents may access this screen here. The rest of you can burn in hades.

Our IT staff, spearheaded by the world famous programmer extraordinaire, VINCENZO ILLUMINATI, is very busy with code. Frankly speaking, he doesn’t have time to muck around with logos, and things of that nature. Therefore, effective immediately, I am going to allow you, the unwashed persons who travel the internets like vagabonds, to make your mark in life.

Create our logo. We will allow the people (you!) to vote for the best one and I will grant a monetary prize. I am not sure how much I am willing to give; but it will be in the hundreds.

Here’s the catch:

We have some credits available at 99designs and have commissioned them, professional hack-jobs, to make our logo too. In others words, it’s you versus them.

May the best men win.

Logos should be submitted to me, via email: [email protected].

After I am satisfied with the amount of submissions, I will post them all in a blog and you will have the opportunity to partake in elections, expressing your democratic rights, enabling a most fortunate web designer to achieve immortality.

NOTE: This is our current logo, a fine offering but not exactly what I had in mind. I need more art, less banana.

Bring them in. You know this isn’t going to stick. Everything you’ve come to know is meaningless. The market runs on nuclear vapors (extra USU) and no matter how dire the situation may appear, it rises again and again and again. It’s the relentlessness of the ascent that boggles the mind, causing us to run for cover at the first sight of panic.

Fear is the most powerful emotion of the human anatomy. It makes us do things we thought we never would. In this case, the fear is decidedly on the side of the short seller, the guy who knows what true carnage is–because he’s been a party to its baseness for the better part of 4 years.

The Nasdaq is down a point, YELP is hitting new highs, and I am cowering in the shadows like a eunuch witnessing a man speed chopping carrots atop a table with his penis on it.

I am begging you, all of the gods (old and the new), bring down this market, to its knees, and I will buy it all. Sadly, my prayers are often ignored in this regard.

It’s time to start buying stocks again.

This is all going according to plan. The market is pulling in at the precise time when I am 50% cash, enabling me the opportunity to buy some blood. Truth be told, I live for moments like this. It’s always hard to buy into a decline–because our brains get in the way of our balls. When in doubt, I condense the situation and declare to myself: “I might buy too early, but not as early as the poor fool who held through the decline.”

I am astounded by upside action in USU. What gives?

Just when everyone declared nuclear to be dead, it detonated on their faces. Other plays include URRE, URZ and GVP.

Are you watching some of these earnings disasters? EXPE, BRCM, SWI, ZNGA, CRUS. Ouch.

Holding a stock that you have no edge on, something that was supposed to just be a trade, is equal to swimming in an body of water filled with shark with chum hanging off your penis.

Here is the criteria:

Market cap: $1 bill+
YTD % gain: 20%+
2 week % loss: 10%+
Average daily volume: 100k+

The results:

Members of The PPT can access this screen here.

Here is that same screen, with a 1 year time horizon instead of YTD.

And here is the actual screen.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to report that iBC has banned over 2,000 readers since the site was launched in 2007. I do this, for a variety of reasons, mostly to quench a personal thirst of digital slaughter that I’ve been afflicted with since I was a young adult.

There are two tiers of banship. The first is prohibition from commenting, which is lifted, 9 out of 10 times, after the reader emails me for respite. The most severe is FULL IP BAN from ever accessing the site again. Upon visiting the site, you will be redirected to this page, then redirected again to the Greg Solomon re-education camp. I’ve found that people who dislike Mr. Solomon are miscreants. Therefore, this video is ample punishment.

I ban people for the following reasons:

1. They are losers. Losers will not be tolerated in these halls.
2. They are stupid.
3. They are dressed poorly.
4. Their behavior is unbecoming of a gentleman.
5. Their commentary is childlike. Children are not permitted on these grounds.
6. Random rage assault. Sometimes I just blow of some steam by banning you.
7. Their stock picks are pathetic.
8. They spam the comments section with drivel.
9. They dislike Benjamin Bernanke.
10. They question my pimp hand. That, my friends, will not be tolerated.

These are the ground rules. If you want to become a better investor, learning from true professionals, shut your mouths and watch your manners.

Good day.

One of my developing theses is to profit from the demise of corn. All of these stupid farmers planted corn last year, due to drought induced price hikes. Over the past year, corn is down 27%, a great boon to companies that deal with corn inputs.

Corn is used to feed chickens, so this is a no brainer trade. Companies like PPC, SAFM benefit, directly. And, restaurant chains who sell chicken, like BWLD and BAGR, benefit from cheaper cheaper wings, widening gross margins.

Also, ethanol producers are benefiting. My favorite play, by far, is GRPE. Other ethanol plays include ADM, BIOF, PEIX and MGPI.

BG is interesting too.

PENX is a very, under the radar, starch play–that is soaring due to lower inputs.

ANDE makes the grain elevators and they’ve been on fire.

There are a lot of outlier plays that could catch fire, if the price of corn continues to drop. However, be careful of this trade reversing. If the corn crop isn’t as great as everyone thinks it’s going to be, everything I just said will occur, but inverse–like a triple inverse ETF from hell (extra Direxion). Last year, consensus opinion stated that corn prices had to go up because of drought. I viewed that as simplistic and built a monster position in PPC, around $4. Soon enough, after the harvest, the price of corn collapsed and PPC took off like a wild mongoose in a field filled with cobras.

I am throwing some mixed signals here, but that’s the nature of the market. As of now, however, companies who have to buy corn to produce a product are in a sweet spot. It’s also worth noting, cattle prices collapsed last year, because ranchers were slaughtering their stock early, to avoid feeding them. Well, since then, the price of cattle has soared to new highs, due to supply/demand constraints. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out steak prices will be coming down soon.

The increase in volume, due to lower food prices, is bound to help grocery store stocks, like WFM, NGVC, FWM, WMK, IMKTA, KR and SVU. There’s a reason why these stocks have been soaring. Now you know.

Oh, one more thing, wholesale food distributors, like UNFI, CORE and SYY work too.