Online Brokers Smashed After Schwab Announces Trade Commissions Reduced to Zero

What sort of fucking planet do we live on anyway? What will full service brokers do now? Fucking Schwab announced they are reducing trade commissions to ZERO, effective now — sending shares of other online brokers into the shitter.

“This is our price. Not a promotion. No catches. Period,” added CEO Walt Bettinger.

The firm made about $400m in fees from their EXPENSIVE $4.95 commissions last year and now they’re fucked. This is all happening because millennial favorite Robinhood came out a few years ago with a zero commish platform. Granted, they fuck people over in other ways, namely privacy related, but the kids love it.

This of course is all about luring millennial and zoomer faggots back into the fold — a grab for assets. They know, the brokers, that young folks couldn’t give a shit about their platform. Bear in mind, these are people who like Minecraft and other retro-retarded software games and apps. They’re accustomed to low tech garbage, which is why they love Robinhood.

Bottom line: full service brokers are rampaging throughout their offices today, 100% dinosaur’d, in the streets and fucked. Investment advisors are still able to hoodwink people into believing their fees are worthwhile. They will go by the wayside too, once AI gets good enough to replace them. Then the brokers will truly drown in misery, for they’re now heavily dependent upon advisors and their assets.

Good morning lads.

Last year this time you were all talking extreme shit, only to get your teeth punched out clean inside of two short months. The major difference between then and now is rates. Back then the Fed was still independent and wanted to hike rates, causing leveraged loans to fuck themselves. This go around the Fed is slashing rates and We Work is under pressure for being a scam. I don’t know, does a $47 billion disaster mean anything? Asking for a friend.

This go around, we’re all powerful and strong, chests out and cocks hard. We walk around with confidence, no matter the news. President impeached? Fuck him. Bad economic data? Fuck off. See, just like that, I dismissed all of the worries and can noW feel good about going long equities.

Can the market swan dive this year like last year?

No, absolutely not. The market never does what you expect it to do, especially follow the exact path of the previous year. It’s very likely we’ll do the exact opposite of what people think will happen.

Futures are +65 and everything is SAFU. Today is my Quant reshuffling day and I’m still REELING from a few trading account losses from yesterday. Hopefully I can clear those out, get back to winning again, and also fix some of the technical issues that were fucking me yesterday inside Exodus.

Wish me luck!

I got fucking wrecked in my NUGT overnighter and let’s not mention my other two 3x inverse vehicles. Sure, China is on the verge of breaking 10,000 legs in Hong Kong and Trump is getting impeached — because he fired Bolton. But do equity owners give a shit? Inflows and a dramatic increase of American wealth have left us in a permanent state of bullishness. When I used to say “nothing can stop stocks” — I used to joke. Now it’s serious. Nothing can stop the upward melt, not war, not rates, not the economy. Nothing.

I find myself in the midge of a dreadful trading spate, slipping up steps, breaking my jaw en route to my destination.

My last 10 trades:

KL +6.7%
(HUBS -7.7%)
(SOXS -6%)
PG +4.8%
(DDOG -10.5%)
(NET -8.1%)
JFIN +3.5%
DUST +8.5%
(LK -3.8%)
(NUGT -9.8%)

How do we deal with these runs? 50% cash, careful not to let things slip too far. Bad streaks are part and parcel of trading. For whatever reason, my connection to price action has been impaired. The way I am seeing stocks, the inputs I absorb, are creating false signals — resulting in losses. In the past, I’d double down on mistakes in a stubborn attempt to win. I do have a gigantic position on the books now that will be closed out tomorrow.

More on that tomorrow.

Very busy this morning, so I’ll make this brief.

I thought I could trade gold back and forth, long and short. I made money on both the upside and the downside, ha ha ha — but not today. Then I thought I could short China, because more laughs. And I felt comfy taking gigantic TVIX positions over the weekend and into a Monday. All of my plans were scattered about the floor and my face kicked in thoroughly.

What should I do? What will I do?

Nothing yet, but I’ll most likely close it all out and chalk it up to hubris.

Markets are flying high today and gold is laughably crushed to fucking pieces. The news? Trump is being impeached. Geez, thank God.

All that aside, everything is going well.

I understand some of you are concerned about my house, so I will provide an upside.

I drank a bottle of Sancerre this evening with dinner, lemon chicken, rice, veggies. I am a master chef, and a master bartender, in addition to a master trader and blogger. Almost everything I do is good to great. A great person once said to me “you do everything great” and it’s true.

Getting accustomed to NC has been easy, but the kids are MEH on it, mainly because of their friends up north. The weather is HOT AS FUCK, always 90 degrees and the sun is stronger here. It burns my fucking face off. Also, there are waterbugs here. Fuck that shit. But overall, Cary is a very fine town, all new builds. You cannot fine a home built before 2012.

The refurnishing of House Fly is going well, spending $5k per day on SHIT from Restoration Hardware and Crate and Barrel. We are almost unpacked, but never quite so, since we have considerably less closet space here. I have 50 unopened boxes in my garage now and another 10 in the basement. My fucking Benz is still in the dealership, with CATASTROPHIC engine damage, costing me $10k. Other than that, everything is the same.

On the business end here, we are 50% done with Exodus 2.0. It will be called something else, with a unique domaine. It’s mainly me here on the site now, so I’m thinking about doing a redesign to ditch the front page and bring it straight to my blog. My new programmer/partner is from Germany, much younger than me, reminiscent of my original programmer when I started iBC in 2007. Things change, but everything is generally the same. People come and go, but “The Fly” is everlasting and constant.

Almost every dip in SAAS stocks have resulted in sharp rallies and monetary reward. Recently we’ve seen a sharp decline in the software sector, which is the most overvalued of all the tech sectors — due to high growth/margins business models. Every 5 years or so the sector gets upended and I’d be remiss to tell you that this VC fueled industry got fucked almost immediately after the We Work debacle.

YTD Returns for top cloud-humping stocks.

Truthfully, I don’t have any strong opinions here, especially since once upon a time in 2014 I had very strong opinions about buying the dip — only to get my fucking face blown off in the five fingers of the apocalypse. What I can tell you, without equivocation, the sector has never been more overvalued vs the tech sector.

Here’s the trick. You can buy anything you fucking want. Who’s gonna stop you? But if you buy SAAS now and your stocks fall 10% from the basis, you have lost the right to own them anymore. Sell it and move on. My hunch, if forced to offer one, is for more downside. The whole market is heaving and teetering on sloppily spilling over and slinking down the sewer drain.

Markets are teetering on the brink of disaster. October storms are just around the corner and BIDU is soon to be delisted and changed to BIDUQ.

The idea of Trump limiting US investment into China is patently absurd, on par with applying sanctions onto a terorrist state. What’s the end game here? War? This country loves created a crisis out of thin air, just to solve it later. Obviously, the art of the deal has fallen short, thus far, so Trump is increasing the pressure on Beijing to acquiesce.

Given the current political climate, I doubt they will. Ergo, prepare for broken elevator trading action next week.

Top ideas: Volatility, short China.

Market jumped more than 100 when the US-China trade war meeting was scheduled for October. We already knew this, but for some reason it was relevant today. Then, ALL OF A SUDDEN, Donnie Ukraine announced this:

*** WHITE HOUSE WEIGHING LIMITS ON U.S. PORTFOLIO FLOWS INTO CHINA ***

This means “fuck you BABA”, “fuck you Baidu.” It also means fuck off with your IPOs China — the American money isn’t yours anymore. If done, this is the deathblow to China and sure to fuck them hard.

Wait, there’s more. How about we de-list all of your fucking stocks?

BREAKING: Trump Officials Considering Delisting Chinese Companies from U.S. Stock Exchanges.

SCOOP on new pressure tactic in #tradewar from @jendeben @sdonnan

— Mike Dorning (@MikeDorning) September 27, 2019

Markets do not bottom on Fridays.

UPDATE: I sold DUST, purchased yesterday, for a one day profit of +8.5%.

Lots of things to digest, such as Presidential impeachment, fucked up trade deal rumors, woefully leaning and heavy indices — wrought with rookies from top to bottom, exploitive little fuckers in for the quick buck. If there was ever a time for massive downside October, it would be this year.

Friday approaches and the roaches are out. Time to stomp them out.

We all want society to burn, from the bottom up. All of the people caught in a house of fire, burnt crisp from the convexity of it all. But, to be honest, aside from the shit-show PTON IPO — this tape doesn’t look too bad. It’s your normal run of the mill sell off.

Old man stocks are running hot, so I sold out of my PG position for a 4.8% gain. I don’t have it in me to play the long game with these fucking old man stocks. It is tempting to buy utes and REITs, but fuck that. I own WEC from about a month ago and barely up.

I still have a 10% bearish position on this fucking market and a shit-load of cash. I suppose I’ll just wait around for something fun to happen and then POUNCE on something and really take action. Who knows? Anything can happen. Anyone can get shot.