And Up We Go Again

It was a coin flip and here were are pushing +200 like yesterday never happened. If you’re trying to short the market, you ought to take out life insurance first — because this type of pin action is going to give you a heart attack.

Citi think a trade deal isn’t happening any time soon.

Trade negotiations between the U.S. and China broke down last month.

Investment bank Citi said on Wednesday that it sees “no deal before the 2020 US election.”

As the trade war continues, Citi expects U.S. economic metrics, such as consumer fundamentals, will “likely deteriorate further.”

No one cares.

Old man Greenspan is out with commentary, suggesting the US is heading towards negative rates.

No one cares.

Stocks are gleefully swimming higher. Shorts should be covered, hedges closed out. The FAGBOX is intact and we’re racing towards the top end of that range. Moreover, you should assume we’ll break it and establish a new range to the upside.

Up or down? That’s the trillion dollar question.

Here is my vantage point.

FAGBOX initiated.

We can go either way, frankly. I would not be surprised. I do, however, have a bias — barreling into September. I believe, at a minimum, we’ll see sharply lower prices in the morning, followed by recovery. The break in junk bonds is notable and can start to make this squall grow some balls and really instill fear into the weaker hearts of men who have no business in this game.

While most of you get ship-wrecked by this malevolent tape, “Le Fly” is banking coin. He sold his DRIP this morning and re-shuffled his Quant, which booked a gain of +1.2% in August, and is now reallocating into various names.

Did I mention I sold EXK for a +16.5% gain? Oh, I did that too.

So what’s next on the agenda? Something exotic?

Well, I am 35% cash, long some miners, old man stocks, and other shit that is holding up well. Stuff that isn’t holding up well is sold immediately. I don’t have the time or inclination for recoveries. I am in a state of winship all the time and if I’m not I best to get into one in short order. Life is fleeting and the market is a bitch — might as well milk it best I can to the best of my God given abilities and let the chum come along for the ride.

Yields are very low. Money will chase yield or stocks paying dividends and gold. Don’t forget gold. Please don’t forget silver.

That is all.

I’ve been saying this for more than a year. China is likely to wait until the 2020 elections, or perhaps 2024, to cut a deal with America. Why ink a long term deal that hurts you if the main component of said deal (Trump) will be gone in a few years.

Trump addressed that this morning, which is interesting and also terrifying for China.

….And then, think what happens to China when I win. Deal would get MUCH TOUGHER! In the meantime, China’s Supply Chain will crumble and businesses, jobs and money will be gone!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2019

If China does not ink a deal before 2020 and Trump gets elected, they’re completely fucked. By extension, the lower and middle class in America will be fucked too, fucked with inflation.

WTI is -3.5%, copper down nearly 2%.

I’d like nothing more than to see, or dare I say, preside over the market Mccrashing into the floor boards and beneath them. All of the beauty from this market waxed and erased from existence, replaced with Middle Earth’d Orcs who eat weak humans for sustenance and carry out the will of evil for purposes of end of days.

We need a good biblical cleansing and I’d be willing to sacrifice for it.

Sadly, we’re not going to get any of that. As we speak, Larry Kudlow is combing his hair and greasing it to his head — preparing statements that are sure to get the market’s dick rock solid again.

Speaking of which, Succession is the best show on tv now, makes Billions look like the assclownery it is. I highly recommend watching it.

As for me, I’d getting settled in nicely. My office is finally set up, classical music playing, and the coffee is flowing freely and with strength.

I have cash reserved in my trading, to deal with today’s 200+ drubbing, and a DRIP hedge that was tossed on Friday as my weekend hold. I will be selling it today and looking for longs.

NOTE: GOLD! I am 15% weighted gold in my Quant, which is being reallocated today, and 10% miners in trading account.

Happy Labour Day gents, Jungle.

Summer is over and it’s time to get back to work, which means crash this fucking market — leaving zero survivors. Well, that’s not entirely true, since me and my cadre of like minded gents inside Exodus will be thriving throughout any and all market seasons.

On this day of sloth and idleness, I bring forth to you a commercial for Exodus — my market intelligence platform built for men of leisure and industry. Yes, we’re building a BRAND FUCKING NEW platform and all present members will be grandfather’d in. There will be a new pricing structure, which entail high prices — because hard work and toil is being integrated into the process.

Reasons to join Exodus today.

1. Markets are on the verge of belly-flopping into a sea of morons soon.
2. It is the only place you can receive real time Fly trades, or any Fly trades for that matter.
3. AWARD WINNING stock message board, dubbed The Pelican Room, a denizen of high IQ gents discussing worldly events and how to cook eggs and how to trade.
4. The Exodus predictive algorithms have never been better. (see below)

Lastly, you get access to the Exodus Quant, a monthly updated portfolio designed to CRUSH the market and hedge the downside during periods of duress. The process is entirely mechanical and Le Fly offers free demos to explain the process. Not a fucking problem.

See you soon, fucked faces.

The notion of cooler heads prevailing took a backseat to a new volley of tariffs out of Washington and Beijing.

Here’s the latest.

Via ZH:

However, that did not happen, and with no trade deal in sight, at 12:00am on Sunday, the Trump administration slapped tariffs on $112 billion in Chinese imports, the latest escalation in a trade war that’s ground the global economy to a halt, sent Germany into a recession, and given the market an alibi to keep rising because, wait for it, “a trade deal is imminent.”

Only, it isn’t, and 1 minute later, at 12:01am EDT, China retaliated with higher tariffs being rolled out in stages on a total of about $75 billion of U.S. goods. The target list strikes at the heart of Trump’s political support – factories and farms across the Midwest and South at a time when the U.S. economy is showing signs of slowing down.

The 15% U.S. duty hit consumer goods ranging from footwear and apparel to home textiles and certain technology products like the Apple Watch. A separate batch of about $160 billion in Chinese goods – including laptops and cellphones – will be hit with 15% tariffs on Dec. 15. China, meanwhile, began applying tariffs of 5 to 10% on U.S. goods ranging from frozen sweet corn and pork liver to bicycle tires on Sunday.

Nasdaq fits are -62. Here’s why you want to be long gold. Inflation will get forced down our gullets, courtesy of the trade war.

Gold futures are +0.45%.

A giant fucking hurricane is barreling towards my new estate. Naturally, this is to be expected, as the black cloud follows me striking me with lightning everywhere I go. My only respite, my only sole source of winship, in my entire life, is the stock market. Never ever feel envious of Le Fly, no matter how much shit I talk, for my life is plagued with drawdowns on a scale you can only begin to imagine.

For example.

“The Fly” took out a rental the other day — because my fucking Benz is still in the shoppe. I opted for NO INSURANCE — because I was being cheap, and also because I am a MASTER DRIVER, super safe, defensive, and wonderful. My wife, on the other hand, is a menace to the road.

I was casually dining in Durham the other night when my mechanic called to tell me he had a loaner car for me.

“How very nice of you Sir”, I said. And he left the car in front of his shoppe, with the keys under the dirty old mat. I told me wife “let’s go pick up the loaner and then you take the leased car and we’ll drop it off in Cary”, to which she replied “ok.”

We got the car, smelled like a box of crayons — 2004 Benz without a camera or anything resembling normal tech for our era. My wife was so tired we had to stop by Chapel Hill to get some tea and coffee (she only drinks tea). We head onto the road and closing in on the rental store, but we’re meandering down a tight road with fast driving southerners in their fucking pick up trucks. It was one of those two way streets that are supposed to be one way. I was driving in front and I saw she was over-compensating by veering to the right, into the bushes and shrubs. Since my kids were in her car, I was watching closely and hoping she’d keep the wheel straight.

Then I heard a “PFFfffffffff” and her car jumped up like Dukes of Hazard escaping the long arm of the law. She pulled onto the side of the road and it was soon revealed she dipped into a crevasse and flattened the tire, bent the rim, and probably fucked the alignment, all of which will come directly out of my purse — since I was too cheap to opt for the $10 per day insurance package.

The storm is coming and I’m sure it’s coming right for me.

September is the worst month of the year, as junior from the trading turret gets pushed aside for Mr. Big Shot fund manager returning from his summer at St. Barts.

All of the wonderful things are present for a crash — insane twitter account at POTUS, inverted yield curve, Zerohedge readership at record highs etc. The democrats are running around talking about bullshit, and the integrity of the Federal Reserve has been decimated to be less than the N. Korean regime of torture and murder.

Over at the Exodus Quant, my monthly adjusted quantitative investment stratagem, I gained 1.2% for the month of August — 15% weighted GLD. Going forward, the quant will be 20% GLD and 5% TLT, the balance in growth stocks.

The sole purpose of this stratagem is growth, but with a hedge. During times of duress, the quant barrels in headlong into GLD and TLT — because of their historically defensive posture against SPY.

YTD, here are the results of this strategy.

Jan: +6.6%
Feb: +7.2%
March: +2.6%
April: -0.2%
May: +0.6%
June: +3.5%
July -0.8%
August +1.2% (preliminary)

A wonderful Sharpe, believe me.

For the first time in my life I’ve gotten a stiff neck. I bought a new mattress and fancy fucking pillow and it destroyed me. Now I can move my head about 5 degrees in each direction. If you’re talking to me, I’d need to move my entire body to see you — because my neck no longer accommodates such movements.

This is typical and also ridiculous, and here I am in pain — blogging like the wind.

I sold off some stuff today, booked gains and losses, and generated cash. With said cash I will do nothing. It’s also worth noting, I took out a hedge, in the hopes the market will plunge very hard into the close.

Bottom line: Markets do not bottom and Friday’s certainly not ahead of Labor Day weekend.