Fake Meat Comes Public and Soars; Markets Soft

Beyond meat has come public today and the stock went nuts to the upside. Look at the lovely lovely chart.

Truth be told, Le Fly tried being vegan for a year and initially felt good about the decision. I enjoyed the discipline of adhering to a certain set of rules — because I’m a man and men like order. At first, I was optimistic about this sojourn, saving innocent baby animals and being environmentally friendly. Plus, I had a deep seething disdain for the meth-heads who worked at the slaughterhouses.

About 9 months in, I started to truly hate it and felt I was being unjustifiably punitive with myself. After all, I’m not immortal and do not intend to live past 85, so what the fuck was I doing — punishing myself for the sake of what exactly? Since the beginning of man, men have been eating animals. They are lesser creatures and deserve to be subordinated, not because men are evil or because of cruelty — but because that’s what living is — the subjugation of one to uplift another. We can bear witness to this on a micro-scale all the way up.

Men are supposed to eat cows and sheep and chickens, not only because they taste good — but because the help build muscles and make us stronger — which helps us kill people who deserve to be killed. I do not expect any women reading this post to understand the mind of men. Your nature is to nurture and to be kind, and supportive, and beautiful. Men, on the other hand, despise other men who try to be beautiful and we frown upon other men who lack substance and aren’t formidable.

I can argue that BYND is a short from the very start and will barrel lower into irrelevancy. But it appears we have a wave passing over us now where men are women and women are men and upside down is sideways and gay bathrooms only serve vegetables — and anything industrious is poison. A great giant fucking psychosis is sweeping around the globe and this might help buoy BYND, at least for a while.

But eventually, like all things, men will turn vegans into dust and with it — BYND.

Good day.

It looks like the seasonality Gods are really serious about their work. Oil stocks are posting their 8th consecutive red candle today. Complete apathy in the sector now.

As you can see from the graph above, oil stocks, generally, do not do well between the months of May- January.

The entire basic materials group is under pressure — lower by ~5% the past month.

The Exodus oscillator is low, but not extremely low. We are not at oversold levels yet.

If you take out the recent highs — you can see there is a FAGbox for oil and we’re now probing the lower portion of it.

None of this scares me without HYG/JNK going lower. On a day like today, with WTI down by 3%, you’d expect to see downward action in the junk bond market — but nothing of note.

I recently heard an analyst discuss oil and he said that chemical stockpiles were heavily built over the past 3-6 months — but that waned recently and did not correlate with the price jump in crude. This was atypical and was indicative of market manipulation and not true end user demand, justified for the rise in oil. I don’t know what the real truth is, only that we should keep an eye on crude and definitely bonds. If you see a break in HYG below $86, get some hedges. For now, I am being patient — 65% cash.

For a long long time, Tesla bears have been grinning and dry washing their hands over potential liquidity issues at the company. On Twitter, these people identify themselves with the $TSLAQ moniker. This morning, TSLA and their ~$50b market cap and went to market to raise $2 billion.

Tesla formally announces offerings of $650 mln of common stock and $1.35 bln aggregate principal amount of convertible senior notes due in 2024 in concurrent underwritten registered public offerings (234.01)

The aggregate gross proceeds of the offerings, assuming full exercise by the underwriters of their option to purchase additional securities, would be approximately $2.3 billion before discounts and expenses. Tesla intends to use the net proceeds from the offerings to further strengthen its balance sheet, as well as for general corporate purposes.

Question for bears: how could you not see this happening?

In all previous offerings, Elon Musk has purchased shares. During this one, he bought 42,000 shares valued at $10 million. Back in 2013, Musk bought $100 million worth of stock in an $830 million offering — which was the pivot point for bulls and set the stock on the fucking war path higher.

The stock is up 5% on this news.

If you haven’t watched this video in full yet, I implore you to. Stunning. $TSLA $TSLAQ pic.twitter.com/ID7YhBPEXU

— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) May 1, 2019

This is exactly the sort of move that catches most off guard, which of course makes it all the more valuable. It happened. Apple smashed numbers. People got giddy. Market reversed and got REKT. From a sentiment point of view, this is as bad as it gets.

Throughout the session, I liquidated, raising my cash position to 65%. I am now on a 14 for 14 streak.

I’ve been selling because, err, May. But aside from that, I felt it was a reasonably intelligent trade to step aside after the crescendo, the grande finale — the finale salvo — if I might be sold bold.

I’ve been alluding to this scenario for some time now and here we are. Stay true to your mantra.

Will I short the tape? How could I do it here? Nothing in the charts suggests doom. I’d rather wait for confirmation and short into some speed.

I know, it’s all so miserable and life is better when things work perfectly. Very rarely do we get the things we want, when we want it and for a good price. This is the nature of living, having to endure the pangs in order to later get to enjoy the bangs.

I know I said everything about this market depended on Apple. While that thesis remains intact, I think it’s fair to assume the market had already priced this in. Going forward, the markets biggest hurdle are asshole fund managers going to Antibes for a cocaine filled sojourn amidst their degeneracy. Junior at the trading desk trading wildly, and liquidity drying up at a time that can or cannot be filled with more Trump fun.

For the most part, the gains for 2019 have been had and if you’re not up 15%+ by now — you fucked up.

YTD, the top performing sector in tech is solar. Who would’ve guessed that? After that, it’s all about software and semis. Are you long A list names or a bunch of shit? You know, I’m sick and fucking tired of you people blowing out your accounts, when all I do here is tell you what to do and how to do it. Although I think hiring an investment advisor is fucking retarded, some of you literally cannot be trusted with your own money.

I might take out long in a runner today, but I won’t be allocating any serious money — now 60% cash.

I sold ZM for a 7.1% overnight win. Additionally, I sold DOCU and FAS — both for small gain — upping my cash position to 60%.

It’s also worth noting, I am 13 for my last 13 trades and do not intend on ever losing again.

The Quant portfolio for May is up in Exodus now.

This month I’ll be turning 43 years old. Hopefully by then, I would’ve sold this house and moved down into the south to become a southern gent. However, the process to get the house ready to sell it is going slower than I anticipated. There is nothing more dreadful, nothing more rueful, than having to move an entire house filled with 5 grown people.

Do I find myself elated all the time?

No, almost impossible to do.

Miserable?

Wouldn’t go that far.

I plod on, press and pull, scratch and claw — until there is nothing left.

Being May the first, I am often reminded of the delightful and hilarious short story May Day — written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Do yourselves a favor and read it here. Thank me later.

Small pet peeve of mine. Working from home has to be the most disastrous thing another human being can do to himself. All day long I am shadowed by my fucking dogs — asking to go out or eat something — or simply wanting me to throw a toy at them. I thought I loved dogs, until I was left alone with them for an extended period of time. Now I find myself tolerating them and often find myself locking the doors behind me.

Futures are sharply higher. Today I allocate the Quant in Exodus, so I will be busy for an hour or two after the market opens.

Inside voice Jim — INSIDE VOICE.

A little background on Musk vs Cramer — they never got along.

Musk disses Cramer on Tesla’s IPO day.

Cramer says Musk is making a fool of himself.

Recently Cramer upped the rhetoric on Musk.

To that, Musk responded that Cramer wasn’t real and is a simulation.

The fools at The Street dot dumb account cornily tweeted this shit out — to which was flippantly dismissed by a now deleted tweet by Musk — declaring Cramer to be “ShallowFake.”

That small spat caused this fucking meltdown, presided over by a poor girl who looked like she was just born yesterday.

Steel yourself Jim. Toughen up.

I’ve been waiting for these numbers for 3 months, obsessing over them. Faggots online have been focused on the wrong stats — iPhone sales. Not indicative of global growth anymore. People already have cool phones. Now they want services. This is no different from the fiber rollout of the late 90s, or the rail layouts of the 1880s.

The infrastructure for mobile devices has already been laid out; now Apple is rushing towards services.

Broad strokes:

Company expects paid subscriptions to surpass 500 mln in 2020 (currently 390 mln).
Mac revenue decline was driven by processor constraints.
iPad revenue returned to growth in China.
Continues to expect annual increases in dividends.
Tim Cook feels results are positive in light of currency movements. Results would have been 200 basis points better in constant currency.
Best quarter ever for services.
iPad revenue growth rate was highest in 6 years.
Wearables business is now the size of a Fortune 200 company.
Yr/Yr performance in China improved relative to the December quarter.
Declines in iPhone revenue were “significantly smaller” in the final weeks of the quarter.
Active install base continues to grow in each geographic segments.
Reached 390 mln paid subscriptions, an increase of 30 mln qtr/qtr.

Apple prelim Q2 $2.46 vs $2.36 S&P Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; revs $58 bln vs $57.40 bln S&P Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees Q3 revenue $52.5-54.5 bln vs. $52.09 bln consensus

And here is the kicker:

Apple reports Q2 services gross margin of 63.8% vs 60% ests

Those margins are incredible, likely driven by the high margin aspect of services. Apple is now quickly moving into a higher margin business segment and nothing about these numbers speak slow-down.

The stock is higher by 5% in the after-hours and it cements the idea that things have gotten better and continue to get better, as evidenced by a pick up in iPhone sales towards the end of the quarter.

Remember I told you what their parts marker said back in February. Those comments by Amkor have been prescient. New record highs here we come.

I will never book a losing trade again.

Sold BOOM +6.5%, making me 10 for my last 10.