Happy New Year.
Twenty seventeen has started off with more of the same. European markets are surging ahead, led by the DAX and FTSE MIB. The dollar is higher by 0.5% v the euro and bitcoins broke 1,000 to the upside — making the Vinklevoss twins very happy assholes to start the new year.
One notable laggard is Brazil’s Bovespa index, currently off by 1%.
The first week of January is very important, as it sets the tone for the year. So far, so good.
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These were two final sacrifices of 2016 — one where a once famed singer blew up on stage and didn’t bother to sing her own songs before storming off in what appeared to the beginnings of tears — and another when libtard CNN anchor, Don Lemon, was seen on teevee drunk, offering to take his shirt off for a nipple piercing, only to later get an old fashioned needle through the ear for all the world to cringe over.
Mariah’s death on stage meltdown.
Fifty-year-old Drunken Don Lemon making a fool out of himself on New Year’s eve.
I hope all of you had better New Year’s celebrations than the two featured above.
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It was a lot of fun in 2016. Cheer to all and be sure to LOCK IN THOSE LOW RATES. Inflation is out of control, as per Yellen. I had no choice but to raise prices for Exodus, in order to keep the neverending pools of champagne flowing effortlessly.
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It was a year replete with Asshats, men and women making complete fools of themselves — as mankind tends to do on a continuous basis. But, just like in the book Animal Farm, some fools are more equal than others.
Enter Doug Kass.
During the height of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, buoyed by a biased media and rigged polls, Mr. Kass took time out from his day to venture on over to have a chat with the strange man at Bloomberg, who is seemingly obsessed with bow-ties and what college professors are up to, Tom Keene. During his interview, accompanied by an analyst from Citi, Kass predicted, quite effervescently and with ample degrees of energy, that Donald Trump would, in fact, DROP OUT of the race for President of the United States.
Both him and the Citi analyst were practically orgasmic over the specter of such a humiliating occurrence — which would, of course, equate to the ascension of the first female president of the United States, Hillary Clinton.
Watch.
As the campaign carried on, I kept tabs on Mr. Kass to make sure he knew that he owned that video and would one day pay for it.
.@DougKass Wondering if you still believe Trump will drop out of the race? Thanks in advance.
— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) September 19, 2016
Today is that day.
Congratulations Mr. Douglass Kass for winning 2016’s Asshat of the Year Award. You certainly earned the distinction.
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This was my favorite year to blog ever. There were so many topics to discuss, from an early year crash in markets to the elections, I was kept very busy with a rich reservoir of material to choose from. The breakout star for 2016, content wise, was our new Zeropointnow, who published hit after hit. I look forward to more depravity of this sordid detail in 2017.
Relieve the grandeur of 2016, one last time.
Rumor: Clinton Emails Labeled ‘Life Insurance’ on Weiner’s Computer Obtained by NYPD
Ex-Kissinger State Dept Official: YOU ARE WITNESSING A COUNTER-COUP ASSISTED BY JULIAN ASSANGE
Huffington Post Reporter, David Seaman, Fired After Questioning Hillary’s Health
A Conspiratorial Theory Worth Positing: Is Julian Assange Dead?
Podesta Discusses Assassination With Steve Elmendorf 3 Days Before Justice Scalia’s Death
Who the Hell is Ben Fischbein, God Damn It?!
Michael Moore: Trump’s Election Will be the Biggest “Fuck You” Ever Recorded in Human History
Maria Bartiromo Interviews The Ghost Face Killer, Regarding Shkreli
The President America Deserves
Dennis Gartman Appears on CNBC Sockless, Clad in Penny Loafers, Declaring a Top in Oil
Snopes Says No, But NYPD Thinks Clinton Wore Secret Earpiece During NBC Town Hall
“Everyone Loses”: 3 Bear Market Rules
Rumor: Julian Assange is Dead — ‘Dead Man Keys’ Triggered on Twitter
Did Hillary Clinton Send Out a Body Double for Photo Op with Little Girl?
Sole Killer in Baton Rouge Identified as Gavin Eugene Long
Biotech Stocks Are Being Liquidated; Is Baker Bros in Trouble?
SICK: Let’s Revisit The Podesta Penchant For Pedophilic, Cannibalistic, And Satanic Art
The Real Reason Behind Peyton Manning’s Ridiculous Super Bowl Budweiser Plugs
Ed Klein: Hillary Cried Inconsolably and Blamed Obama, Comey for Losing Election
Here’s the 60 Minutes Interview George Soros Scrubbed From the Internet
And here was one of our most viewed videos on our Youtube channel, which enjoyed record traffic of 3 million views.
That sums it up.
Year to date, the S&P 500 pressed higher by 12%, Nasdaq +7% and the Dow +16%. I used ETFs to gauge the performance, so the actual numbers of the indices may differ slightly. More than half of the gains were enjoyed following the election. If you weren’t positioned long for a Trump rally, you didn’t make much money, broadly.
Certain sectors truly shined this year, after enduring harsh pullbacks.
Steel and Iron stocks blasted higher by 73%.
Regional banks exploded higher by nearly 50% and semiconductors pressed their rights on the market by 40%. There were plenty of sectors that did well; but if 2016 needed to be described by three notable winners, I’d say steel, semis and banks.
I realize both gold and silver did better than all sectors, with silver stocks +148% and gold +85% — but the sector has been harangued by losses over the past 3 months — off by 17%. Plus, the precious metals aren’t widely owned like banks and semis and is more of a niche sector.
The overall composite market cap of the entire gold sector is $110b, whereas steel and iron is upwards of $230b with a fraction of the stocks populating the industry.
Oil stocks moved higher by 35%, but have done hardly anything for the past 6 months — with returns of about 10%. The lionshare of the oil and gas gains were enjoyed earlier in 2016.
On the loss side were solar -55%, biotech -35% and healthcare -18%. Summing up the losers of 2016 is easy: anything to do with alternative energy was annihilated. People started to pushback against exorbitant drug prices — partly thanks to Obamacare — and slammed drug stocks, hospitals, long term care facilities and even drug stores.
Raw commodity wise, coal was the single best performer, higher by 98%, followed by sugar +25%, lithium +23% and palladium +20%. On the downside was cocoa -34%, wheat -24% and corn -11%. Fuck the farmer.
Bitcoins rose by 120%, the Brazilian real rose by 21% and the Russian ruble soared ahead by 19%. The Mexican peso plunged by 20% and for all of its pomp and circumstance, the US dollar index rose by less than 4% to 14 year highs.
Bonds were flat and copper lept by 17%.
The Shanghai finished 2016 the biggest loser — off by 12.5%, followed by Portugal -12% and then Italy -10.2%. The best performing markets were Russia +52%, Pakistan +44% and Brazil +38%.
Of the big western markets, the small cap Russell index performed best, higher by 20%.
Data provided by Exodus
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The propaganda coming out of the Washington Post isn’t even creative or convincing. It’s the type of nonsense that one instantly dismisses as the work of a lazy employee of the state. Look at this sensationalist headline posted by Washpo last night.
Ooh, sounds menacing right? By the looks of it, the Russians were quickly working their vodka driven ways towards shutting down all of our lights, Christmas tree included. The only problem with this narrative is that it’s a complete fabrication.
Here is the statement from Burlington Electric.
In other words, a single laptop, not connected to the grid whatsoever, had malware on it — likely from purveying porn sites, and Washpo published an alarmist story suggesting the entire grid was at risk of becoming the bitch to malicious Russian hackers. What the fuck?
After being revealed to be fake news, the cucks at Washpo changed the title of their article. This is what it reads now.
And here’s what the democratic governor of Vermont had to say about the event.
“Vermonters and all Americans should be both alarmed and outraged that one of the world’s leading thugs, Vladimir Putin, has been attempting to hack our electric grid, which we rely upon to support our quality-of-life, economy, health, and safety.”
So instead of keeping his mouth shut after it was revealed that the Russians had not hacked the grid, Shumlin doubled down on a fake Washington Post story and blamed Putin himself for trying to fuck up America’s ‘quality of life, economy, health, and safety.’
Bear in mind, all of this assumes that the actions of this so called ‘GRIZZLY STEPPE’ group is actually real, actually Russian, and not actually a figment of the CIA’s imagination. This was the proof offered to the American people regarding this insidious group, led by Putin, trying to install Trump into the Presidency and then shutting off our lights.
Long time reader of the site and real life cyber security expert, Gap, summed it up best.
As to the actual code being used in these sophisticated attacks, they appear to be ‘made in the Ukraine’, is outdated and thoroughly shit.
Source: Zerohedge
Comments »According to some cybersecurity specialists, the code came from an outdated Ukrainian hacking tool. As RT notes, IT specialists that have analyzed the code and other evidence published by the US government are questioning whether it really proves a Russian connection, let alone a connection to the Russian government.
Wordfence, a cybersecurity firm that specializes in protecting websites running WordPress, a PHP-based platform, published a report on the issue on Friday.
Wordfence said they had traced the malware code to a tool available online, which is apparently funded by donations, called P.A.S. that claims to be “made in Ukraine.” The version tested by the FBI/DHS report is 3.1.7, while the most current version available on the tool’s website is 4.1.1b.
“One might reasonably expect Russian intelligence operatives to develop their own tools or at least use current malicious tools from outside sources,” the report says.
The second part of the analysis deals with the list of IP addresses provided by the US agencies. The report says they “don’t appear to provide any association with Russia” and “are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors.”
The New Year’s festivities are almost here and I wanted to make sure I got to say thank you for supporting the site, before you headed off into the blue moon to inebriate yourselves to the point of retardation.
When I quit managing money in December of 2015, I was as happy as a pig in slop. Looking back on that moment now, seeing the results of the market, I am filled with regrets. Some people don’t know what they want to do in life. They hem and haw through life with indifference and half ass their efforts because their work isn’t inspirational. I was always lucky in that regard. Since the age of 10, I wanted to be a stock broker. As a young teenager, me and my nerd friends would play money manager using the Wall Street Journal quotes, some paper and pencil, and a lot of imagination.
When I became a stock broker, the dream of wanton success and elaborate degrees of winship was alive and well in me. I’d work furiously and without pause until I reached success. I achieved business success after just a few years, but was quickly disillusioned when the dot com bubble burst — causing me to lose tremendous amounts of money for my clients and personally.
Nevertheless, I moved on from that and slowly built my business back to be bigger than ever. However, the ebbs and flows of an economy on tilt, being rigged by central banks, eventually took its toll and I started to hate it. So in December of 2015 I quit.
Not having anything to do with myself, I completely immersed myself in iBankCoin, quickly moving on from personal trade ideas to news and then politics. The election season was too interesting for me to ignore. I realized by doing this, spewing out certain ideas and demonizing ‘libtards’, I’d abandon 30% of my legacy reader base — many of which had been very loyal readers since the beginning. But I couldn’t contain myself. The ideas put forth during the campaign and the pettiness that has occurred since then provided me with a golden opportunity to explore this nefarious outlet — and I did so with great vigor and tenacity — as most of you know. In other words, I used to get angry at myself or the market for not adhering to my beliefs, now I just get mad at everything else.
I have deep seated anger issues, but I’ll be ok.
Part of reconciling with some of you retarded liberals was to lift all bans from iBC, forever. I will only ban people for making direct threats or spamming. In spite of the fact that I do not agree with many of you, I am mature enough now to see that ideas are just ideas, life is finite, and everyone should have a say.
The subsequent result of all of my bantering has led to a 60% jump in iBankCoin traffic and an appreciable spike in Exodus memberships (we do need to keep the champagne flowing around here). Aside from iBC being my soul and life’s work, it’s also a business and I take it very seriously. We’re working on some great updates for the software in 2017 and I intend to become very active in my trading account, in order to keep me focused and interested in finance.
I am very ritualistic about New Year’s Eve and believe it’s a time to cast away bad habits, old belongings, and move onto greener pastures. For 2017, I intend to return to my former glory and grace, thrusting enemy battleships into the ramparts of hell — sending all in my path towards a forlorn journey into the black abyss of never ending suffering and loneliness.
I wish everyone else a very happy New Year’s and may 2017 be the year that you finally grow a penis and become the man you were supposed to be.
NOTE: Exodus prices rise after midnight tomorrow. Lock in the lower rates now, else suffer the consequences.
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Oh this is good. The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman painted a picture of Obama kicking over wooden bowls, filled with gruel, from the hands of working class plebs — just trying to enjoy life’s simple pleasures.
Meanwhile, this is the Russian compound in Maryland that is being closed.
Not exactly spartan living.
She said the sanctions affected 96 people, forced to leave the United States on short notice. Some had to remove their children from pre-school.
Due to the holiday season, finding an airplane to Moscow proved to be a difficult task, so the Russian government sent a plane to pick everyone up. I’d love to be a fly on the wall on that plane heading for Moscow, filled with angry and very drunk Russians.
“One can only hope that this was the last thing that the current administration does to spoil bilateral relations – the last strange, unwise decision, which targeted, among other things, ordinary people and their simple human joys,” she added.
She twisted the knife in a little deeper, explaining why Moscow didn’t expel US diplomats in Russia.
“We took into serious consideration how our American colleagues and their families would feel. Especially their children, who are now preparing for the New Year and are on their Christmas holidays,” Zakharova explained. “They would have been cut off from their school programs and forced to pack their things and go back to their homeland in 72 hours. So we decided against it.”
Yesterday, Zakharova went apeshit on her Facebook page, criticizing Obama. This is a fucked translation by Facebook. But you’ll get the gist.
The Monte Paschi saga continues. If we lives in normal times, they’d like the rotten bank go bankrupt already. After all, the bank sucks. But since we live in an era of perpetual bailouts led by central banks, Monte Paschi gets to live and infect many others with its disease.
Yesterday the ECB announced new rules for Monte, demanding that the prospective Italian bailout of the bank bring its tier one capital up to 8% from the current -2.4%.
Jesus Christ.
Currently the legal minimum is 4.5%. If the ECB were to hold other European banks to the 8% standard, well then, at least 10 of them will need to raise new capital, including Deutsche Bank, Unicredit and Allied Irish.
“There’s a lot more to be explained,” said John Raymond, senior European bank analyst at CreditSights. “They just say, ‘Oh, this is needed to get to 8 percent,’ as if we all knew the number was 8 percent, when in fact that’s a completely new number.”
Monte Paschi needs to raise at least $9b, hardly any of which will come from the private sector. The Italian government will have to bail them out.
Based on the recent stress test, Allied Irish had a CET1 ratio of 4.3%, Deutsche Bank 7.8%, Unicredit 7.1%, Barclays 7.3% and Soc Gen 7.5%.
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