CNN Caught in Locker Room Talk; Crew Jokes About Trump’s Plane Crashing

Nothing to see here. The girls at CNN were merely fraternizing, joking it up about the President elect’s airplane crashing. If you listen closely, one of the catamites caught giggling said he’d only be injured, not killed, so there’s that.

Hot mics are a bitch and so is the person who made these comments.

Over this weekend, Italy will vote on a referendum that, if passed, will give the government sweeping powers to enact radical change. According to the latest polls, the referendum is expected to fail — which might then pave the way for the nationalist Five Star Movement party to form a government — who literally hate the EU.

Similar to what we experienced here with Trump v Clinton, Italian liberals are out in force — demonizing the right wingers who will vote against the referendum, calling them ‘Trumpistis” — accusing them of spreading pro-Russian fake news.

Sound familiar?

source: NY Times/Fortune

“A protracted period of political uncertainty after a ‘No’ vote could exacerbate the Italian banking issues, unsettle the Italian bond market, and weigh on business and consumer confidence,” says Holger Schmieding, chief economist with Behrenberg Bank in Berlin.

The populist and unpredictable ‘5 Stars Movement,’ as well as the anti-euro Lega Norde of Matteo Salvini, are waiting to exploit any failure of Renzi. As such, says Schmieding, “a political crisis could open up a bigger can of worms in Italy than it would elsewhere.” And that is never good for economic growth.

Some argue this vote could be even bigger than the BREXIT vote, because of the fact that Italy has so much debt and is wholly dependent upon Germany and the ECB to keep them afloat. If the referendum fails and Italy moves to exit the EU, it’s widely expected that the entirety of the Italian banking system, with some of the worst performing stocks in the world in 2016, will collapse amidst a gigantic plume of clown dust — tossing the Germans off the side of the boat to figure out all of their losses in solitude — entirely bedraggled with ruinous losses strewn out across their overleveraged banking system.

Ciao.

For the love of God, I do not get Snapchat. My teenage son and his friends live on the app, rarely, if ever, bothering with Twitter. I’m finally old. I started blogging about stocks more than 10 years ago, when I was just 29. Now I’m 40 and my interests have switched from consuming large quantities of Monster Energy soda and slapping people in the faces with hot slices of pizza, to a more genteel living.

Although I am keenly aware of what these youngsters are doing, I am not obligated to like it.

Two things are for certain.

1. I will not be buying Snapchat’s IPO at 25-30x next years revenues.
2. I will not be buying their retarded sunglasses — featured in the video below.

We got our hands on Snapchat's elusive Spectacles https://t.co/GUKNqJ7e2L pic.twitter.com/qakeORGYR9

— Bloomberg (@business) December 2, 2016

For gold traders, it has been a long month of the ‘Trump-trade’ completely decimating their lives — disrupting their austere lifestyles with harrowing losses. In the shadow of soon to be great again America, gold stocks plummeted by more than 15% over the past month — knee capping an otherwise spoiled rotten investor base who’ve been enjoying magnanimous gains throughout 2016 — even though they’ve mostly done it under the pretext of waiting for an end of days scenario to unfold.

In addition to gold, bonds and anything defensive, like consumer staples, utilities and REITs got hammered — as Joe Blow blew his wad into high beta, psychotic energy, and aluminum stocks — gleefully and flippantly tossing money at bank stocks too because the yield curve blew out.

If only for today, the defensive plays are back in vogue, reminiscent of the days when the deflationary vortex reigned supreme and people, literally, feared for their lives and the future of their nation. Gold and silver stocks are higher by 4%, REITs by 2.5% Utilities by 1% and Goldman is down 1.6%.

Recent underperformers in the biotech space are participating in the rally — as a general malaise wistfully sweeps through Wall Street — exuberant about any and all best case scenarios. Traders, as always, are ignoring all of the negative aspects of sharply higher sovereign borrowing costs and an administration whose central campaign promise was to bring China to its knees — reversing decades of unfair currency manipulation and one sided trade deals. Judging by the sharp rise in basic materials, especially copper, none of that is being priced into stocks.

Once again, Trump is not being taken seriously.

If recent history is of any use, investors will soon learn about the seriousness of Trump’s policies and how upsetting the apple cart isn’t exactly a seamless transition into mindless rallies — based solely on hope.

Once upon a time, this stock nearly destroyed me. Some of you might recall the winter of 2014 when the Four Horsemen of certain death nearly killed me. It was the largest drawdown of my meaningless career and it was the turning point in my life that told me that I didn’t want to manage money anymore. For that, I’m eternally grateful to WDAY. All other aspects of the stock can fuck itself in the worst of ways.

The company is out with soft guidance in their conference call this morning, which is having an acrimonious effect on its shares. Amongst other things, these assclowns are blaming the elections and BREXIT for the softness.

Hello, BREXIT happened two quarters ago.

Via Briefing.com

Last night, WDAY beat Q3 estimates and raised FY17 guidance slightly.

However, during November, co saw slippage in a handful of large deals with multinationals delaying projects due to uncertainty (Brexit, elections), not a competitive issue — co is waiting to see how it plays out.

Co also guided for 30% sub rev growth next year (FY18) with sub billings growth in the mid 20s (below estimates) and margin improvement; low teens sub billings growth for Q1.

Tech has already been the weak spot in this market. This warning will not help sentiment for high valuation, high growth tech.

The morticians at Bank of America are so far ahead of everyone else, they’re planning for an end to a bull market that hasn’t even happened yet. This is financial cuckery at its finest. If I was running their division, I’d fire them on the spot for such shoddy analysis.

The bank is literally warning that the end of the bull market is at end, but we’re due for another 20% rip to the upside. Well, hell-fucking-oh, I don’t think anyone is planning for their divorce just before getting married.

souce: Bloomberg

Stocks have continued to hit new highs this year despite concerns over global growth, geopolitical events, and an earnings recession. That dissonance may be coming to an end as analysts at Bank of America Corp. predict we are approaching the market’s last hurrah. The crux of the argument is that the firm’s contrarian sell side indicator, which measures Wall Street’s bullishness on equities, jumped to a six-month high in November, its biggest gain in more than a year. Right now, the index is pointing toward a rally of almost 20 percent for U.S. stocks over the next 12-months, but the analysts believe that a rally of that magnitude could mark the end of the bull run.

“[T]he post-election bounce in Wall Street sentiment could be the first step toward the market euphoria that we typically see at the end of bull markets and that has been glaringly absent so far in the cycle,” a team led by Savita Subramanian, head of U.S. equity and quantitative strategy at the firm, wrote in a note Thursday.

“The Sell Side Indicator does not catch every rally or decline in the stock market, but the indicator has historically had some predictive capability with respect to subsequent 12-month S&P 500 total returns,” the bank said.

Bank of America analysts currently have a base case call for the S&P 500 to end 2017 at 2,300, or 5 percent above today’s levels. With this indicator taken into consideration when formulating their outlook, the team’s bull case scenario represents a rapid rise in stocks. “The case for a traditional euphoria-driven end-of-bull-market rally is easy to argue for, and 20 percent or greater annual returns are the historic norm, putting the S&P 500 at 2,700 in our bull case,” they conclude, adding that their bear case calls for stocks to end the year down 27 percent at 1,600.

In other words, because sentiment was so poor, stocks will trade higher — then they will top. Gee thanks for the value add. This is something the Option Addict has been preaching the entire year, and did so with great success. If you want real analysis without cuckery, attend the last iBC boot camp of the year — scheduled to start on 12/12/16.

According to Bloomberg, world equity markets gained $635b in market cap, while bonds lost $1.7t — leaving a deficit of more than $1 trillion since the election. Much of those losses were absorbed by foreign governments, the cucks participating in never ending QE schemes. The balance sheets of the ECB and Federal Reserve are looking much worse now than just one month ago.

source: Bloomberg

“The market has moved with remarkable swiftness to price in the anticipated reflationary impact of a Trump administration,” said Matthew Cairns, a strategist at Rabobank International in London. “This has, in turn, prompted a notable rotation out of fixed income and into equities.”

Still, Cairns cautioned the moves are “remarkable given the distinct lack of clarity as regards what policies the president-elect will actually pursue.”

November’s rout wiped a record $1.7 trillion from the global index’s value in a month that saw world equity markets’ capitalization climb $635 billion.

The yield on 10-year U.S. notes rose 56 basis points in November, the biggest jump since 2009, and was at 2.44 percent as of about 4 p.m. in New York, after reaching the highest since June 2015.

The average yield on the Bloomberg Barclays Global gauge climbed to 1.61 percent on Nov. 23, after touching a record low of 1.07 percent on July 5.

“A lot of people are beginning to think that it is the end of the bull rally,” said Roger Bridges, chief global strategist for interest rates and currencies in Sydney at Nikko Asset Management’s Australia unit, which oversees $14 billion. U.S. 10-year yields may rise to 2.7 percent in January, Bridges said.

I think it’s important to remind people that the stock market has been soaring on the hopes of rapid GDP growth under Trump — who promised to build all sorts of stuff — walls, tunnels, bridges etc. What people don’t seem to grasp, unfortunately, is that in order to fund these projects the government needs to tap the bond markets. The 10yr bond yield has risen from 1.75% to 2.44% over the past month. The cost to service the national debt has skyrocketed — making it increasingly difficult to enact ambitious fiscal stimulus.

Couple that with the break-neck gains in the dollar, especially against our chief trading rivals (+14% v yen over the past month), and one can easily paint a picture that all of the recent grandeur in equity markets has only served to ingratiate the wealthiest in the country and have hampered the specter of any real fundamental change, via fiscal stimulus, promised by Trump — which is central to his platform.

Initially, everything melted up — in what could only be described as a post Trump short squeeze for the ages. The most significant gains have been found in construction and material stocks — up anywhere from 15-40% since November 8th. Second to the materials are the banks. Contrary to what the cucked media is saying, the banks aren’t going up because Trump is secretly a Wall Street shill. The banks are going up for one simple reason: the yield curve has steepened from 80bps to 129bps. For a banker, that spread is pure profit.

While the gains enjoyed by these sectors steal the headlines, I think it’s important to take note of the broad market cap gains across the biggest sectors, in order to assess a true and pure analysis of the gains.

Sector/Collective Mkt Cap/1mo Return

Drugs – Major/2.1t/+1.8%
Major Oil/1.68t/+6.5%
Internet Info providers/1.57t/+1.88%
Money Center Banks/1.38t/+17.5%
Chinese Burritos/1.3t/-1.1%
App Software/1t/-0.16%
Conglomerates/965b/+6%

In short, if you weren’t long a bunch of banks or oil stocks over the past month, your portfolios marked time. As a point in fact, out of $10 trillion in market capitalization in the aforementioned sectors, just $4 trillion of them enjoyed gains more than 2%.

The biggest losses were endured in gold and foreign utilities (currency fuckery), down 16.5% and 15.9%, respectively.

Over the past two weeks, the rotation and dichotomy of the market was much more pronounced.

Sector/Collective Mkt Cap/2 week Return

Drugs – Major/2.1t/-4.1%
Major Oil/1.68t/+5.9%
Internet Info providers/1.57t/-2.3%
Money Center Banks/1.38t/+3.4%
Chinese Burritos/1.3t/-1.25%%
App Software/1t/-2.4%
Conglomerates/965b/+1%

The biggest losses were endured in shipping and biotech, down 9.7% and 7.8%, respectively.

Not too healthy, eh? The market isn’t a zero sum game. Gains are merely transferring from one sector to the next — frustrating momentum traders with classic misdirection.

It’s also worth noting, the biggest market of all, the bond market, has been ravaged — with losses in TLT at 9.3% over the past month and -2% over the past two weeks.

If the muni market is telling us anything, it’s that a great doom is just around the bend. Back in November of 2008, munis dropped by about 7%. Last month, following the rout in bonds, munis dropped by about 7%.

The dollar value on the sell off equates to about $5b. The pre-funded munis, which are munis paid off with treasuries, are now yielding 1.53% — the highest since Lehman’s collapse.

I don’t care how awesome Trump is going to be or how great you think the economy is now, the hockey sticking of yields is never a good thing — especially in a government bedridden by $20t in debt.

The last time this happened, markets became disjointed in January of 2009 — paving the way for a record 16% lift in munis, as investors fled stocks in search of safer havens.

The market is allowed to trade lower every once in awhile. There is nothing harsh or unusual about stocks trading down after a big leg up. The rotation out of tech and into basic materials is happening and there’s nothing wrong with that either. Barring a complete melt down, which is highly unlikely to occur in the month of December, the bulls have won the battle for 2016 — holding firm in a year wrought with uncertainty.

My bubble Basket, domisciled in Exodus, has broken down. I update this portfolio every 6 months with what I interpret to be the highest valuation stocks. After a harmonious lift post election, they’re finally heading lower again — off by more than 2% today.

Tech stocks are getting shredded and breadth stands at about 38%. The very worst performers could be found in the semis.

It’s very odd to see such a divergence between the Dow and the Nasdaq, but not entirely unpresecedented. For me, the much bigger picture is the rapid ascent of rates and the dollar. Eventually, they will crush corporate earnings of exporters. But the market only seems to care about momentum, especially after a long year of bitter partisan politics. It is not, however, factoring in the fundamentals. Then again, the market hasn’t truly factored in fundamentals in years.

People only seem interested in the facts when things go wrong.