$BID Explodes Higher, Tracking Very Closely to its Asian Customers

Sotheby’s is one of my favorite long term holds for a variety of reasons, the first being the divergence of classes in this country, and the world, widening– providing an avenue for the super elite to spend their excess cash reserves. The other reason why I like BID is because it will eventually get a buyout, or someone will attempt it. It is the ultimate show piece for any billionaire.

The vast majority of growth at these auction houses emanates from the east, ripping off newly minted millionaires in China. This is the reason why the price of art, first growth wine, and other collectibles have been soaring: Chinese demand. What I didn’t realize was how closely the shares of BID tracked with the MSCI.

Fascinating.

The company just recorded a stellar quarter. Profits were way up, led by a 22% jump from Hong Kong.

The stock is up 13% today.

In other words, Sotheby’s is China and is tied to its fate. Food for thought.

What did I say in the beginning of the year? I had this fucking rage against stocks and promised to only trade the oversold signals in Exodus, long only trades. Remember when I said that?

No, I can’t stick to a plan for an entire year. Poor Fly gets bored and has to veer off the reservation. NO MORE VEERING OFF THE FUCKING RESERVATION. Each time that I do, guess what, I get whipped with a cat o’ nine tails.

I just sold out of DRIP for a two point loss, from $7.5 to $5.5. What is that 25% inside a week or less? This is the second time I’ve been flame broiled in oil shorts this year, thanks to my fervent belief in the oil man being dead. If I keep this up, I’ll be the one dead, as the oil man smashes my dead body to pieces with his barrels.

There isn’t much else to say, other than quit being a dumbass and stick to the plan. It goes without saying, the plan isn’t to get impaled by haggardly 3x ETF vehicles of doom. Those fucking bastards at Direxion will get theirs one day.

No one saw this one coming, believe me. The parent company of Sleepy’s, MFRM, has been mired in mud for the better part of the last year. The stock had been ripped to shreds, off by 50%, amidst a slowing US consumer. So, naturally, a gigantic South African furniture company, dubbed Steinhoff, stepped in and fucking destroyed the 36% of shares sold short in MFRM, acquiring the company near all time highs or 114% higher than Friday’s close.

Founded in 1986, Mattress Firm has approximately 3,500 stores across 48 states with 80 distribution centers. In February, the company solidified its position as a leader in the U.S. mattress retail market when it completed its $780 million acquisition of HMK Mattress, the holding company of Sleepy’s. Sleepy’s was the second-largest specialty mattress retailer in the U.S. with over 1,050 stores in 17 states in the Northeast, New England, the Mid-Atlantic and Illinois.

RIP MFRM shorts. You accounts just went negative equity.

Get the fuck out of here with this shit.

In response to CMG’s catastrophic decline in revenues, the poison vendors at Burger’d King have decided to launch their Whopperito, which is essentially a whopper in a flour burrito and some zesty ‘Mexican sauce.’

Super racist name to boot.

Burger King’s latest new item is taking a stab at Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., which is still reeling from a string of foodborne illness outbreaks.

The Whopperito, which puts Whopper burger ingredients like beef, tomatoes, onions, lettuce and pickles inside a flour tortilla, will be sold nationally beginning Aug. 15. A queso sauce replaces the mayonnaise from the hamburger.

“It’s certainly one of the first times that we’ve tapped into the Tex-Mex category,” Alex Macedo, North American president at Burger King, said in an interview. “It’s one of the fastest-growing categories — consumers like the freshness of it, they like the mix of flavors.”

Americans love their burritos, especially ones stuffed with whopper chopped meat.

They’re like an evil empire spreading their tentacles towards their minions. Immediately following a coup and subsequent crackdown of civil rights in Turkey, in which school children, scores of teachers and other random people were scooped up and tossed into raping prison cells, the folks at Goldman, Credit Suisse and the European Bank for Recomstruction and Development rewarded Erdogan’s regime for a job well done, by investing $150m in TFI TAB YATIRIMLARI AS, aka Burger King Turkey.

TFI TAB Gida plans to invest $800 million in the next three years as it aims to double its restaurants to 3,000 locations, according to a report in the Dunya newspaper, citing Chairman Erhan Kurdoglu and other executives. Revenue from the Chinese business will double to $400 million this year as the company targets 30 percent annual growth overall, the newspaper said.

The company is plotting to come public soon. I am sure Goldman will provide them with the advice necessary to make their dreams a reality.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Fed’s Powell cited sluggish growth and a lack of inflation as a reason to hold off on hiking rates

“The probability of an era of weaker growth, lower potential growth – that worries me more than it used to,” he was quoted as saying in Monday’s edition of the newspaper.
“With inflation below target, I think we can be patient.”

Meanwhile, away from bullshit land, more than 500,000 jobs were created over the past two months and the Atlanta Fed is forecasting 3.8% GDP growth for Q3.

Fed’s Powell is either wholly full of shit or an idiot.

You decide.

I haven’t concocted a blogroll since 2004. I’ve been getting bored of all the lies and deceit coming out from the grimaces of the main stream media reporters. As such, I’ve done some reading over the weekend and come up with a few sites that I like, some for nefarious purposes. I fully intend to incorporate some of their missives into my content in the days, weeks and centuries to come.

They’ll all be long dead and I’ll be quoting them to my readership base of belligerent space invaders, who will fucking love me.

• Zerohedge
• Daily Reckoning
• Ritholtz
• Reformed Broker
• Wealth of Common Sense
• Calculated Risk
• Irrelevant Investor
• Mish Talk
• Economists View
• Naked Capitalism
• Pragcap
• Contra Corner
• Dollar Collapse
• Economic Collapse Blog
• Financial Sense
• Wolf Street
• Abnormal Returns
• Howard Lindzon
• Crossing Wall Street
• Business Insider
• Dealbreaker
• Marketwatch
• Recode
• TechCrunch
• Venturebeat
• The Verge
• Uncle Fred!
• Techmeme

If any of you have a blog/site or two that needs adding to my olde blog roll here, please let me know.

Thanks in advance (super asshole form of goodbye).

Believe it or not, this is the largest e-commerce acquisition, ever. I’ve never ventured off to Jet.com, mainly because nothing is better than Amazon or Ebay.

Jet.com was founded two years ago by CEO Marc Lore, who will remain at the company to teach the fucking morons at Walmart about the internets. I suppose Marc was working real hard these past two years, building Jet.com from scratch into an entity that enticed and allured the corporate HACKS at Walmart to acquire them for 6x sales.

Truth be told, I find it rather amazing that Jet.com did $500m in sales last year. How the fuck does an ecommerce company go from dick in hands to $500m in two years? Pray fucking tell me, the world wants to know.

Maybe they took some of their VC money and bought lotto tickets, and with the winnings bought a bunch of lamps and rugs and shit from their site?

I really want to know.

According to CrunchBase, the company raised $800m from a sundry of greedy fucking bastards, including Fidelity–who chipped in $500m, which was likely all designated into performing ‘revenue QE’ for the companies balance sheet– by purchasing a bunch of lamp shades and tea kettles.

THE COMPANY IS BASED OUT OF HOBOKEN, NJ for christ’s sake, land of the hobo and boozehound.

The CEO, Marc Lore, stands to rake in $750m from the transaction.

What are the Chinese going to do? Perhaps they can dig for oil on one of their manmade islands? You never know, they might get lucky.

I have nothing better to do on a Saturday ‘evening’ at 2:46 in the AM than to report to you this horrible news. I walk the streets in the night, in search of blood, because I am a vampire.

At any rate, these FOREX reserves numbers came in as expected. Before the whole ‘capital flight’ that China endured in early 2016, FOREX reserves were above $4t. Not anymore, fucked faces.

Also, and this goes without saying (whatever the fuck that means), the Chinese seem to be interested in gold. Ahead of the Olympics, it appears they acquired lots of the shit. Maybe the made a bunch of solid gold medal for some of their community organizers and social media TZARS? For the month of July, gold reserves rose to $78b up from $77.4b. Whoa.

Comparatively, we’re doing pretty good too. Lots of our debt is owned by the Chinese, making them our bitches. Also, the Federal Reserve owns almost twice the amount of debt than China, making them our true masters. How could we owe money to ourselves, you ponder? Fucking.magic.

The Fed owns 2.46t of the debt and our agencies, like Social Security, own another $803b. Mutual funds own another $1t+, and a few haggardly peasant countries, like Japan and China, own a trilly plus of it. It’s a wonderful thing.

Our current account is fucked up too. But markets love that shit. Spend more. Fuck the grandkids. Do more coke.

The debt bubble is massive. But who gives a shit when we’ll just order the Fed to print more of that fucking coin and buy treasuries in the open market? If their printing presses break, we’ll order the states and govt agencies to toss their cash into it and mandate that mutual funds can only permit clients to buy government money market funds, fucking all of the private ones. Oh, that’s right, we already do that.

Happy fucking Sunday. Enjoy your day at church.

It was an interesting week, with shorts getting arrested on Friday, flung carelessly into ravines, as markets ripped tits, higher, to new all-time highs. Inside of the hallowed halls of Exodus, there was lively discussion inside The Pelican Room (12631), pertaining to a great many trades and community oriented ideas.

In the beginning of the week, I highlighted SWKS as oversold and designated it as the Exodus pick of the week. While it struggled early in the week, towards the end it proved to be marginally profitable.

Once again, I was dispatched into the poorhouse with another wise idea to short crude, into the hole. This was an idea of mine, nothing to do with the algorithms. I’ll hang on to this bowser until early next week.

Based off impressive overbought data, I sold short FCX. Despite the rally in stocks, FCX closed lower than my entry point. I am confident in this short enough to hold it for another week, maybe longer. Additionally, TLT paid out its monthly divvy, lowering my cost to $118.85.

Towards the end of the week, the German ETF, EWG, was flagging OS. This had me thinking about swapping out the Exodus long pick for EWG. I might do this trade next week.

As of Friday, some overbought stocks, with impressive stats, include BHP, MUR, CEA, ETFC, JBL, MU, ESRX and ORCL.

On the oversold side, NSA, G and SIX look okay.

Overall, it was a solid week for oil, banks and semis, while utilities, gold and REITs suffered.  This is exactly what you want to see as a bull, all of that scared money fleeing for riskier parts of the market.

Looking at the individual industries, banks and semis look very overbought, while utilities and gold are pressing the low end of their recent ranges. These charts aren’t price oriented. They are a composite of all technical and fundamental grades, based off the Exodus algorithms, in an effort to find predictive patterns. You be the judge.

Notice how the current range is much higher than last year, before the melt up in gold? This is a result of shallower pullbacks, indicative of a sector that is prone to be purchased on dips. Exodus is constantly learning to evaluate ranges in real time, using moving averages.

Based off the above charts and several key stocks that are overbought, I’d bet for a pullback of a primordial nature in the week ahead. Also, TLT is oversold on its 3 mo algo, albeit with limited occasions to judge the signal. It’s, nonetheless, impressive.

It comes down to this one question: is the market behavior about to change or will the status quo that is sleepy and methodical in nature, at times tedious and frustrating, preside over the indices?