Over the next few weeks, the monopolists at Amazon will launch private label items, from nuts to detergents to coffee to diapers, under the brands Happy Belly, Wickedly Prime, Mama Bear etc.

This is a huge step, one obviously copied from major supermarket chains, that will boost margins and further Amazon’s goals to decimate and destroy all physical stores in favor of a virtual world.

To me, this is a huge affront across the bows of PG, CLX, CL and other household names. The entry of Amazon into this sector, via private labels, means that pricing power will be challenged for the manufacturers of consumer goods. Studies have shown that people don’t recognize the difference between private labels and professionally managed brands made by companies like Church and Dwight.

Typically, private labels retail for 25-40% less than branded labels and have proven to be very effective tools in re-negotiating better deals for retailers with manufacturers.

The clowns over at Moody’s downgraded the House of Saud’s credit rating this weekend, thanks to the price of crude slumping. Taking into account the high expenses of their harems and torture facilities, as well as operating the EPA inside of the United States, Moody’s believes their credit profile to be less than ideal.

While the government has ambitious and comprehensive plans to address the shock by diversifying its economic and fiscal base, those plans are at an early stage of development and their impact remains uncertain,”

It is not yet clear how this cumulative financing need will be met: while Saudi Arabia’s low levels of government debt at 5.8 percent of GDP in 2015 provide fiscal space, no medium-term funding strategy has yet been announced,” Moody’s pointed out.

It’s worth noting that the Obama administration, under the guise of global warming, has just passed new rules to punish American oil companies. This, of course, is a net positive for Saudi Barbaria and will help towards funding their freshly stocked harems, torture chambers, and global terrorist cells.

These are our great friends. We enable them with open eyes.

This is a story about a man, Jack, who was obsessed with a stock, which, eventually lead to his downfall.

He was in love with it. He fought for it and eventually died for it. In the end, Jack, gave everything for his investment, including his life. The love that he shared with his investment was entirely one sided, which was made abundantly clear when he was denied access to the floating door (spoiler alert!), a door that could’ve easily been shared, but was selfishly hogged by his bitch of an investment.

When the weather was balmy, she was exceedingly accommodative. However, once the storms came, self-preservation triumphed the childish notions of love, which enabled her to leave Jack in the icy waters without the comforts of a floating door.

This is a classic Wall Street tale, one that teaches those to remain emotionally detached from their investments, otherwise, you’ll end up in the arctic waters, destined for an icy demise.

I am opening up the lines for suggestions. Believe me, I am not without topics to discuss. There are many issues to touch upon, all to do with markets on the precipice of unparalleled disaster.

Nonetheless, the floor is yours. Try to set a nice negative tone for the week ahead.

Thanks

-Management

CEO of StockTwits, H. Lindzon, just completed an interview with Bloomberg, where he discussed this, that, and the other thing. None of which he said was important. What did stand out, however, was his black t-shirt, which was placed underneath a checkered button down shirt– a no-no amongst all of the fashion circles from Milan to San Fransicko.

Observe.

C

For those of you who are interested in seeing the black shirt in action, here is the entirety of his interview.

Harvard University just released compensation data for their former investment chief, Jane Mendillo, and it was somewhat underwhelming according to a sundry of morons who think the university is underpaying for talent.

Ms. Mendillo received $13.8 million in her last year of employment, which ended in 2014. Moreover, the top six gurus pm’s at the endowment were paid $50 million in 2014, in spite of the fact that performance has been lackluster.

Under Jane Mendillo, the school produced an average annual gain of 10.5%, which ranks second lowest amongst all Ivy League schools.

“It seems like they’re not paying the market price for talent,” said Ge Bai, an assistant professor of accounting at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, who studies compensation at nonprofits. “They’re paying extremely high bonuses to get mediocre performance.”
Alternative Assets

Really?

In addition to running a very lackluster endowment, Mendillo is on the boards of Lazard, The Andrew Mellon Foundation and GM. With exception to Mellon, the other two boards pay their members $250k per annum.

I have no problem with people getting compensated for doing a good job. I’m not Bernie Sanders over here, crying for the underclass to rise up and takeover the upper class, which would, essentially, drive this country into the ground. However, paying someone a salary of almost $14 million for performance that could be achieved in an index fund is just silly. She’s not to blame, naturally. The University itself are the fools who negotiated such a bad deal (extra Trump).

Yes, you’ve been told everything is going well. The market is within an earshot of new highs and all of the people who’ve been warning of a great, tremendous, collapse, are super assholes.

With marked exception to the following notable names, all who’ve been muddled to pieces in a bear market– down more than 20% for the year.

AGN -29%
LFC -35%
BCS -26%
NFLX -24%
REGN -32%
RBS -31%
DB -32%
CS -37%
LNKD -43%
PANW -26%
MU -32%
TWTR -39%
VRX -75%
JWN -21%
UAL -24%
FSLR -27%
HAR -21%
SCTY -62%

The list goes on for 9 pages inside Exodus. Here is the link for members. The minimum market cap requirement for that screen is a billion. It is, essentially, the cross section of the global economy.

Do you know what’s missing on that list?

Ironically, miners and energy stocks aren’t abundantly found there, in spite of the fact that they are the number one risk to the market and economy right now. Morons of the first magnitude have propped up an already dead industry. They just can’t read through the lines like I can.

What have I been saying all along? Give recession a chance.

Markets are scalping longs by the dozen here. I hope some of my former clients, who are now reading this post, have been heeding my dire warnings and have cash reserves.

My next trade will be my best. According to the laws dictated by Exodus, we aren’t done going lower yet. Incidentally, VXX flagged oversold yesterday and sports a great track record.

I will buy SPY when it’s time for a little mean reversion.

Meanwhile, back on the ark, the food is good and the drink is even better. I believe we’re eating some saber tooth tiger tonight, with a little red wine, dating back 30,000 years. I hope the cork held out all of these years.

In all seriousness, don’t believe the government data. We’ve become liars and thieves, just like the Chinese. Listen to the conference calls of some of the retailers who reported this week. Escape your little bullshit enclave and go see the real world, where real people live. The economy is oppressive for the middle and upper middle class.

We’re playing out the Karl Marx dream.

It’s raining outside and I don’t expect the storm to break until the dams do.

In an especially glum note on the state of retail, specifically DECK, BB&T is defying the government’s assessment of retail sales and downgrading DECK, citing a bleak retail outlook. Moreover, they believe the company is going to guide down, so this downgrade is an attempt to get ahead of that.

Via Briefing

BB&T Capital Mkts downgrades DECK to Underweight from Hold given bleak wholesale channel commentary from footwear, apparel, and accessories companies, coupled with Macy’s (M) and Nordstrom’s (JWN) dismal Q1’16 reports and outlooks. Wholesale sell-ins remain tough, with many accounts opting instead to chase in-season demand, and as such, firm continues to believe consensus expectations for FY’17 remain too bullish. They expect co to guide below current consensus numbers and they proactively lowered ests in early April. YTD, shares of DECK have risen ~13%, outperforming the overall footwear manufacturing sector, which they believe has been due partly to the possibility of M&A activity.

Sanofi is done playing games with the fuckheads over at Medivation. Effective immediately, their $52.50 bid for the company, which is about $8 below the present market value of the shares, means they could replace the entire board of 8 useless morons with their own morons.

Medivation has a few Merck people, one Jazz Pharmaceutical retired exec, and several other medical wastrels doing nothing all– but getting in the way of Sanofi acquiring the company whole, in an all cash deal, for $9.3 billion.

Lastly, they’ve hired Goldman Sachs to advise them on how to proceed going forward. Ooh, scary!

Shares of MDVN are higher by 1% this morning.