$JNJ Ordered to Pay $72 Million in Lawsuit, Because Their Talcum Powder Causes CANCER

You can’t get more evil than cancer causing powder, used for babies and small children. Naturally, some older people use it too. And, apparently so, it fucking causes cancer, of the ovarian varietal.

Johnson & Johnson was ordered by a Missouri state jury to pay $72 million of damages to the family of a woman whose death from ovarian cancer was linked to her use of the company’s talc-based Baby Powder and Shower to Shower for several decades.

In a verdict announced late Monday night, jurors in the circuit court of St. Louis awarded the family of Jacqueline Fox $10 million of actual damages and $62 million of punitive damages, according to the family’s lawyers and court records.

Guess who owns the brand who makes this shower to shower cancer talc shit?

You guessed it: VALEANT PHARMA. They must’ve gotten it real cheap, after JNJ found out it caused fucking cancer.

Out of nowhere, European markets have started to tank again, led by German markets–who are, inexorably, being placed into the sausage machine.

As such, US futures have doubled its losses to 88.

The Japanese currency fluctuates 1-2% in any given day versus the dollar and Bloomberg’s army of 2,400 journalists don’t bother to even broach the subject. However, the Chinese yuan dropping for a fourth consecutive day, to the tumultuous tune of 0.23%, is headline news of the extreme varietal.

Why?

The yuan fell 0.08 percent to 6.5319 a dollar as of 10:24 a.m. in Shanghai, according to China Foreign Exchange Trade System prices. It dropped to 6.5326 earlier, the weakest level since Feb. 15, and has lost 0.23 percent in a four-day streak. The central bank cut the reference rate by 0.04 percent to 6.5302 following a 0.17 percent reduction on Tuesday.

“Sentiment hasn’t fully recovered, and there’s still depreciation pressure in the long run considering China’s fundamentals and capital outflows,” said Tommy Xie, a Singapore-based economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. “The PBOC will likely keep the yuan stable against a basket, leading to greater two-way volatility of the currency against the dollar, before the G-20.”

In fairness to the media establishment, the purposeful devaluation of the Chinese currency has been something of a trend for the better part of 2016, as the Chinese economy struggles to grow at the required rate to keep their people from storming the palace with their pitched forks.

World markets are falling again, with the NIKKEI off by 0.8% and the Hang Seng down by 1.7%. Crude oil is down 2.3%; hence, U.S. futures are down by 42.

JP Morgan chief, Jamie Dimon, said in a conference call today that he’d buy JP Morgan all day at $48, suggesting it was good for an annual 13% rate of return. He boasted about his companies performance and staying power, in an effort to firm up investor sentiment. Dimon recently reported a purchase of JPM, equal to one year’s salary or $26 million. He was bored.

JPM is down 14%, year to date.

What will all of you fatties do when a bag of sugar fetches for $100? With El Nino (is it me, or is every year plagued with El Nino?) rampaging throughout the Latin world and Brazil, stupidly, using sugar to produce ethanol, the price of sugar rampaged higher today, after ISO data suggests the doom for sugar lovers is not over, but only just now beginning.

“A statistical deficit is clearly supportive for world prices,” the ISO said. All other things being equal, prices “can be expected to trend generally higher in the remaining months of 2015/16.”

El Nino has already hurt plantings in Brazil the largest sugar grower, as well as India and Thailand, spurring price gains in the final months of 2015. But further heavy rainfall in Brazil has prompted forecasters to revise their numbers. Rabobank International said Tuesday it now expects a bigger deficit than the 4.7 million tons it previously saw. Last week, INTL FCStoneraised its deficit forecast to 7 million tons. Recent heavy rains in Sao Paulo province may delay the harvest that starts in April, according to MDA Weather Services.

The ISO data “reiterates that El Nino is not over — we still don’t have the final tallies on Thai and Indian crops,” Michael McDougall, a senior director at Societe Generale in New York, said by telephone. “Pressure is increasing as we move forward, things are getting tight.”

Raw-sugar futures for May delivery soared 8.9 percent to settle at 13.90 cents a pound by 1:04 p.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York, the biggest one-day gain for the most-active contract since at least March 1993. In London, white sugar for May delivery jumped 6.1 percent to $395.90 a ton on ICE Futures Europe.

It’s not just adverse weather that’s supporting prices. Brazilian mills are making more ethanol from sugar cane to meet surging domestic demand for the biofuel, adding extra pressure on sugar supplies.

The sugar ETF, SGG, is up 26% over the past 6 months.

This is the sort of shit I have to deal with, parsing through video clips of crazy men giving fucking trophies to global giants for having a great quarterly conference call.

We get it, Cramer. Home Depot is the best company ever conceptualized, readily assisting general contractors to rip off unsuspecting home owners with their shoddy work. Frankly, I don’t know why I even bothered to post this drivel, other than the indelible fact that many of you have a vested interest in hearing about Home Depot.

Say what you want about Dick Bove, the man knows his banks. He’s a repository of bank knowledge in both mechanism and historical precedent. During this interview, he made the two little ladies questioning him look like orangutangs, unable to ask a question possessing a modicum of intelligence, stuttering and stammering all the way to the end.

If forced to describe this interview with one word, I’d say ‘swag.’

Bove stunted on Kashkari’s communist manifesto to break up the banks, made the CNBC host sound and look ridiculous, and he even chastised  Jamie Dimon, equating his analogy offered to describe the difference between big banks and small as ‘childish.’

Boss.

I want the world to end, just like the next guy. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen tomorrow. Like a fine wine, good things get better with age. The longer we delay the apocalypse, the greater its spectacle will be.

That being said, stocks were hammered by 1% today, throwing the long only camp into a fury, unable to deal with the minor set back. Commodity related stocks were poleaxed by 5% and David Einhorn told you the commodity super cycle was over.

On the plus side were discount, carnivale type stores, whereby goods are bargained off for less than $1. Also, gold and bonds fared well. Let’s not forget department stores, such as M, DDS and even SHLD were all higher.

It’s entirely possible that the top has been reached and everyone here who is long will commence a period of draw-down that can only be described as dreadful. But, it’s also possible that you are reading too much into this and that stocks aren’t done pressing higher. The wall of worry is very tall indeed, which effectively makes it all the more alluring to climb.

Even though I’ve embarked on a campaign to do away with equity exposure until the next Exodus oversold signal, I am not bearish enough to consider short positions, at least not now. The time for betting against stocks was in January and will come again in May. There will be a period of time when your only hopes will be for a Federal Reserve emergency meeting to take place on a warm summer night.  But the weather is still cool and the Federal Reserve isn’t done inflicting their damage upon the global economies.

Don’t forget that tonight is the 2nd part of Jeff Macke’s boot camp. Our investor camp last through Friday. Don’t worry if you’ve signed up late. There are video archives available for late stragglers. The Option Addict is presenting on Wednesday and Thursday and finally RAUL on Friday.

Quick, hide the kids under the bed, or better yet, the closet. Fed’s George is out making a speech today, where she said this, in regard to the idea of hiking interest rates in March: “It absolutely should be on the table for consideration.”

Trust me when I tell you, the market hasn’t come to grips with this possibility.

She wants to move sooner rather than later, faster rather than slower. For the love of God, Esther George from the Federal Reserve of Kansas City (lolz), wants to destroy your common stock portfolio through the premature hiking of interest rates.

According to the alcoholic gamblers at the CME, the market thinks the chances of the Fed hike in March is just 10%.

If done, markets are going to reel lower, heavy kick to the chest into a sea filled with hungry sharks style.

I knew this news would stifle the lot of you, Hansel and Gretel, chocolate bar eating fools. Nevermind the stock market and subsequent losses that you will endure for relegating yourself to asinine money management plans, the Mars Bar company has received a formal complaint that a slither of plastic was present during the consumption of one of their products.

See?

Mars Netherlands said it decided to issue the voluntary recall as a “precautionary step” after receiving a consumer complaint about a piece of plastic found in one of their products.

Mars, Snickers and Milky Way bars with best before dates between June and October 2016 should not be eaten, the company said. Celebration and Variety candy packs are also being recalled.

It was only a mere slither, in which caused the billion dollar chocolate giant to undergo a recall on a massive scale, stretching around the globe twice, costing them countless millions of dollars.

But do not concern yourselves too gravely, it was only a petulant slither of plastic in a Snickers bar that has everyone in an uproar.

Nevertheless, if you value your lives and the lives of your children, DO NOT EAT CHOCOLATE PRODUCTS FROM THE MARS BAR CORPORATION, dated June through October 2016. Oops, that means Halloween chocolate that was already consumed. I am very sorry for your demise.

This is only precautionary steps and the Milky Way subsidiary has denied wanton rumors that consumption of their ‘bars’ causes humans to morph into brain eating zombies.

As you were.