18 years in Wall Street, left after finding out it was all horseshit. Founder/ Master and Commander: iBankCoin, finance news and commentary from the future.
Thanks to my cult-like personality (drink the kool-aid), I was able to secure dozens of resumes for a job that paid zero and offered nothing else but the glory and privilege to blog aside a living legend in finance blogging. I sincerely thank all who applied for the job, to be part of the second launching of the Peanut Gallery, aka iBC Blogging network.
We tried this endeavor several years back and it didn’t work out. We had hundreds of bloggers; but it was a fucking disgraceful mess. With this iteration, my intent was to hand pick the first 5, treat it as a blogging internship, where I would keep in touch and guide the young blood on how to properly attract an audience.
After careful consideration, here is the first 5 (twitter handles) of what I expect to be a very large and burgeoning community of finance bloggers, whose goal is to uplift the drek of 140 character bullshit to a realm that appreciates the written word.
Just when you though the Greek boogeymen were tucked away, locked in the closet: they reemerge with a fresh appetite for some new, cold, hard, cash.
“The keys to voluntary investor participation in the capital raises will be clarity regarding the ultimate capital structure and the extent of the government’s participation in the governance of the banks,” Ross, chairman of WL Ross & Co. said after the release of the ECB’s so-called comprehensive assessment for Greek lenders on Saturday. “Investors will not be comfortable with committing new equity capital to banks that are effectively nationalized,” the billionaire investor, who holds a stake at Eurobank Ergasias SA, said.
The ECB asset-quality review identified 9.2 billion euros of valuation adjustments for National Bank of Greece SA, Piraeus Bank SA, Eurobank and Alpha Bank AE, the Frankfurt-based supervisor said Saturday. The banks’ capital gap amounted to 14.4 billion euros under a simulated stress test scenario, and 4.4 billion euros under baseline macroeconomic assumptions. The four banks will have to submit recapitalization plans to the ECB’s supervisory arm by Nov. 6.
“Raising funds will clearly be difficult,” Arturo Bris, a finance professor at IMD business school IB Lausanne, said in a phone interview Sunday. “A solution can be a government-sponsored plan that takes care of the bad part of the banking system, while the good part becomes marketable.”
Under European stress tests, apparently all of the Greek banks are without proper funding.
So, how many of you are interested in some Greek bank bonds?
I could go cliche and choose Halloween; but that’d be lame. By the way, the Michael Myers mask was actually a cheap Captain Kirk mask purchased in Hollywood. It was an extremely low budget film, that went cult.
My halloween movie pick for 2015 is Trick R Treat, an extremely atmospheric halloween flick, made in 2008. It’s a contemporary classic. It’s not really scary, at least for adults. But it’s well written and it really hones in on the holiday of Halloween, which is pretty cool.
My grandfather used to tell me tales of halloween, growing up in Harlem, NYC, circa 1920’s. Times were tough, so they weren’t tossing protein around like kids in my day. Instead, they put flour into a black sock and used it to pound each other into dust. On occasion, he told me of times they’d store one or two eggs in a drawer for a month or two to make the eggs rotten. He said the stench it’d leave after exploding over someone’s head was enough to kill a mule, or bring back the dead.
When I was growing up, in the 80’s, no one trick or treated. Costumes were no more than a cheap plastic apron, with some bullshit sketched on it. I once walked around as a skeleton, with only the front painted, because that’s all C-town sold that year. For me, in my hood, Halloween was all about destroying the neighborhood and your friends with eggs and shaving cream. My friends and I would save our money and buy dozens and dozens of eggs, multiple cans of shaving cream, then head out to wreak havoc on our neighborhoods.
We’d affix aerosol caps to the shaving cream, so it would spray better. Or, if we couldn’t steal a cap from the local store or find one in our apartments, we’d take the cap, rip out the middle, and use that. It wasn’t aerosol, but it sprayed further than leaving it as is.
Everyone got bombed on Halloween. If you were walking outside and under the age of 18, you got nailed.
Because I lived in an apartment complex, there were rivalries between the buildings. I was lucky enough to live in the building that had the most athletic/most popular kids. Plus, it was like children of the corn around my way, with 30 kids running around without parental supervision, menacing the entire neighborhood. Cops never came by either, mainly because it was a low crime area in those days. Later on, when the neighborhood changed, people got shot, including several of my close friends.
One time we got caught off guard by some elder teens, who chased us into the building amidst eggs flying everywhere. We ran up the stairs, trying to shake them. Some of our slower friends got caught and egged to hell. The interior of the building was completely wrecked, strewn with cracked eggs and mountains of shaving cream. The porter would always get pissed off, cursing at us, telling us to “take this shit to the park.” The day was never complete without the psychotic, STEVE BROWN, dropping gallons of milk down the stairwell from the 7th floor, accompanied by his lunatic whistle to make it sound like it was a bomb dropping out from a bay.
Good times.
Oh, and if you ever yelled at us throughout the year for playing hardball baseball in the parking lot, your door got destroyed on Halloween.
I’ll leave the more extreme Halloween stories for another year.
Happy Halloween. Don’t eat too much candy; it’ll make you sick (Yo Gabba Gabba)
I sold out of a small position of mine last week in GGAL. The stock ran straight up like a bat out of hell. As a matter of fact, the entire Merval, Argentina’s main index, is up 46% for the year and up 31% over the past month alone.
Ask me why?
Zero fucks.
All I know is some asshole is going to replace another asshole as Presidente. As such, people can’t get enough of this Merval.
Here are Argentinian stocks listed here, with their fanatical one month returns, courtesy of Exodus.
If stocks aren’t your thing, being a dumbass advisor who solely depends on ETFs for business, have a look at ARGT. Here is how its stacked up v the Merval this past month.
Do we chase here?
The fuck do I know? Quit trying to kill the middle man. All I know is, while we’re over here getting our fingers cut off with these bastard stocks, fuckers in Argentina are getting rich, drinking cervezas, and having lots of siestas.
He admitted to several important things. For one, his average cost is $186. Also, he owns upwards of 21 million shares, making VRX his largest position in the “mid-teens” as far as positions size goes.
And, lastly, he said the stock has 89% short term upside and should be worth $448 within 3 years.
Here are some other notes from the call, via Briefing.
Does not believe business model is broken; Notes there are some big holders still in the name; thinks passage of time will lead to a revaluation of the co.
Does not see Philador as being materially relevant.
Does not believe a share buyback is the co’s first choice for use of cash at the moment.
Ackman has no plans to ask for a seat on the Board.
Notes Novartis saw similar issues however the stock was never attacked because people had more confidence in the co’s business model as it has been around longer; believes the perception is unfair to VRX.
From what it has heard, believes there could be some overstatement of Philadors numbers; does not believe VRX had sufficient control over Philador.
To me, this is pretty unbelievable stuff, putting himself out there like this. It’s reminiscent of his absurd JCP plan, or his HLF vendetta. Ackman does things big and very public. If this turns south on him, he’s gonna be wiping egg off his face for a very long time.
VRX is near the lows of the day, down 13%. Citron has been rubbing salt into Ackman’s wounds, tweeting VRX has a better chance of seeing zero than HLF ever will. Ouch!
He must be smoking some goood ganja, the same shit the Tepper for SUNE rumor mongers were smoking, if he thinks this will ever happen.
“I consider [Chinese monetary policy] much, much too tight still. And they play too many games with their economy,” he said. “If there was going to be paradigm, it would be China really easing; not one quarter, but they could lower a couple hundred basis points.
As you know, he shot down the SUNE rumors and laughed at the idea he’d ever buy something as stupid as SUNE. Also, he was cautious on his outlook for stocks, with little to no swagger.
Fact: stocks are up 8% since the last time he cast shade on the market. Oh, and he’s also still worth many, many billions of dollars.
Fri Oct 30, 2015 7:17am ESTComments Off on Valeant Shuts Down Philidor
Is it too little too late, or can the caped crusaders at Valeant turn this around (POW, ZAP, ZAM!) and get their stock price higher again?
“The newest allegations about activities at Philidor raise additional questions about the company’s business practices,” Michael Pearson, Valeant’s chief executive officer, said in the statement. “We have lost confidence in Philidor’s ability to continue to operate in a manner that is acceptable to Valeant and the patients and doctors we serve.”
Clearly, if VRX is running a scam, they’re pretty shitty at it. This all comes ahead of Bill Ackman’s sales pitch to Wall Street this morniing, regarding his awesome and amazing reasons to be long such a wonderful company.
Last go around for the Peanut Gallery was several years ago, an open blogging forum that iBC hosted for scores of vagrants and intellects alike. For me, it was a grande failure because the culture of iBankCoin was diluted by know-nothing fucktards, mostly interested in self promotion. After posting my request for formal Twitter resumes, I’ve received dozens of emails from people interested in voicing their opinions.
This is good news from a finance blogging viewpoint, as some believe Twitter has all but eliminated the need for blogs. The truth is, if you’re only on Twitter, you’re a nomad without a home. iBC can offer a homebase for you, one that is without agenda, aside from the completion of the Orbital Space Cannon (OSC), designed wholly for offensive purposes only. To my point, I offer zero promises or monetary reward for joining our ranks. Ad dollars do not support the site and I’d be a ridiculous person to offer money to people who’ve yet to prove themselves valuable to our organization.
Where we’re going with this?
Sky is the limit. iBankCoin has a powerful voice in finance, with over 65 million page views since inception. If you differentiate yourself from the pack, I will assuredly invite you to become a “tabbed blogger.” With it, eventually, may or may not lead to monetary gain. I’ve netted millions in profits from the site, since inception, self funded, totally bootstrapped, and without the hawk eyes of vulture capitalists peering over my shoulder.
That being said, if you’re interested in joining our platform and offering content, whenever it suits you, email me at [email protected].
I am likely to select just 5 people to beta test the program, then expand from there. Ideally, you will bring something to the table, in the form of a Twitter or StockTwits following. If not, I’d like proof that you actually know english.
