Trump’s Trade War Worsens — Threatens to Increase Tariffs Due to Slow Progress in Negotiations

It all started Thursday night. I chanced upon one of my kitchen windows and touched the folds of my white wooden blinds with a wet hand to peer into my yard. Much to my chagrin, when I removed said wet hand — I bore witness to a terrible spectacle — dirty blinds and a mud print left from my fingers. I then took a step back and truly looked at all 4 windows and came to terms with the fact they were all dirty, in spite of the cleaning services hired to attend to these ordeals at House Fly.

For the next 7 hours, I toiled away with the toxic chemicals, otherwise known to you as 409. As I sprayed and sprayed and then sprayed again, I could feel my lungs being affected, my throat was completely hoarse and my fingers raw from the exposure. The next morning I was in full blown allergy mode — dying throughout my house. Nothing could stop me from sneezing and feeling dreadful. By noon, a good friend of mine came over with his chainsaw — because we had agreed to remove my cedar playset in the yard — because it was old and dilapidated. Before we did that, however, we fixed one of the sump pumps in my basement — because, apparently, I have a river flowing under my house. After toiling with the rusted still rancid water, we went outside, armed with a chainsaw and beers.

Because we’re true men, we didn’t need face masks and as we sawed away — millions of particles of cedar dust spilled into my face and into my lungs. Whenever it got too bad, I washed it down with a Corona.

After 5 hours, we completed the dismantling of the playset and then turned our attention to whiskey and cigars. The gentleman at the cigar shop recommended a peppery pardon, 1926, retailing at $24 per — saying “these are all the rage here”. To that I replied, “who the fuck is buying $24 cigars from you anyway?”

At any rate, we ate heartily and I kept popping aspirin and Claritin in between sips of Redbreast and after dinner we smoked the cigars and they were terrible — like smoking a fucking bottle of pepper. It got cold real quick and I felt the sickness washing over me — so we retired early at about 3am.

Presently, I am shaking with fever and on the verge of certain death, and even though I rinsed my mouth out 10 times and brushed my teeth 5, I can still taste the peppery cigar and I’m too infirmed to get up and eat — so I rest here patiently awaiting death.

These people don’t even pretend to know what they’re talking about. It’s almost refreshing, actually, similarly to rap music. The tone is so ignorant and flagrant — it’s entertaining.

This is some low IQ shit here, not because inflation is a threat — but because we’ve just come off ZIRP and that shit did not produce inflation. Want inflation? Well then, help the middled class earn some money outside of their WMT gigs.

“I think it might be time for us to consider lowering interest rates,” Pence told CNBC’s Eamon Javers on Friday. “We just don’t see any inflation in this economy at all.”

“There’s no inflation here,” Pence said.

He also added the idea that Fed perhaps should focus on a single mandate, maximizing employment, to make monetary policy, instead of the dual mandate that also includes low inflation. Pence added that a single mandate is not something he and President Donald Trump have talked about.

“We’re seeing jobs being created all over the country … [and that] should be an encouragement to every American and also to people that operate our monetary policies,” Pence said.

Both Trump and Pence are now on record asking the Fed to reduce rates, at a time when the stock market is at record highs, unemployment is 3.6%, and my bank account laughs at me when I try to find a decent interest rate. I am forced to find yield in the market, which is the whole fucking point isn’t it?

I have home improvement shit to do today and will be out chopping wood and fixing sump pumps. If you really need me, break into the Mayor’s office and shine the bat signal into the air. If not, jog on and be merry and fuck off.

UCTT is a play off broader strength in semis with an OLED kicker.

OLED is just back and going a lot higher.

I found this amusing, in a “we have so much money, no one really knows who is buying what” sort of vibe.

Buffett reveled one of his guys at Berkshire has been buying Amazon.

“One of the fellows in the office that manage money … bought some Amazon so it will show up in the 13F” later this month, Warren Buffett told CNBC Thursday

“Yeah, I’ve been a fan, and I’ve been an idiot for not buying” Amazon shares, Buffett said. “But I want you to know it’s no personality changes taking place.”

Warren has been a terrific steward of Berkshire’s money. But truthfully, the next leader at Berkshire really needs to dial up the testosterone and commit to hostile actions — filling active 13-ds and demanding seats on boards — like an evil Buffett with designs for world domination. Too bad he kids grew up to be manlets, otherwise they could do it.

In other news, OLED is back in a big way. This is guided by iPhone sales and whatever Apple decides to do.

Universal Display beats by $0.34, beats on revs; guides FY19 revs in-line (156.60 -0.73)

Reports Q1 (Mar) earnings of $0.66 per share, $0.34 better than the S&P Capital IQ Consensus of $0.32; revenues rose 101.4% year/year to $87.8 mln vs the $64.59 mln S&P Capital IQ Consensus.

Co issues in-line guidance for FY19, sees FY19 revs of $325-350 mln vs. $337.98 mln S&P Capital IQ Consensus
Although the OLED industry is still at an early state where many variables can have a material impact on its growth, and the Company thus caveats its financial guidance accordingly, the Company believes that its 2019 revenue will be approximately in the range of $325 million to $350 million

The guidance was prepared utilizing accounting standard ASC Topic 606; under the prior accounting standard ASC Topic 605, the Company estimates that its 2019 revenues would be approximately $395 million to $420 million

OLED is definitely heading back to new highs, above $200. Two things of note: UCTT is the foundry that specializes in OLED and COHR makes the lasers. Take from it what you will.

Lastly, Nasdaq futures are +50 and Bitcoin is soaring above 6,000.

Non-farm payrolls came in at an astounding 263k — reducing the unemployments rate to 3.6%.

Who needs a China deal? We should keep taxing them and use the proceeds to buy weapons in order to bomb countries on a random basis.

Beyond meat has come public today and the stock went nuts to the upside. Look at the lovely lovely chart.

Truth be told, Le Fly tried being vegan for a year and initially felt good about the decision. I enjoyed the discipline of adhering to a certain set of rules — because I’m a man and men like order. At first, I was optimistic about this sojourn, saving innocent baby animals and being environmentally friendly. Plus, I had a deep seething disdain for the meth-heads who worked at the slaughterhouses.

About 9 months in, I started to truly hate it and felt I was being unjustifiably punitive with myself. After all, I’m not immortal and do not intend to live past 85, so what the fuck was I doing — punishing myself for the sake of what exactly? Since the beginning of man, men have been eating animals. They are lesser creatures and deserve to be subordinated, not because men are evil or because of cruelty — but because that’s what living is — the subjugation of one to uplift another. We can bear witness to this on a micro-scale all the way up.

Men are supposed to eat cows and sheep and chickens, not only because they taste good — but because the help build muscles and make us stronger — which helps us kill people who deserve to be killed. I do not expect any women reading this post to understand the mind of men. Your nature is to nurture and to be kind, and supportive, and beautiful. Men, on the other hand, despise other men who try to be beautiful and we frown upon other men who lack substance and aren’t formidable.

I can argue that BYND is a short from the very start and will barrel lower into irrelevancy. But it appears we have a wave passing over us now where men are women and women are men and upside down is sideways and gay bathrooms only serve vegetables — and anything industrious is poison. A great giant fucking psychosis is sweeping around the globe and this might help buoy BYND, at least for a while.

But eventually, like all things, men will turn vegans into dust and with it — BYND.

Good day.

It looks like the seasonality Gods are really serious about their work. Oil stocks are posting their 8th consecutive red candle today. Complete apathy in the sector now.

As you can see from the graph above, oil stocks, generally, do not do well between the months of May- January.

The entire basic materials group is under pressure — lower by ~5% the past month.

The Exodus oscillator is low, but not extremely low. We are not at oversold levels yet.

If you take out the recent highs — you can see there is a FAGbox for oil and we’re now probing the lower portion of it.

None of this scares me without HYG/JNK going lower. On a day like today, with WTI down by 3%, you’d expect to see downward action in the junk bond market — but nothing of note.

I recently heard an analyst discuss oil and he said that chemical stockpiles were heavily built over the past 3-6 months — but that waned recently and did not correlate with the price jump in crude. This was atypical and was indicative of market manipulation and not true end user demand, justified for the rise in oil. I don’t know what the real truth is, only that we should keep an eye on crude and definitely bonds. If you see a break in HYG below $86, get some hedges. For now, I am being patient — 65% cash.

For a long long time, Tesla bears have been grinning and dry washing their hands over potential liquidity issues at the company. On Twitter, these people identify themselves with the $TSLAQ moniker. This morning, TSLA and their ~$50b market cap and went to market to raise $2 billion.

Tesla formally announces offerings of $650 mln of common stock and $1.35 bln aggregate principal amount of convertible senior notes due in 2024 in concurrent underwritten registered public offerings (234.01)

The aggregate gross proceeds of the offerings, assuming full exercise by the underwriters of their option to purchase additional securities, would be approximately $2.3 billion before discounts and expenses. Tesla intends to use the net proceeds from the offerings to further strengthen its balance sheet, as well as for general corporate purposes.

Question for bears: how could you not see this happening?

In all previous offerings, Elon Musk has purchased shares. During this one, he bought 42,000 shares valued at $10 million. Back in 2013, Musk bought $100 million worth of stock in an $830 million offering — which was the pivot point for bulls and set the stock on the fucking war path higher.

The stock is up 5% on this news.

If you haven’t watched this video in full yet, I implore you to. Stunning. $TSLA $TSLAQ pic.twitter.com/ID7YhBPEXU

— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) May 1, 2019

This is exactly the sort of move that catches most off guard, which of course makes it all the more valuable. It happened. Apple smashed numbers. People got giddy. Market reversed and got REKT. From a sentiment point of view, this is as bad as it gets.

Throughout the session, I liquidated, raising my cash position to 65%. I am now on a 14 for 14 streak.

I’ve been selling because, err, May. But aside from that, I felt it was a reasonably intelligent trade to step aside after the crescendo, the grande finale — the finale salvo — if I might be sold bold.

I’ve been alluding to this scenario for some time now and here we are. Stay true to your mantra.

Will I short the tape? How could I do it here? Nothing in the charts suggests doom. I’d rather wait for confirmation and short into some speed.

I know, it’s all so miserable and life is better when things work perfectly. Very rarely do we get the things we want, when we want it and for a good price. This is the nature of living, having to endure the pangs in order to later get to enjoy the bangs.

I know I said everything about this market depended on Apple. While that thesis remains intact, I think it’s fair to assume the market had already priced this in. Going forward, the markets biggest hurdle are asshole fund managers going to Antibes for a cocaine filled sojourn amidst their degeneracy. Junior at the trading desk trading wildly, and liquidity drying up at a time that can or cannot be filled with more Trump fun.

For the most part, the gains for 2019 have been had and if you’re not up 15%+ by now — you fucked up.

YTD, the top performing sector in tech is solar. Who would’ve guessed that? After that, it’s all about software and semis. Are you long A list names or a bunch of shit? You know, I’m sick and fucking tired of you people blowing out your accounts, when all I do here is tell you what to do and how to do it. Although I think hiring an investment advisor is fucking retarded, some of you literally cannot be trusted with your own money.

I might take out long in a runner today, but I won’t be allocating any serious money — now 60% cash.