Scientific Studies Prove: Fat Faced Alpha Males Are Shitty Traders

WTF sort of propaganda is this? Do you mean to tell me Carl ‘give me three seats on your board’ Icahn is a shitty investor? Or how about Dan Loeb?

Nerds did a study using over 3,000 test subjects, categorizing men by (get this) their ‘facial width-to-height ratio’ — and have concluded that, scientifically, they are inferior traders to betas.

While we’re on the topic of short-wide faces, there is data that backs up the theory that these men should be eliminated from society. In fact, en masse, they’re far more likely to be convicted and executed than men with longer faces.

In fact, the facial width to height ratio is an excellent predictor in all types of behavior, stemming from criminology to sex drive, even to success. While short fat faced men are more apt to be overly aggressive, claw-hammering-violent deviants — that same behavior tends to make them utterly useless traders.

After years of underperformance, researchers may have discovered what’s plaguing the hedge-fund industry: too much testosterone.

Hedge-fund managers with high testosterone underperform those with low testosterone by 5.8 percent each year, according to a study conducted by University of Central Florida and Singapore Management University.

The researchers used a software to measure the facial width-to-height ratio — proven to be a proxy for testosterone levels — of more than 3,000 hedge-fund managers. After controlling for variables such as risk and market environment, the researchers found that not only do higher-testosterone managers’ funds produce lower returns, but they also have a greater propensity to be terminated.

High testosterone managers “trade more frequently, have a stronger preference for lottery-like stocks and are more likely to succumb to the disposition effect,” the report said.

The researchers also found that hedge-fund investors — specifically, hedge fund-of-funds — select managers based on their own testosterone levels. In other words, higher testosterone fund-of-hedge funds are more likely to invest in higher testosterone managers, while the reverse is true for lower testosterone.

The results of the study may have implications for hedge-fund performance as well as hedge fund culture, which tends to prize aggression, competitiveness and drive.

If this study is true, perhaps the prevalence of alpha males is what’s eroding alpha.

Alphas are attracted to other alphas, who the get blown the fuck out by alpha like behavior in hedge funds that are treated like giant lottery pools. This is great news for those of you searching for investment advisors — just look at their fucking faces.

If they have faces like this — don’t invest.

Alpha-male, moron investor

If your manager is a flaccid soft spoken cuck and looks like this:

Cuckold, Legendary investor

He’s likely to make you a fortune.

Feel free to prove this theory wrong.

Pro-tip: you can’t.

Every retard west of the Nile is long FAANG in their asset management plans because MUH hedge fund hotel, liquidity, and MUH awesome returns. The profile of the FANNG basket is as follows:

FB, AMZN, AAPL, NFLX, GOOGL

Median market cap: $590b
Median PE: 59
Median P/S: 6.8
Median Sharpe: 1.20

Avg YTD Returns: +21%

The trillion dollar question is, can Exodus find the next gimmicky acronym based investment strategy?

Answer: fuck yeah.

BEHOLD: CARBS

CRM, ADBE, RTN, BA, STO

Median market cap: $93b
Median PE: 30
Median P/S: 2.4
Median Sharpe: 2.29

Avg YTD Returns: +23%

Here are good reasons for you to swap out of FAANG and into CARBS.

#1 CARBS represents war, and missile, and shit.
#2 CARBS got some Norwegian oil in it, and FANNG has none.
#3 valuation wise, CARBS is far less retarded than FAANG and the laws of large numbers aren’t at a critical stage yet.

Now that I’ve solved the issue of finding a new acronym based investment theme, you can quickly call your clients and tell them the good news.

Chocolate sales in China have doubled the past decade, whilst supply for the main ingredient for the decadent treat, cacao, dwindles due to poor weather and fucked up crops.

Because people in America are eating healthier, opting for chocolate bars consisting of high levels of cacao (personally, I prefer 70%) — a crop shortage looms by 2020.

It’s a $98 billion per annum market and chocolate nerds and global warming are menacing supplies to the point that some believe it will be extinct by 2050.

NOAA warns that 89.5% of land currently used to cultivate cacao will no longer be suitable by 2050. The agency recommends focusing on farming specific breeds of cacao seeds that are resistant to drought and supporting more efforts to grow cacao seeds using a traditional Brazilian method called cabruca, in which additional trees are planted in the rainforest to provide cacao trees with shade—a critical element the seeds need to survive.

The Ivory Coast represents 33% of world supply and they’ve been getting hammered with rain, too much rain in fact, which is damaging the second crop of the season. The first crops were damaged by drought.

Although an unseasonably dry spell has hit Ivory Coast, there has been so much rain in recent weeks that sentiment is shifting, said Commerzbank. The rains could damage the second crop of the current season and that “heavy rain could tear the fruits from the trees before they have fully ripened,” it said.

Citigroup is also bullish on cocoa. “Cocoa balances are expected to shift from surplus to deficit on lower world production and processors returning to the market,” it said.

The subsequent result of all this hand-wringing is +50% jump in the price of cocoa.

On the other side of the trade is HSY — lower by 15% for the year — all thanks to you gluttonous Hansel and Gretel acting motherfuckers stuffing your fat faces with gigantic bars of 70% cacao.

I can’t wait until there’s no chocolate left and you’re forced to eat shit.

I woke up to the SEC fucking with a stock I just bought yesterday and now I’m conceding victory to the Russians — selling out from my RUSS position. Moreover, I sold my FRANKENFOOD disaster, RKDA, which is also sharply lower. This is a day of infamous happenings for me, marked by bad luck and bad trading.

The proceeds are in cash and deserve to rest there for a while, since I obviously have no idea what I’m doing here.

Today’s gains are industrial: steel, iron, copper, oil, trucks, services. It has a macro feel to it, suggestive of an American economy about to take off. Alas, it’s just one stinking day and I will not get lassoed into its web.

The weakest of all the sectors is tech. Are we finally going to rotate out of tech and into something else?

What the fuck do I know? I haven’t the slightest clue what I’m doing right now.

I woke up this morning to this news.

The revelation of an SEC investigation into the nefarious practices of a company dubbed RIOT, which I happen to own as of yesterday.

“SEC Chairman Jay Clayton warned that it is not acceptable for companies without a meaningful track record in the sector to dabble in blockchain technology, change their name and immediately offer investors securities without providing adequate disclosures about the risks involved, As a result, we could be subject to substantial SEC scrutiny that could require devotion of significant management and other resources and potentially have an adverse impact on the trading of our stock.”

I sold the fucker in the pre-market, down 4%. Absolutely fucked by the SEC, absolutely. I can’t catch a break with these shitcoin companies. All I want to do is trade them a little — 100% here, 75% there. I haven’t any interest in their actual businesses, which is why I suppose these occasional losses are well deserved and earned. It’s nearly impossible to nail these volatile stocks all the time — there will be blood.

Speaking of which, oil is up nearly 2% and gold/silver are also running. This, of course, will fuck my Russian short, but provide succor for the NUGT. By the way things are angling out in the pre-market, I’ll be lucky to break even should the market gap higher by 500.

Midway into April, I am sick and tired of 30 degree weather here in the north east. I know you southerners think you’re blessed with hot air — but it makes the people stupid and the insects belligerent. The cold air makes the people smart — forces them to think about their crops and how they might survive over the harshest months of the year. For example, the local farmers market here is closed on Wednesday, and during off-peak season, they close at 5pm. There are times, sadly, when I am forced into the dissolved premises of the Princeton Whole Foods in order to purchase produce with the rest of the empty vessels. But I just about had my fill with freezing temperatures and would kindly like to make a very public appeal to the Gods for warmer climes. Thank you very much. (<—- things an asshole would say after a sentence like that)

There’s a bunch of other shit taking place in the pre-market, but I don’t feel like telling you about it, quite frankly.

The good news is that SBUX is taking steps against being racist faggots. On May 29th they’ll be closing all 8,000 stores in order to re-educate people on racial matters. I’d love to be a fly on the wall during one of these faggot meetings.

“Listen here Brad, when you see two African-American gentlemen sitting peacefully in the store, do not call the police on them.”

What happened to common sense?

In other news, a famed British journalist, Robert Fisk, visited the town of Douma, Syria and concluded the town was not gassed.

This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks–and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world’s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There’s even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down in the very same clinic, cheerfully tells me that the “gas” videotape which horrified the world– despite all the doubters–is perfectly genuine.

War stories, however, have a habit of growing darker. For the same 58-year old senior Syrian doctor then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.

It was a short walk to Dr Rahaibani. From the door of his subterranean clinic–“Point 200”, it is called, in the weird geology of this partly-underground city–is a corridor leading downhill where he showed me his lowly hospital and the few beds where a small girl was crying as nurses treated a cut above her eye.

“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night–but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia–not gas poisoning.”

So the story of Douma is thus not just a story of gas–or no gas, as the case may be. It’s about thousands of people who did not opt for evacuation from Douma on buses that left last week, alongside the gunmen with whom they had to live like troglodytes for months in order to survive.

I walked across this town quite freely yesterday without soldier, policeman or minder to haunt my footsteps, just two Syrian friends, a camera and a notebook. I sometimes had to clamber across 20-foot-high ramparts, up and down almost sheer walls of earth. Happy to see foreigners among them, happier still that the siege is finally over, they are mostly smiling; those whose faces you can see, of course, because a surprising number of Douma’s women wear full-length black hijab.

…Oddly, after chatting to more than 20 people, I couldn’t find one who showed the slightest interest in Douma’s role in bringing about the Western air attacks. Two actually told me they didn’t know about the connection.

But it was a strange world I walked into. Two men, Hussam and Nazir Abu Aishe, said they were unaware how many people had been killed in Douma, although the latter admitted he had a cousin “executed by Jaish el-Islam [the Army of Islam] for allegedly being “close to the regime”. They shrugged when I asked about the 43 people said to have died in the infamous Douma attack.

Whatever.

The volatility index collapsed again.

Who wishes they could be long XIV here? It would be glorious.

Not much else to discuss, other than stay long stocks, short Russia — indifferent on anything coming out of the media

I tend to default to hyperbole, a byproduct of my violent upbringing. This trait has served me well over the years; but, on occasion, has led me down a ruinous path (i.e., VXX trades), saved only by my natural wit and charms.

Here I am, down 50% in a variety of SHITCOINS, delving back into a proxy play of lamentable qualities. Before I mention the stock, which shouldn’t be of much concern to you, I’d like to let you know that I am behaving quite well and have been reading a great deal and also investing wisely. I’ve taken the majority of my money and have been investing it quantitatively, something I mentioned earlier this year — all to do with Exodus. But this isn’t a sales pitch, at least not now. Sometimes I think it’s important to reinforce a few things about the anonymous author of this site, “The Fly”, a man who doesn’t abide by conventional laws of decorum, but does in fact honor and respect the dignity of man.

In short, this means I do not waste time hating people and only focus my valuable energy on improving the quality of my life and the lives dearest to me. By extension, the people reading this site are beneficiaries of my efforts. I do not cast many harsh aspersions — but I have been known to ridicule some of you for what I deem to be “incongruous behavior” with enlightened peoples of the world. This is something that can be corrected, but only with effort and zeal. Summarily, I hold sympathies for those of you ensconced in a most vile, violent, and degenerate world and hope that both my prose, and investment acumen, can create an environment for you that leads to a semblance of acuity.

I bought RIOT this morning, not only because the ticker symbol harkens back to a nostalgic time when I was a swashbuckling teenager, but also because I think Bitcoin has bottomed and if it has — then the fucking blockchain is going to rip tits to the upside.

Aside from that, I have upside in nearly all of my positions today — higher by 1.2% — led by gains in RKDA, UEC and others.

Trump getting back into TPP, or threatening to do so, is another flaccid attempt at sticking it to the Chinese. The idea behind the TPP is to fuck over and screw China — an conglomerate of Asian nations banding together to fight the good fight. Yesterday the President attempted to fribble away at US-Chinese relations by declaring China a currency manipulator, when it fact the Chinese have been using their reserves to prop up its currency. The ignorance and incompetency of the ruling class is somewhat startling. Net-net, it’s a good thing to push back against Chinese trade dominance and maybe we can get a ‘better deal’ — but it doesn’t address any structural issues — which is a business culture contemptuous of a domestic work force in favor for the lowest wage. I suspect that is something that cannot be fixed and we will continue to see productivity losses, as the populous becomes disenfranchised and subjugated to a social order without upward mobility.

Dow futures are mobile, +240 — which is a stark reminder to those of you stuck in the amber of the middle’d class: this is your only way out. Invest wisely, do not fall victim to consumerism, marry smartly, and you might be able to create a legacy worth talking about and a bloodline that could be productive members of society.

It’s worth noting, crude is flat.

Here are some other headlines.

O’Reilly Auto downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Guggenheim
Xcerra upgraded to Buy at Needham; tgt $16
Methanex target raised to $75 at Cowen
Twitter upgraded to Equal-Weight from Underweight at Morgan Stanley
ROKU +8.4% (ESPN+ direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service now available on Roku devices; Point72 Asset Management disclosed 5.1% passive stake)
PUMP +6.3% (to join S&P SmallCap 600)
Stifel raises their NFLX tgt to $345 from $325
Merck upgraded to Overweight from Equal-Weight at Morgan Stanley
Lazard upgraded to Buy from Neutral at BofA/Merrill
Goldman Sachs beats by $1.38, beats on revs; raises quarterly dividend 6.7% to $0.80/share
Dollar General upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at JP Morgan
Chesapeake Energy downgraded to Sell from Neutral at Citigroup
Johnson & Johnson beats by $0.06, beats on revs; reaffirms FY18 EPS guidance, raises FY18 revs guidance

In an interview with the BBC, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said the United States punished first and looked at the evidence second — exclaiming Russo-American relations were worse now than during the Cold War — because during the Cold War, unlike now, there were open channels of communication.

He described the present situation in the harshest of terms, saying western nations were practicing ‘genocide by sanctions.’

In regards to the chemical attacks in Syria, Lavrov implied the US was signaling terrorist groups to carry out these attacks, or inviting them, by offering them an incentive in the form of military support.

“When some time ago the three western countries, who are leading this crazy campaign said: ‘if Assad uses chemical weapons then we would use force.’ I believe that was a signal to the bad guys, including the White Helmets to stage a provocation,” Lavrov said. “Now after they stuck on April 14, they say again if you do this again we will use force again – this is another invitation to the opposition; to the extremists to resume fighting, which they did already. They tried to attack Damascus immediately after the strike.”

The Russian RTSI is -20% from the February highs.

It’s not that I am wishing for world war 3, but I do crave a more interesting narrative here. What fun is it when only one side gets smoked out and the other just sits there and takes it? Plus, America doesn’t have a draft anymore and any additional troops will be provided by one of the many mercenary groups set up in this post-modernist world.

Happening now: Israel bombs Syria — Russia does nothing.

#BREAKING: Video of a missile being launched towards a object in the Far East area of the Damascus countryside. (Video: @Ibra_Joudeh) pic.twitter.com/IiFS1ZecoA

— BreakingNNow (@BreakingNNow) April 16, 2018

Breaking :

Syrian air defense launch missiles against unknown objects over Damascus and Home countryside

— H.K ?? (@Ibra_Joudeh) April 16, 2018

#Syria state media reporting missiles over Homs.

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 16, 2018

#BREAKING: Warn sirens can be heard all over #Damascus

(Source: Locals)

— Nidalgazaui (@Nidalgazaui) April 16, 2018

UPDATE:

So far not a single missle hit Shayrat airbase in eastern #Homs. All missles were intercepted by the Syrian army.

(Source: Syrian State media)

— Nidalgazaui (@Nidalgazaui) April 16, 2018

Stay tuned for more happenings. Perhaps Russia might be up to something, longer term.