It was a week from rural Romania for “The Fly,” as the biggest bull run in 5 years decapitated much of his year to date gains— and humbled him into eating Lucky Charms cereal.
Looking back, it is true my erroneous bragging upset Mother Market, causing her to punch my face in with brass knuckles.
Nonetheless, I have made my peace with the dumb bitch and will start banking coin, shortly.
During the day, I did many things, which I neglected to report in my idiotic “Fly buy, Fly Sell” posts.
For one, I sold some [[SMN]]. Those evil bastards NEVER go up. It’s a blend of pure death for short sellers. If ag goes up, it goes down. If ag goes down, the gold part of the component buoys shares.
Under no circumstance can SMN trade up. I hate the people who concocted that ETF, with great vigor.
Also, I blew out of most of my gold position, via [[GLD]] and [[DGP]].
With the proceeds, I took advantage to re-weight back into short banks and brokers, via [[SKF]]. And, I bought more [[SRS]]. At the moment, my only b/d short is [[MS]].
Finally, I added to my [[FXP]] position. It’s a funny thing with that asshole ETF. The country in which the components are domiciled (China) is being obliterated with egregious stock market losses, yet here in the states—they are robust.
It’s not like speculators are getting poleaxed in China— big money is. Look at the banks. They are all down 40-50% year to date. In my book, the weakness in China means something.
All of our companies point to rampant consumerism in China— for our bullshit products. If everything is so great, then why is the Shanghai exchange down nearly 50% over the last 6 months?
Off to eat a hotdog.
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Two pork products meals in one day?
Stop for some Metamucil on the way home.
Big Dreams
Still at the SEC Conference golf championships and decided to check in. Crazy market stuff going on. Save some action for next week.
Outside of gapping the shit out of the markets before the open they really didn’t do much during the day. The NASDAQ COMPOSITE was only up .35% during the day on lower then average volume.
The markets have turned casino in after hours trade. Does anyone else think this market sucks?
He’s gonna eat a Hebrew National to spite the Pork head god. Casinos can’t export their chips to the grasping Chinese consumer, while CAT is very happy to do that, right along with jobs. Bow Tie may be prescient in moving his family to Charlie Chan. Like the junior Senator from Illinois says, when the jobs are gone, and the Nassau domiciled multinationals ship the food there too, about the only thing left here will be firearms and the Lord Jesus.
I think we are witnessing the birth of a new more humble Fly . . . I am conflicted.
BrundelFly?
He’s getting better!
GOOG hit it’s 38.2% fib line today (541.01) from the November 7th highs to its March 10th lows, and bounced back.
Two fib gap almost today, as well. That’s pretty impressive, and very very difficult to sustain.
April 18, 2008 – Moody’s Cuts Ratings On Morgan Stanley Alt-A Deals
Overlooked headline today ????
GOOG earns
http://www.fuckedgoogle.com/fuckedgoogle/2008/04/even-valleywag.html
iPhone
http://valleywag.com/381600/european-iphone-retailers-slashing-prices
fly-
serious question for you; not picking a fight or being an asshole. i respect you, and i honestly want to understand your reasoning.
SRS i get. gunners, mish and mr. mortgage are right. i am with you on that one.
but SKF? i understand it from a TA standpoint. i understand it from a fundamental standpoint. but after all that has happened in the last 3 months, what in the fuck can possibly happen to make the financials go down at this point? we all agree it defies logic. we all agree that the game is fixed. whats your thesis?
thanks in advance.
I am not surprised you lost Fly, I’m surprised you admitted it. Up 20%, BOOYAH!!
Boom,
That GOOG article was awesome. Fly oughtta give that guy his own tab.
And Mr. Mortgage too. Why not make this the site for “inside dirt” on all the bastids?
Remember that site “fuckedcompany.com?”
Update: FC.com is now this guy, apparently.
Someone posted something from this guy’s site last night, too. Odd, no?
yo brokeass, keep talking bs. You are still my number 1 contrary bitch indicator. Keep it up. :))
jake-
back in the glory days (1999, when i changed jobs every 2 months for a 50% salary increase each time), i used to use fuckedcompany as research material before the interview.
i miss being a rock star.
The FXP trades off the HSI, not the SSEC which is locked in a downtrend 50% off its high. And the HSI is in a reverse head and shoulders cock & balls formation, which is set up currently, to bring death & destruction to FXP bearshitters in short order.
Fly, why the heck would you sell SMN now after it has been beaten down so badly. Even though its in a perpetual downtrend it does pop hard. You should of waited for the pop which should land it at about $34 to $35 probably this coming week. I think 40 would be pushing it but it has done comparable moves.
Hang Seng Ba Ba Boo Friggin’ Yah!
BTW, It wasn’t the boasting, it was that video you posted the other day of that scuz bucket hedgefundmanip. You are hereby sentenced to lousy karma for the rest of the year. All your Lucky Charms are belong to us.
Boomer, Jakey.. what’s the big hullabaloo.. Bloomberg broke that yesterday right at the call. CAT earnings are spiked by currency translation gains, so is Coke, so is IBM, so is Intel. No one gives a shit about the quality of earnings anymore, don’t you know?
SMN makes a lot of sense with gold coming down and AGs overbought. It did well today.
Null:
Regarding the banks:
They are my ATM machines. Pun intended.
You wonder, “what will drive the share prices lower” after all the bad news. I counter: they have already regained most of the YTD losses and are due to come down.
Plus, they are still hemorrhaging cash and are not even near done fucking up.
They will all retest their lows. I like here under $105.
Jake:
We tried to “acquire” Mr. Mortgage, but he has some irons in the fire at the moment. We may link up at a later date.
I don’t think he realizes the power and dominance of iBC, yet.
Raider:
I sold some of my SMN for two reasons.
1. For mental health. I hate it.
@. Better opportunities in FXP and SKF.
ok, listen up piker cubs. This is how us bears survive in a bullshitters world.
==========================
Crybabycapitalism
If anyone was in doubt as to how badly folks want to believe that all is well and the Fed will save the day (the points I’ve been trying to make this week), today should put that to rest. Google helped ignite an explosive party as it managed to win at “beat the number.” That, as expectations had been lowered, and then Google dropped its tax rate about 4 points, which wound up creating the illusion that the company experienced a spectacular quarter.
Google’s earnings results, even with the tax-rate fiddle, were about where expectations had been set initially. Meanwhile, Google experienced a total collapse in its revenue-growth rate. So, all in all, it was really much ado about not much.
Poor results at SanDisk and Citigroup were similarly shrugged off. Meanwhile, a helping of joy was delivered by the dollar. (More about that below.)
Onward, Upward ‘R Us
Preopening, our stock-index futures managed to rally 1.5%-2%, depending on the index. Post-opening, we saw a bit of a dip. But about 90 minutes into the day, we were right back to the morning highs. Leading the charge was the Nasdaq, which gained better than 2%. For the most part, tech was red-hot, everything that touched a mortgage was firm, and essentially everything was chased higher. All in all, it was another feel-good session — where bullish operators (as I just noted) expressed their view that the Fed has saved the day, conquered the recession, the business cycle, and anything else standing in their way of financial nirvana.
It is remarkable to me that anyone with an ounce of common sense and an understanding of economics can view this current macro landscape as anything other than a tremendous problem in the long run. But for the moment, the majority of the voters have concluded that this bastardized version of capitalism — which I’ve decided to call crybabycapitalism — is just plain awesome, and they want more of it.
No Country for Market Bears
Turing to Capital One, which several readers have emailed me about, I took advantage of today’s weakness to cover my short in it, as well as trim a few other shorts that were weak early on. I’d assumed that earnings season would bring problems, and they would matter. But thus far, nearly all problems have been ignored. And, anything that smells remotely not like a problem (no matter how contrived the rationalization) results in a party. Thus, I am keeping only a handful of names as we continue to move through earnings season. I have less and less conviction about the short-term. I’m more and more worried that the current feel-good rally, which started earlier than I expected, might perhaps morph into something even bigger than I imagined.
Trying to sketch out the landscape is obviously always a work in progress, but for the moment, it would appear that the bulls are far drunker than I expected they might get — and even I had been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt about their level of sobriety. Having said that, I’m anxiously awaiting a moment in time in the not too distant future to aggressively take the other side of all this misplaced optimism.
The early-morning rally was built on. By early afternoon, the averages were even higher still, with the S&P (the laggard) up in excess of 2%. But that was it for the day, as a bit of a setback ensued and we went out with the still-large gains you see in the box score. There’s no point in discussing what went on beneath the surface, as there is no information in any of that.
Away from stocks, oil was up 1% and change. The xera saw a huge bounce. I don’t find that shocking because I’ve sensed that folks want to believe that the decline had been “overdone.” (I can understand how that sort of fits with the action in the stock market.) What did shock me this morning was the huge drubbing in precious metals. I awoke to gold lower to the tune of 2.5%. Midmorning in New York, it was down better than 3%. Silver was down almost 4%. That, as base metals were under some pressure (but not much). Precious metals cut their losses a bit, but were still hard hit. I’m not sure what the weakness means, other than to say that sometime in the near future, it will present an opportunity to add to precious-metal-related positions for those folks who need to.
Given Bond Yields, Nil . . .
In a development that did make some sense to me, Treasurys again came in for a beating, before they reversed and closed almost flat. My Treasury short (which is reasonably chunky) had instantly gone against me a month or so ago, but has now turned nicely profitable. I intend to beef it up, though I’m not exactly sure when (and today I actually covered half of it into the weakness). But one thing I’m absolutely certain of: Longer-term interest rates in this country have nowhere to go but up.
. . . . Chew on This Pill
Having said that, I think folks who need yield might want to have a look at some of the major pharmaceutical companies, which right now are woefully out of favor. I’ve seen this movie several times in my career: People who ordinarily are willing to be bullish on anything believe that pharmaceutical stocks in America are finished — when, in fact, the pharmaceutical business is one of the best in America, and one of the things that we do quite well.
I haven’t done a lot of work on this, as it’s not really my cup of tea at the moment. But one can see that a stock like Pfizer yields almost 6%. It has four years’ worth of dividends on the balance sheet. Yes, I know there are clouds around Pfizer, because that’s why it trades where it trades. But let me ask you this: Who do you think is a better credit, Pfizer or the U.S. government (other than its ability to print paper)? And, PFE has a decent probability of being much higher in a few years. The same case could be made for other major drug companies. Eli Lilly, for instance (which has a different landscape), yields about 3.5%. Bristol-Myers Squibb yields 5%.
Even if we experience a bear market and recession as ugly as I expect, these stocks could still do well, as they’re obviously not GDP-sensitive. And, my experience is that whenever the crowd has decided that these companies will never get a product through the FDA, or that they don’t have a pipeline, etc., they are always interesting to look at. Because, to repeat, that’s how their stocks become cheap in the first place. So, I offer this up as food for thought for longer-term investors who need income, and as an interesting alternative to Treasurys. But remember, you still must do your homework.
re: the power of IBC. For all your self aggrandizing braggadocio, it must be credited that you have never censored a post on here, to my knowledge. Commendable. And Jakey’s scurrilous screeds would have gotten banned in a sailor’s galley, we all know.
Thanks Papa Bear 🙂
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn./china/2008-04/19/content_6629070.htm
doh
Fly,
You’re missing the big picture… you got deballed by the market because you’re a bad Catholic.
The pope showing up and you getting smashed at the same time wasn’t coincidence… it was a sign from God.
It all started when Boomer broke his lent rules in the PG. And like, when’s the last time Zombie has been around saying “Fly is God.”
I’m just putting this shit together. Head to confession.
-DT
Mr. Mortgage is bad juju fly. I advise you to avoid contact. If not you will end up in the gutter.
Juicy,
Pardon moi… but I can’t seem to read your bottom line on FXP.
Long FXP or long FXI?
TIA
TG, I have no interest (at the moment) being long FXP. I did well on an FXI trade recently & I’ll be looking to reload, this coming week.
In fact, for 2ble the fun, I may short FXP. All ultra inverse ETF’s will eventually go the way of DCR; to zero. The creators of such ETF’s know this & thats their scam. Which doesn’t mean you can’t make good coin going long, from time to time but the only way FXP doubles, is if there’s a global depression or WW3. The odds are greater than they’ve ever been for that, but the powers that be simply will not allow that until the Orympics are over.
Thank heavens! Ahmadinejad marks the top in crude, another nail in the commodity coffin. Bottoming dollar, low in interest rates, recession here, pending weakness in euroland and china and now … idiots calling for prices to rise forever. Getting close.
The starvation trade needs to keep in mind that global warming will transform just under 500M acres of Canada (real number) from permafrost to corn and wheat fields in about another year or so… 😉 ‘spose that could be bullish for POT 😉
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/ronpaulseesbailoutwritingonthewall;_ylt=Aj9JiaRiK853jw7H4XoaQgcJr7sF
Ron Paul Sees Bailout Writing on the Wall
Somebody in government finally noticed that people might starve.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/19/biofuels.food
Geez, Boca, that kind of article really steams me. Farking jackass EuroGreen dicators screw with the market and are “shocked! shocked!” to find they’ve caused price increases and shortages to the scale of possible famine.
This is why you should never vote Democrat and only occassionally, and with great caution, Republican. These fuckers will try to run your life for you to mandate “maximum happiness and excellence for all” every time.
And if that’s not bad enough, they fuck it up purely 100% of the time. No miss rates, there.
I don’t know which article is more depressing, yours or Bruce’s.
Goddayum!
Do not screw with Brucie, he really does talk to space aliens. Remember his call the other day about how Friday’d be a good day to reload the short bus?
From Gary Savage’s last email update:
I forgot to mention one other reason I want to sell into this rally… The selling into strength of the SPY ETF was the largest since this data has been published as of May 06. -1100 million. The next largest was on -726 on Aug. 6th 07. About half way thru the summer decline.
!
sorry Jake, I didn’t post it with the intent of upsetting you, although it does aptly demonstrate how foolish government can be with their mandates to do “X” which meanwhile thoroughly screws up “Y” for everyone. Unintended consequences.
Food riots anywhere in the world are disturbing. I hope it disturbs the US government sufficiently to review their own actions. Also, any government actions pro or con corn at this point will affect the commodity markets. More volatility on the way?
Jakey, Boca.. is this a match of naivete? Ethanol, biodiesel are going to bring all those petrodollars/Walmartdollars back home. How about we take two Panamax loads of cavitated auto parts and another three of rotting particle board furniture for twenty bushels of Kansas winter red, Mr. Chan?
Calvin: Interesting point. I only wish they were that smart.
______________
Fly, here’s another “balls-that-clank” firebrand to add to the list of possibles…
Good stuff, especially about the safe.
Interesting correlation… maybe I don’t need to buy DBA after all…
Do you too live in a “deadbeat city,” Mr. Internet Leech?
!
Jakey, great link. There’s that Madison again. Amazing that he is popping up in finance blogs, what a tell. Denninger is on the read list now.