America Loses 72 NASDAQS

The Statue of Liberty weeps for our heinous losses.

Truth of the matter is, today’s move merely negated yesterday’s gains. On the bright side, oil was marginally lower and the dollar is weakening on a daily basis–a net positive for our global exporting bastards.

Additionally, today felt like a head fake lower. You’ll know the move is the real deal when you see actual centaurs on the NYSE, kicking traders in the chest.

The one doomful development is the rapid appreciation of treasuries. Yields at back down to the lows. The market is calling bullshit on the reflation story. Should this persist, I can almost guarantee you the broader indices will drop to the February lows in a matter of weeks.

It’s amazing how a tweet can create shareholder value, almost instantaneously, yet the company who domiciles the platform is unable to make money or create shareholder value for their shareholders.

Charles Gasparino just tweeted that Valeant might unload its Bausch and Lomb unit, something that should attract many bidders.

The stock is spiking on the news. I’d switch over to Fox Business to see his report, but that would entail getting up and finding the remote–simply not worth the effort.

You can’t make this shit up. What a year this is turning out to be for William Albert Ackman. It appears his scheme to merge Canadian Pacific with Norfolk Southern potentially compromises national security. As such, the United States Army is voicing its disapproval to the deal.

“We are troubled by the possibility that Mr. Harrison could become a senior executive at Norfolk Southern in advance of the board ruling in favor of common control/merger between Canadian Pacific and Norfolk Southern,” according to a letter from the Army. “If Mr. Harrison is a senior executive at NSR he may be placed in a position where he must make business decisions with potentially competing interests.”

The Surface Transportation Board will accept comments on the plan until Friday and Canadian Pacific will have until April 13 to reply to those.

“We look forward to providing a fulsome response at that time,” said Martin Cej, a spokesman for the Canadian railroad. Ackman, whose Pershing Square Capital Management is the second-largest shareholder of Canadian Pacific, with a 9.1 percent stake, has advocated for the merger during conference calls with analysts and investors.

There are 36,000 miles of rail lines that are designated to move defense cargo throughout the U.S. “in peace and war,” said the letter, signed by David Dorfman, a senior civil engineer for the Railroads for National Defense Program. The Surface Transportation Board has given interested parties until Friday to submit commentary.

“It is too early to determine whether either a CPRL+NSR merger itself, or a downstream merger involving other major railroads, would degrade national defense,” the letter said. “However, the potential certainly exists for either the CPRL+NSR merger or a downstream merger to adversely affect national defense.”

Never trust loyalist Candian scum.

Art Cashin is out talking greasy this afternoon, as the Dow sinks to session lows. He cites the appreciation in the Yen, up 10% for the year, as a source of major concern for the Bank of Japan. Moreover, he believes if the Yen strength continues, the BOJ will be forced to up the ante on their draconian negative interest rate agenda. As such, this is an indelible negative for banks–which is precisely why the financial sector has been rife with underperformance.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, he believes the market might be breaking through support now, something that is keenly watched by scores of chart-chomping knuckle-draggers.

As the NASDAQ swan dives, lower by 83, I have one question for all of you: did you reserve a seat on the ark (TLT)?

Super asshole, married to the heir to the ketchup fortune, keeps himself very busy in the sky, gallivanting from one destination to the next–forging conflagrations and schemes across the globe.

He has traveled 1.06 million miles, spending more than 96 days in the sky since 2013.

For all of those miles, the American people have received nothing but the bill.

Morgan Stanley lowered their price target on the bank run, Arab spring causing social media platform today to $16, citing troubling trends in engagement as being the core issues facing the company–moving forward.

“We believe TWTR’s core user engagement remains in decline, as time spent per U.S. mobile user fell by an estimated 10% YoY in 1Q:16. This may be an improvement from the 30%+ YoY declines from last year, but stepping back, TWTR’s time spent per user is already among the lowest in the social group … and is still in decline. New user growth doesn’t appear to be rebounding either, as quarter-over-quarter new mobile-app downloads were flat for the second straight quarter.”

Who the fuck ‘engages’ on Pandora? I don’t get that.

In a nut shell, Morgan thinks Twitter is a huge piece of shit and should be treated as such, until further notice.

“We see fewer users and less time per user holding back Twitter’s platform monetization — putting a limit on ad impression growth and holding back the pace at which advertisers increase their share of ad budgets toward the (shrinking) platform,” the analysts wrote.

Just fire @Jack already and leave him to Square.

Evan Greenberg, CEO of CB, is warning that liquidity might be tightening soon, as availability of credit gets constricted as America weans itself off the drug called ‘cheap money.’

“We may be at the beginning of a great unwind in credit availability,” Greenberg said in an annual letter to investors. “If so, that bodes poorly for future growth and the interest rate outlook.”

Greenberg believes the economy has slowed because “global overcapacity and increase of capital caused by cheap money from years of central banks’ stimulus — a drug we should have been off of some time ago.”

“We see less-coordinated central bank policies with the Fed aiming to tighten but confounded by a strong dollar while the EU and Japan engage in continued monetary easing,” Greenberg said. “Many emerging economies are suffering at their own hand as well.”

“We are eating our seed corn brought to you by the Fed,” Greenberg said about the impact of cheap money. “Central bank policies to stimulate growth following the financial crisis have in my judgment outlived their usefulness.”

This isn’t the comments of a misinformed man. He is the CEO of one of the largest insurance companies in the world.

Board the ark.

Wait, did Cramer just admit that placing tariffs on Chinese goods entering the United Steaks, in order to protect U.S. industry, would make Alcoa ‘zoom’? I thought tariffs were evil and free trade was beneficial for helping ‘create moar jobs’?

Imagine if we had a President who made it his duty to protect all industries and not just the one’s cherry picked by the influential few.

Coincidentally, zero American politicians were found in the 11,000 page leak.

Putin dismissed the leak as ‘rubbish’, saying the Obama administration was “an attempt to shake the situation [in Russia] from within, make us more compliant, and tar us the way they want.””

He then went on to recall the propaganda days of World War 1, suggesting it was being employed now, by the U.S.

“And what’s the easiest way? It’s by infusing some mistrust in society toward government bodies and the government, and by setting people against each other,” said Putin, adding that this plan was “brilliantly employed during the tragic years of WWI.”

Finally…

“You journalists all know what an information product is,” Putin told the forum. “So they went through this offshore [material]. Your humble servant was not there, but they don’t talk about that. But there’s still a job to be done. So what did they do? They make an information product – they found acquaintances and friends.”

Ever get the feeling we were the bad guys, or is it just me?

Copper accurately called the bottom in February, bouncing and moving higher before the broader indices. It’s my belief the inverse is occurring now. As copper sinks, the bullish narrative for China darkens and with it the bull run.

Freeport McMoran is the most levered to the space. Its stock is being dismantled today.

All eyes should be on Dr. Copper, for he is a physician in the ancient arts of financial medicine, offering tonics for the infirmed, and bleeding out his patients who get overzealous.