Cramer Gives ‘Best Conference Call’ Trophy to Home Depot

This is the sort of shit I have to deal with, parsing through video clips of crazy men giving fucking trophies to global giants for having a great quarterly conference call.

We get it, Cramer. Home Depot is the best company ever conceptualized, readily assisting general contractors to rip off unsuspecting home owners with their shoddy work. Frankly, I don’t know why I even bothered to post this drivel, other than the indelible fact that many of you have a vested interest in hearing about Home Depot.

Say what you want about Dick Bove, the man knows his banks. He’s a repository of bank knowledge in both mechanism and historical precedent. During this interview, he made the two little ladies questioning him look like orangutangs, unable to ask a question possessing a modicum of intelligence, stuttering and stammering all the way to the end.

If forced to describe this interview with one word, I’d say ‘swag.’

Bove stunted on Kashkari’s communist manifesto to break up the banks, made the CNBC host sound and look ridiculous, and he even chastised  Jamie Dimon, equating his analogy offered to describe the difference between big banks and small as ‘childish.’

Boss.

I want the world to end, just like the next guy. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen tomorrow. Like a fine wine, good things get better with age. The longer we delay the apocalypse, the greater its spectacle will be.

That being said, stocks were hammered by 1% today, throwing the long only camp into a fury, unable to deal with the minor set back. Commodity related stocks were poleaxed by 5% and David Einhorn told you the commodity super cycle was over.

On the plus side were discount, carnivale type stores, whereby goods are bargained off for less than $1. Also, gold and bonds fared well. Let’s not forget department stores, such as M, DDS and even SHLD were all higher.

It’s entirely possible that the top has been reached and everyone here who is long will commence a period of draw-down that can only be described as dreadful. But, it’s also possible that you are reading too much into this and that stocks aren’t done pressing higher. The wall of worry is very tall indeed, which effectively makes it all the more alluring to climb.

Even though I’ve embarked on a campaign to do away with equity exposure until the next Exodus oversold signal, I am not bearish enough to consider short positions, at least not now. The time for betting against stocks was in January and will come again in May. There will be a period of time when your only hopes will be for a Federal Reserve emergency meeting to take place on a warm summer night.  But the weather is still cool and the Federal Reserve isn’t done inflicting their damage upon the global economies.

Don’t forget that tonight is the 2nd part of Jeff Macke’s boot camp. Our investor camp last through Friday. Don’t worry if you’ve signed up late. There are video archives available for late stragglers. The Option Addict is presenting on Wednesday and Thursday and finally RAUL on Friday.

Quick, hide the kids under the bed, or better yet, the closet. Fed’s George is out making a speech today, where she said this, in regard to the idea of hiking interest rates in March: “It absolutely should be on the table for consideration.”

Trust me when I tell you, the market hasn’t come to grips with this possibility.

She wants to move sooner rather than later, faster rather than slower. For the love of God, Esther George from the Federal Reserve of Kansas City (lolz), wants to destroy your common stock portfolio through the premature hiking of interest rates.

According to the alcoholic gamblers at the CME, the market thinks the chances of the Fed hike in March is just 10%.

If done, markets are going to reel lower, heavy kick to the chest into a sea filled with hungry sharks style.

I knew this news would stifle the lot of you, Hansel and Gretel, chocolate bar eating fools. Nevermind the stock market and subsequent losses that you will endure for relegating yourself to asinine money management plans, the Mars Bar company has received a formal complaint that a slither of plastic was present during the consumption of one of their products.

See?

Mars Netherlands said it decided to issue the voluntary recall as a “precautionary step” after receiving a consumer complaint about a piece of plastic found in one of their products.

Mars, Snickers and Milky Way bars with best before dates between June and October 2016 should not be eaten, the company said. Celebration and Variety candy packs are also being recalled.

It was only a mere slither, in which caused the billion dollar chocolate giant to undergo a recall on a massive scale, stretching around the globe twice, costing them countless millions of dollars.

But do not concern yourselves too gravely, it was only a petulant slither of plastic in a Snickers bar that has everyone in an uproar.

Nevertheless, if you value your lives and the lives of your children, DO NOT EAT CHOCOLATE PRODUCTS FROM THE MARS BAR CORPORATION, dated June through October 2016. Oops, that means Halloween chocolate that was already consumed. I am very sorry for your demise.

This is only precautionary steps and the Milky Way subsidiary has denied wanton rumors that consumption of their ‘bars’ causes humans to morph into brain eating zombies.

As you were.

We were never out of the trecherous black waters to begin with. The rallies we’ve enjoyed over the past week were nothing more than temporary respites in an otherwise invective climate for long only investors.

Whether you’re onboard or not, the ark sails. Government bonds are the preferred safe haven for intelligent investors everywhere.

Crude oil is determined to seek out lower prices, causing great injury to those sectors reliant upon it for cash flow. This, of course, is my principal cause for being bearish. It is my belief the analyst community is greatly underestimating the far reaching scale and scope of this crisis to come. It will begin to take on the characteristics of a systemic problem during the second half of 2016, in my estimation.

Stocks are merely servants to the price of crude oil. The demands by which it imposes upon them is unusual and cruel, often wrong. Nevertheless, this is what the market deems important now, the never ending fickle fashion show called the stock market.

European losses edged towards 2%. I doubt there is a rally left in this tape today. I’d still be a seller here, avoiding all commodity related names and banks like the plague.

Saudi Oil Minister, Al Naimi, is in Houston today, casting aspersions on those who suggest that his government was purposely seeking the complete and total annihilation of American shale oil. After all, why would his government want to bankrupt a bunch of inefficient, highly leveraged, high cost producers of shit oil?

The natural order of things will hash out the shale oil producers. Our good friends at the House of Saud are merely expediting the inevitable. For this, we owe them out sincerest gratitude.

“We have not declared war on shale or on production from any given country or company, contrary to all the rumors you hear and see,” he said.

“We are doing what every other independent representative in this room is doing. We are responding to geology and market conditions and seeking the best possible outcome in a highly competitive environment.”

The market will determine where on the cost curve the marginal oil production lies, he said. Drillers with higher costs must find ways to become more efficient, borrow cash, or liquidate, he added.

“The oil market is much bigger than OPEC. We tried hard to bring everyone together — OPEC and non-OPEC — to seek consensus. There was no appetite for sharing the burden, so we left it to the market as the most efficient way to rebalance supply and demand,” Naimi said.

“It was, it is, a simple case of letting the market work,” he added.

Unlike American and European bail out schemers and connivers, the Sauds are ‘letting the market work’, old school, Old Testament style.

David Einhorn, who has been resurgent as of late with some good calls, said in a conference call today, in no uncertain terms, the commodity super cycle is over. This is not your 2012 global growth story, spearheaded by robust Chinese stockpiling of raw materials.

Moreover, he said he was short heavy machinery, which probably means CAT, JOY or something like them.

“Bulls are assuming the current commodity environment is an ordinary cyclical downturn,” Einhorn said Tuesday on a conference call discussing results for Greenlight Capital Re Ltd., the Cayman Islands-based reinsurer where he is chairman. “We believe it is the end of a commodity supercycle, and this will exert a long period of earnings headwinds for these companies.” He didn’t specify which manufacturers he’s shorting.

“Currently, market participants seem to be concerned about a global slowdown, and are losing faith in central bankers,” he said. “The U.S. economy is challenged due to the strong dollar and beaten-down energy sector, and policymakers have very little room to maneuver in the event of a real downturn.”

On the upside to his call, he believes the ruinous drop in oil will be a boon for the US consumer, in spite of the fact that we’ve yet to see any evidence of this occurring. Furthermore, aside from the occasional dead cat bounce in retail specific names, the industry has been rotting from within for the better half of 10 years.

Perhaps he’s beaming from his recent successes in both KORS and M, both of which have very little prospects for sustainable long term growth.

I feel like one of those caitiffs who I poke fun of for being in a seemingly permanent state of cowardice, always juxtaposing loud talk against a backdrop of useless, endless, rants of neutrality. For those of you who know me, you know that to be bold is something I am rather fond of.

Forthwith, I sold out of 1/3rd of my SPY position, as dictated by Exodus. This trade was a great success and I am very happy to have taken it. More so, I am even happier to be taking over 10 points of profit.

Let the markets do what they must. I have little interest in the minute machinations of the day to day anymore. For now, I am entirely focused on the bigger moves, the macro. Truth is, I no longer possess the time, nor the inclination, to bother myself with micro strategy calls, performing clownish acts of genius for an otherwise ungracious and obstreperous audience. Moreover, since it’s my firm belief that markets will reel from catastrophic losses by the end of 2016, I feel the best course of action is the one I am presently undertaking.

By the end of the week, I will be in a 75% cash position, only long TLT.

What a shit show this is. Icahn and his stupid commodity bets, long egregious amounts of CHK, LNG and FCX, have wreaked havoc on his publicly traded net worth inflator, aka IEP. He owns 90% of it and now S&P is threatening to slash the credit rating to junk status, due to its nefarious holdings in which the value have been subjugated to ruinous losses.

These and other bad bets have led Standard & Poor’s to warn it may downgrade Icahn Enterprises (IEP) to junk territory within the next 90 days.

S&P says Icahn’s firm had just $182 million of cash as of the end of September, down from $1.1 billion the year before. At the same time, Icahn Enterprises lists $13.4 billion in total debt, of which $1.2 billion is due early next year.

All of this has led S&P to posit whether Icahn might inject personal capital into IEP to firm up its balance sheet. This is a delirious reversal of fortune, coming from the man who made his biggest gain of his life just a few years ago in NFLX. Since then, and inexorably so, Icahn has performed miserably, conducting his fund like a man driving a speedboat into a wall of dynamite.

Even still, Forbes lists his net worth at $19 billion.