Icahn and Einhorn Sold Out of Tim Cook’s Apple Before 2016

Icahn hasn’t made a good trade since his son forced him to buy NFLX at $60. On the other hand, Einhorn has been outperforming in 2016, posting a positive gain of 1.4% for the first month of the year, despite the wheels falling off the market.

Apparently, both men decided against holding Tim “I am so gay and single” Cook’s Apple into 2016.

Icahn sold 7 million Apple shares in the fourth quarter, leaving him with 45.8 million shares worth $4.8 billion. Greenlight Capital cut its stake by 44 percent to 6.3 million shares worth $661.5 million as of Dec. 31, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday. Vanguard Group Inc. and Northern Trust Corp. were also among the institutional investors that reduced Apple holdings in their portfolios.

Shares of AAPL are down 7.71% for 2016.

There is panic in the air for the JP Morgan global strategist based on Hong Kong. Marcella Chow is warning that oil is going to careen lower to $22. She’s panicked, worried, and everything in between. Her advice is simple: listen to Le Fly and board the ark, get long U.S. treasuries before it’s too late. The floods are coming and no one is safe.

The global strategist for the $1.7 trillion money manager says she’s on edge, her clients are panicky and she’s telling them to stash as much as 70 percent of holdings in bonds including U.S. Treasuries. Calm won’t return until China’s economy improves and central banks regain credibility with investors, she said. She’s waiting for oil to fall to as low as $22 a barrel, and in the meantime she’s battening down and trying to avoid volatility.

“Am I worried? Yes,” Chow said in a Feb. 15 phone interview from Hong Kong. “There’s so much uncertainty,” she said. “Equities might not be a wise choice.”

In September, she started telling investors to shift to a 70 percent weighting for debt from an equal mix of stocks and bonds. Since the beginning of October, the Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bond Index has gained 2 percent, while a measure of global equities has lost 4.3 percent.

“Even though it’s tempting to hold cash given how crazy markets have been, it’s better to go for stable bonds,” Chow said. “At least you can generate a few percentage points in returns.”

“China’s growth stabilization story is still unclear,” said Chow, who sees e-commerce business as one bright spot in Asia’s biggest economy. “We have to wait and see what happens.”

“How much more down is there to go? I want to know too,” Chow said. “I’m not feeling very adventurous.”

It’s time to batten down the hatches; a great storm is coming, apparently.

Amongst other things, D. Gartman called the good members of OPEC liars, cheats and thieves. In plain terms, Mr. Gartman, who has nailed the recent moves in both oil and gold, believes the production cuts are a joke. Crude is to trade lower, especially in Ruble terms, and the organization called OPEC is to be laughed at from afar.

I won’t say he is cursed, only because he’s somehow managed to etch out a multi-billion dollar net worth and retains the trust of his investors, despite making one very public bonehead move after the next.

As fate would have it, John Paulson has held is gold position for an eternity; but decided to pare it down by 37%, just prior to its upside explosion.

He reduced his GLD position from 9.23 million shares to a mere paltry piker sum of 5.8 million.

It’s like the stock Gods waited for the precise moment when he sold to jack it up.

Changes in the portfolios of some of our favorite hedge fund managers was released over the weekend. I’ve managed to compile and organize it, for entertainment purposes only. Remember, most of these funds are being managed by men high off cocaine. If markets continue lower, they’ll just close up shop and live off the 1 or 2 billion they’ve managed to accumulate over the years.

SUNE

Visium bought 1.3 million shares.
Sand Grove Capital Management bought 272,000 shares
Adage Capital Partners bought 9.2 million shares

AIG

Omega Advisors increased its stake by 731,200 shares to 4.1 million shares

BAX

Starboard Value nearly doubled its holdings to 2.4 million shares
Visium Asset Management bought roughly 1 million shares
Jana Partners sold half its stake to 5.7 million

GE

John Burbank’s Passport Capital bought 4.9 million shares

HLF

Huber Capital sold 96,800 shares to own 1.2 million shares

HTZ

Jana Partners sold out of 39.2 million shares

JCP

Omega Advisors sold its entire stake of 500,000 shares

MS

Third Point bought 3 million shares
Carlson Capital bought 2.2 million shares
Adage Capital added to its position, buying 1.6 million shares to own 4.5 million shares

MDLZ

Passport Capital bought 1.2 million shares

Zweig-Dimenna Associates bought 187,900 additional shares to own 394,650 shares
Adage Capital Partners sold half its position to 2.7 million shares

PFE

Jana Partners bought 9.2 million shares
Suvretta Capital added 1.9 million shares to own 2.5 million
Omega Advisors cut its stake by 3.5 mln shares to 1.3 million shares

PXD

Baupost Group sold out of 4.1 million shares
Senator Investment Group sold out of 500,000 shares

VRX

Suvretta sold out of 354,750 shares
Visium Asset Management sold its position of 1 million shares
Jana Partners started a new position, buying 1.56 million shares
Brahman Capital nearly doubled its position, buying 4.1 million shares to own 8.1 million
Omega Advisors sold its entire 484,915-share stake
Pershing Square trims stake in VRX to 16.59 mln shares from 19.47 mln shares

WRK
Starboard cut its stake by 26 percent to 4.5 million shares

WMB

Jana Partners took a new position of 3.8 million shares

YHOO
Jet Capital added a new position, buying 2.1 million shares
Carlson Capital bought 2.9 million shares

YUM
Serengeti bought 135,000 shares

ZTS
Jana Partners sold out of 3.9 million shares

Big day for markets, with stocks closing at session highs. Bears were dispatched and hideously disfigured after this morning’s head fake.

Markets feigned weakness, then exploded to the upside and never looked back.

All of the risk assets were higher and bonds were lower: a good day.

I stepped into today fully invested, 75% SPY, 25% TLT. Although my combination didn’t yield FCX type returns, I now find myself without loss for the year, flat at a time and place when destruction is festooned all around me.

Going forward, I expect greater rallies. For now, barring a resumption of negative newsflow, markets should proceed higher through April.

You doubt this prediction, because you’re part of the mortar that has built a wall of worry. Bull runs are fueled by such things.

Don’t be stuck in it. Climb it.

The market has taken a turn for the better, over the past 30 mins or so. I will not pretend to know the ultimate outcome of today’s carnivale show. However, I’d like to point towards a few things.

Breadth is strong.

Most importantly, risk assets are climbing, appreciably.

How can I quantify this assertion? Two ways.

In Exodus, my bubble basket is higher by 2.54%. More specifically, my TWDFM (these will definetely fuck me) basket is vastly outperforming the old and the stodgy FANG plays. I will continue to stress this point, as long as the markets remain in peril.

Here, have a look at the extreme outperformance.

Without question, there is a bullish narrative being inserted into the newsflow. I’ve been curating it for readers of the site, without bias. This newsflow can and will increase as risk assets rise.

This is how sentiment shifts. Humans are very malleable creatures, savage and without decorum.

But I’ll take it. About 75% of stocks are higher today, despite the market softening from the minute it opened.

There are several headwinds to contend with, the first being oil. The absence of production cuts out of OPEC and Russia has the oil market in sell mode.

Second is the dollar trading higher.

European markets have reversed early gains and are now in the red.

We were supposed to rally 200+ today.

Nevertheless, since overall breadth is good, some gains should hold. Coming off a 300+ point rally, anything short of a complete reversal is acceptable, given the malicious tone of this market for the better part of the past two months.

Fed’s Harker, who is a non voting member of the FOMC, but a hawk nonetheless, is changing his tune on absurd Fed rate hikes.

This is all well and good; but not exactly what the market needs now. These words would have provided the market with extraordinary succor, had they been delivered by Yellen herself.

Nevertheless, the Philly cheesesteak man speaks.

“Although I cannot give you a definitive path for how policy will evolve, it might prove prudent to wait until the inflation data are stronger before we undertake a second rate hike,” Harker said Tuesday in prepared remarks to be delivered at an event at the University of Delaware. “Thus, I am approaching near-term policy a bit more cautiously than I did a few months ago. That is part of being data dependent.”

Harker isn’t a voting member this year of the Federal Open Market Committee.

The stock-market selloff will offset “some of the economy’s fundamental strength, but I do not feel it will overwhelm us,” Harker said, adding that he remains “upbeat” about the outlook as “economic fundamentals are sound, and our financial system is in good shape.”

While market turbulence, a strong dollar and weakening growth in China pose risks, “China is not our major trading partner, and it may well be that as the U.S. economy proves its resilience, equity markets are expected to calm down and reverse direction,” he said.

Harker said inflation will return to the Fed’s 2 percent target once energy prices stabilize, predicting an annual average pace of headline inflation of 1.5 percent by the second half of this year. While the Philadelphia Fed’s Survey of Professional Forecasters doesn’t indicate any unanchoring of inflation expectations, he said, Harker noted that market-based measures have eased.

“Hence, it may be worth erring on the side of accommodation to ensure” that consistently below-target inflation won’t lead to a lack of credibility, he said.

At the same time, there’s anecdotal evidence that companies are planning to raise wages, which could translate into faster inflation. Oil prices may eventually also bolster price growth.

“I believe as we move into the second half of the year with economic activity growing at trend or slightly above trend, the unemployment rate below its natural rate, and price pressures starting to assert themselves, policy can truly normalize,” Harker said. “That would not necessarily imply an overly aggressive path for policy.”

I found it somewhat disconcerting that Harker said China wasn’t our major trading partner, when in fact the statistics suggest otherwise. We do nearly $600 billion in trade with China, second only to our counterparts to the north, Canada. Moreover, China offers us what no other country in the world does: extreme growth opportunities.

Is it possible that this man’s head was firmly sandwiched in a Philly cheesesteak when making these ridiculous remarks?

This is a singular lawsuit. A customer of in flight WIFI provider GOGO, American Airlines, is suing them for essentially sucking, citing VSAT as a superior service.

“After carefully evaluating the new technology and services in the marketplace, American has decided to exercise its rights under the Agreement and recently notified Gogo that ViaSat offers an in-flight connectivity system that materially improves on Gogo’s air-to-ground system,” the suit says.

American says ViaSat offers a faster service that is currently installed on United Airlines, Jet Blue and Virgin America planes. American currently uses Gogo for its regional aircraft and on domestic flights, primarily Boeing 737s.

“American continually evaluates in-flight connectivity service to determine what best meets our customers’ needs and wants,” American said in a statement on Monday. “We’ve notified Gogo of a competitor’s offering, and we will evaluate all of our options.”

Gogo said American notified it earlier this month that a competitor’s service is an improvement over Gogo’s early generation air-to-ground service that is used on about 200 of American’s aircraft.

“We have no comment on the merits of this litigation, but we would like to note that American is a valued customer of ours and that we look forward to resolving the disagreement regarding contract interpretation that led to this declaratory judgment action,” Gogo said in a statement late Monday night.

According to its contract, Gogo is allowed to submit a competing proposal which Gogo said it intends to do related to its satellite technology, 2Ku.

“We believe that 2Ku is the best performing technology in the market and look forward to discussing our offer with American,” Gogo said.

As such, shares of GOGO have been decapitated by more than 40%.

As for VSAT: is it possible to get better publicity than a major airline suing for the rights to do business with you, based on the merits of your superior service and technology?

Shares are soaring.