Chinese New Year Retail Sales Soar, +11.2%

Good news everyone: the Chinese government has released some positive economic data, not at all fudged, pointing to a sharp increase of retail sales during the past week of hedonistic ‘lunar new year’ celebrations, up 11.2% year over year.

The ministry statement said retailers firms grew to about 754 billion yuan ($115 billion) during the Feb 7-13 “Golden Week.”

In other orient related news, the head of the PBOC would like everyone to shut the fuck up about yuan devaluation and to please stop reading rumors of suchness.

Zhou added that there was no basis for the yuan to keep depreciating, and China would keep the yuan basically stable versus a basket of currencies while allowing greater volatility against the U.S. dollar.

The government also needed to prevent systemic risks in the economy, and prevent “cross infection” between the stock, debt and currency markets, he said.

Onward.

This is the most dangerous movie for investors since Gordon Gekko sat in his ridiculous red chair in the movie Wall Street. Being in the industry since 1997, I’ve encountered countless brokers/investors who’ve tried to emulated either Gordon Gekko or Bud Fox. I’ve even bumped into a few attorneys who thought they were James Spader, trying to find out “what’s in it for moi”?

The Big Short is a well done movie. Steve Carroll stole the show, in my opinion–playing the competent, but rebellious, angry man who was pissed at the lunacy that was transpiring at the big banks and mortgage market. That’s all well and good–but I am sure this movie is going to inspire scores of impressionable child-men into thinking they too can find “the next big short” and instead find themselves BLOWING themselves into smithereens.

If you are a strong minded man and not easily swayed by moving images with voices, feel free to watch this movie over a bag of popped corn. However, if you’re one of those guys who screams out “Bluehorse shoe loves XYZ” after buying XYZ, with your hair slicked back, sitting in your bullshit red pleather chair from staples, avoid this movie like the plague.

These analysts are so reactionary. Should the market go on a gorilla run higher, they’ll all be upping their targets for the S&P. However, now that it’s fashionable to sound doomful at cocktail parties, these fucking guys are slashing targets.

Truth be told, I think stocks go lower this year, so slashing targets is a good thing–for their pathetic careers. However, they’re doing it from a position of weakness, after the fact, Johnny come lately, losers.

While the bank’s new target implies a 7.7 percent advance from the current level, it’s 9 percent lower than the prior target of 2,200. It also implies that the gauge will fall for two consecutive years for the first time since the dot-com era.

“Unless we see signs of a growth recovery, there may be significant near-term downside to current levels,” the group, led by Savita Subramanian, wrote in a note to clients Friday. “The S&P 500’s move this year has been extreme, worsened by the dearth of liquidity in financial markets amid the tightest regulatory backdrop of our careers. This lack of liquidity could exacerbate downside risk potential.”

Subramanian is now the eighth strategist of 21 followed by Bloomberg to reduce a forecast this year. The new level leaves her as the least-bullish in the survey along with JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Dubravko Lakos-Bujas. The 2,000 target is 8 percent below the median of 2,175.

Analysts.

Shares of ICPT are through the roof, after reports surfaced the company might be shopping itself. For me, this is very low brow shit, especially since the stock has been decapitated in recent months. Nevertheless, maybe they’ll be able to hoodwink GILD or ABBV to pay them absurd amounts of coin for a drug in development.

The drug in question can reverse cirrhosis of the liver, allegedly.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has scheduled an advisory committee to review the company’s obeticholic acid oral tablets for the treatment of primary biliary cirrhosis on April 7.

A major untapped market for the medicine, however, is non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, which analysts estimate may reach $35 billion in sales. The company is collecting data needed to win approval to treat the condition in final studies involving as many as 2,500 patients for 72 weeks.

ICPT is down 58% over the past 9 months, like an evil baby.

This is a great way to close out the week, with the annihilation of overzealous bears. It made no sense to be short stocks, into what appeared to be a very obvious end to western civilization.

NOTE TO SELF: Western civilization never ends, especially when it seems to be ending.

Markets are higher by 300 and the hallowed halls of Exodus called the rally, yet again. The free trials end tonight, so sign up now to get a 5-day pass to the best market intelligence platform the world has ever known.

We get to enjoy a 3 day weekend, thanks to President’s Day. The work never ends here, at iBankCoin. Boot camp begins Monday! Please join Jeff Macke, Jeff Kohler and Raul for a week of in-depth discussions about the market and what trades might make sense in the coming weeks ahead.

The school girls are out in force today, supporting Janet Yellen’s decision to purposely drain the world of liquidity. Steve Liesman is out shooting nerf bullets at the negative GDP camp today, suggesting that the numbers are going way up.

I am bored of the horseshit coming out from Liesman. The economy hasn’t outperformed in a decade. However, for some oddball reason, whenever one piece of positive data comes out, Steve and his school girlfriends crawl out from under the stairs to say GDP is going up, how it can grow at 4%, yadda, yadda, yadda.

It never happens.

Nonetheless, if this Russian style form of propaganda can boost my SPY higher, so be it.

This is a solid gain, despite just 73% of stocks trading higher. We have the banks and materials leading the way, with bonds and gold selling off.

This recent downtick has several key elements that are the proverbial stars, or poster children, of this whole mess. It stems from the commodity bust, bad banks making bad bets, China, retail getting annihilated by Amazon (death to the mall), and the social media bubble being let out.

If forced to choose five stocks that represented the overall risk appetite of the market, I’d go with Twitter, Deutsche Bank, Wynn Resorts, Macy’s and Freeport McMoran.

Sorry, they don’t Voltron up into a convenient FANG like fucking acronym for your small brains to memorize. But these five stocks are the horsemen of our time.

They’re all raging higher.

TWTR +9%

FCX +15%

M +2.8%

I guess you can call them TWDFM if you like, after “These Will Definitely Fuck Me”. They are the opposite of FANG, the Mr. Glass of this story. But they need to go higher if we’re to escape the wrath of the seemingly endless negative feedback loop.

But they’re built to hurt you. You know how the story ends. Villains always lose.

I purchased more SPY this morning, bringing my basis to $185.04. I am being very open with the timing of these purchases only because there is a current free trial taking place in Exodus. Once it expires (today is the last day to grab one), I will not be so forthcoming here.

With the DB news in tow and the long weekend ahead, I am optimistic for a raucous rally in stocks. Hey, if Italian markets can run higher by 3%, so can ours.

As I am presently situated, I’ve depleted my cash reserves to zero.

25% of my assets are in TLT, with a basis of $120.42.

My year to date loss is -1.79%.

Should the market sell off, I am prepared to go 200% long, which means I can buy SPY on another 3 occasions, providing the oversold signals in Exodus all occur inside of 10 trading days. I will begin to sell out of my SPY positions starting 2/23.

These aren’t emotionally driven trades, purely algorithmic mechanical exercises of sublime mathematical precision.

This just came out:

Deutsche Bank announces that it will buy back €3B of its Euro denominated debt, and $2B of its USD denominated debt

The bank said in a statement on Friday that it’s “strong liquidity position” allows it to repurchase these senior securities without any change to its 2016 funding plan. The euro tender offer is targeting 3 billion euros, while the dollar tender targets $2 billion.

The stock is on fire in Germany, up greater than 10%. Commerzbank is higher by 15%, Unicredit +8% and here in the states the XLF is higher by 2%, with gains in C, JPM and BAC.

Dennis Gartman got up with the roosters this morning to remind people how right he’s been on gold, in yen and euro terms (no one actually does that). He thinks the yellow metal might parlay into a dalliance with sellers–driving the price lower by a few dozen points or so–at which point he’d likely step back into the fray and ride it back up.

In addition, he believes the market is ‘more than required’ to go higher in the immediate term, in all forms of currency, even wampum.

Oh, he also had a few comments about oil, which I found to be of the gibberish varietal.