Thoughts on Melania Trump’s Plagiarized Speech

I wasn’t going to get into this, feeding into a non-topic like the bedraggled microbes on Twitter. But for the sake of having a word and understanding what life is like for bedraggled microbes, I’ll offer my two cents.

1st cent: There is no way, whatsoever, Melania wrote her own speech. The speech was too important to be left to someone who barely speaks english, let alone someone who isn’t a professional speech writer. If we establish the fact this speech wasn’t written by her, then we are led to some interesting plot lines.

2nd cent: Having established cent one as Melania’s main contribution to the speech was looking good in front of a bunch of craven republicans and trying to not sound like Borat, we can only assume her speech writer was purposely trying to make her look bad. He or she knew the media would immediately pounce on this and compare it to Michelle’s speech, no? I mean, come on. So, to me, the bigger story is that there are untrustworthy people working inside of the Trump team. The fact that they said no one would be fired after this gaffe is somewhat predictable for ordinary politicians, always trying to save face. But for Trump, a man who fashions himself as a person who gives zero fucks and tells it like it is, he should be publicly humiliating someone today with a rapid firing and public shaming.

I guess investors didn’t like STLD’s quarter.

Their cap utilization came in at 95%, awfully healthy. Pricing improved. Non-residential demand was steady. But the overall picture painted by Steel Dynamics was cautious, suggesting 2016 would be weak, spearheaded by pervasive weakness in the energy and agriculture sectors. Import levels are down 25% year to date, but they’re seeing an uptick, as prices rise. Nevertheless, they do not feel U.S. markets will get flooded with cheap, disgusting, Chinese steel again.

On the news of a potential uptick in imports, this sector is undergoing severe profit taking, with losses crushing the hopes and dreams of holders in ZEUS, AKS, VALE, MT SCHN, RIO, HAYN, CMC and X.

Frankly, the losses are widepsread and without geographic considerations, which leads me to believe investors are simply looking for an excuse to take profits. Steel being one of the hottest sectors of 2016 is cooling off a bit today, off by 3% overall.

Year to date, steel prices are up 75% and iron ore upwards of 35%.

Lee Ainslie, co-founder of Maverick, has been playing a supporting role in the firm’s investments in recent years, handing over the reigns to Andrew Warford and Riad Abrahams. Those fuckers just got smoked out short ARMH in size, according to sources at Reuters.

The set-back for such hedge funds, who position themselves to profit from swings in stock prices, comes at a difficult time for the industry as many peers have seen their performance slide and some investors have even demanded their money back.

Data from Britain’s regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, shows that Maverick Capital had a substantial outstanding short position in ARM of roughly 1.2 percent of its shares when the SoftBank bid was announced on Monday.

The data shows that Maverick had a short position of 0.67 percent as of Jan. 6 and increased that to 1.2 percent on May 3.

Maverick did great last year, booking a 16% return. As far as I can see, they seem to be doing okay this year too, aside from ARMH and their long positions in VRX, AGN and ST. No worries, unlike Pershing Square, they spread their bets out.

Wow, my first reaction to this was ‘super asshole.’But then I thought about it for a few seconds, whilst chewing on a snack, and said ‘all right.’ Fuck Netflix and the price hikes they so fervently depend on. If you recall, it was House of Cards that bailed them out in 2011, the last time they pulled this shit. Now that there isn’t another blockbuster show to bail them out, we can only hope the company ends up in a tinder box–on its way towards eventual insolvency.

When was the last time markets went up because of fiscal stimulus or GDP growth buoyed stocks? Almost every rally is due to monetary promises, which are nothing more than plots and schemes to send stocks higher.

Is anything wrong with stocks going higher all the time?

No. As a matter of fact, I was the guy who claimed to be ‘permanently’ bullish, up until the point when I couldn’t take the bullshit anymore. Earnings season is what did it to me. It revealed the truth behind the facade and it always led to Netflix like harrowing losses. There isn’t much the Fed could do about NFLX missing numbers, other than create the conditions in the market to make stocks like NFLX attractive.

Over the past three weeks, the market has taken on a brand new version of speculative perversion, rallying after BREXIT, heinous terrorist attacks and sharply lower crude prices.

Nothing seems to send stocks lower. They have the indelible feel of invincibility, the sort of market that cocaine addled hedge fund managers dream of.

Having been in the market since the 90s, I can tell you with absolute assurance, markets always feel best just before the rug gets pulled. This isn’t bearshitting conjecture, emanating from a deranged psychotic who blogs about end of days scenarios all day long. I like to consider myself keenly aware of my surroundings, a watcher of the tea leaves. From my vantage point, there is nothing redeemable about the climate we’re in, the dislocations in the credit markets, the faux yields in Europe, the looming credit meltdown in energy. Terrorism is escalating and earnings are in recession.

Ladies and gentlemen, doom is, inexorably, around the corner. You just haven’t bothered to take the blinders off to see it yet.

The sharia loving fuckheads in Boko Haram have caused immense carnage and suffering in Africa’s most populated shithole, Nigeria.

“Some 134 children on average will die every day from causes linked to acute malnutrition if the response is not scaled up quickly,” Manuel Fontaine, Unicef regional director for western and central Africa, who just returned from a visit to Borno state, said in the statement.

During the 7 year jihad Boko Harem imposed on Nigeria, tens of thousands have perished, but we only know about it when a stupid oil pipeline has been disrupted.

Savages.

Sometimes the smartest people are the dumbest shits on the face of the earth. They have social anxiety issues that make them idiots, unable to think like normal human beings. These fucking scientists, mind you, want to reintroduce cougars into the wildlife populations of 19 states in order to reduce deer, and by extension, automobile accidents.

I am not shitting you.

Personally, I like the part when one of these book worms said cougars sometimes kill people too, but the benefits far outweighed the occasional eating of a 5 year old wandering off into the woods. People need to embrace them, in spite of their menacing ways.

Imagine yourself enjoying a summer BBQ with the family. Your in laws are playing a game of croquet, generally enjoying their afternoon. Then, all of a sudden, a fucking cougar attacks grandpa, since he’s the weak one in the pack. Your in laws race over to help him, but the cougar pounces on them too and bites off the nose of your mother in law, all the while grandpa is on the floor, stroking the fuck out from the panic. Your father in law is trying to put his handkerchief on his wife’s noseless face, in order to stop the flow of blood. But it’s coming in good and hard and the blood completely soaks his seasonally appropriate seersucker suit.

Worst BBQ ever.

The answer to the first question is the white-tailed deer. Deer do not set out to murder people, as far as anyone knows, but they do jump out in front of vehicles so often that they cause more than a million collisions a year, resulting in more than 200 deaths.

The answer to the second question, according to a new scientific study, is the cougar.

Laura R. Prugh, a wildlife scientist at the University of Washington; Sophie L. Gilbert, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Idaho; and several colleagues argue in the journal Conservation Letters that if eastern cougars returned to their historic range, they could prevent 155 human deaths and 21,400 human injuries, and save $2.3 billion, over the course of 30 years.

And although cougars do kill humans sometimes, the scientists estimated that number would be less than one per year, for a total of less than 30 lives lost, far less than the number of lives saved.

The scientists studied 19 states, including South Carolina, Maine, Wisconsin, Ohio and Missouri. Four other states — Delaware, Rhode Island, Maryland and Illinois — were part of the eastern cougar’s historic range, which was wiped out by the early 1900s. However, those states do not have enough open forestland to support viable cougar populations, the scientists said.

Adrian Treves, head of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved with the study, said he was impressed with the analysis, and thought it might underestimate the benefits of cougars. He said in an email that there would probably be an even greater reduction in deer-vehicle collisions, “if governments and private citizens allow cougars to recover to historic levels.”

“The idea of being killed in a car crash with a deer just doesn’t scare people the way the idea of a cougar leaping on your back in the woods does,” Dr. Prugh said.

But she hopes that if cougars do return to the Eastern states, an understanding that they could bring tangible benefits will make people “a little more accepting, even if they are still scared.”

Shares of Nintendo are up more than 10% this evening, surpassing Sony in market cap–thanks to the extreme 100% lift in share price since the release of Pokemon Go. Due to a fanatical fan base, the Pokemon Go app is now the biggest and most successful mobile game ever.

Recently, Mcdonald’s inked a sponsorship deal with Nintendo and that stock is off to the races like you wouldn’t believe.

Shithole Mcdonald’s restaurants will now become Pokestops, creepily luring in a whole cadre of little Pokemon trainers into their denizens of unhealthy sustenance. Perhaps someone can sell them alcohol or drugs to go with those disgusting burgers too?

There are so many possibilities with this Pokemon Go shit. It’s gonna be huge (extra Trump)

By the first quarter of next year, the 10 year treasury will hit 1%. By precisely December the 31st, 2016, yields will quote 1.25%, says the sages at Morgan Stanley.

Morgan Stanley, which advised investors to bet on bonds before the U.K. vote to leave the European Union sent global debt markets surging, says Treasury yields are poised to extend their record lows.

The 10-year yield will fall to 1.25 percent by Dec. 31, the company predicts, cutting its forecast from 1.75 percent. It will tumble to 1 percent in the first quarter of 2017, based on the forecasts.

Treasuries will stay in a range in the third quarter, Morgan Stanley predicts. The forecasts were in an e-mail from Matthew Hornbach, the head of global interest-rate strategy in New York. Morgan Stanley is one of the 23 primary dealers that trade directly with the Federal Reserve.

Naturally, this bodes poorly for the risk on perverts who traverse these halls. Then again, who said Morgan Stanley knows anything about bonds? The prevailing trend has been lower for yields, inexorably, for the better part of the last 8 years, so I’m gonna take them at their word.

If our 10 yr is to hit 1%, what in the world will the German bund be by that time? Negative 2 percent?

These lads will make a very fine addition to the EU.