The Absurdity of Hedge Fund Managers and Their Stock Picks at the Sohn Conference

The Sohn conference is for pediatric cancer; needless to say, it’s a great cause. But why can’t these numbskulls just go and have a good time, do stand up comedy routines or sing karaoke for charity, instead of using it as a platform to talk their own books?

Here are some of the outlandish stock advice given during last year’s Sohn conference, by America’s best money managers.

Einhorn, Greelight Capital: short PXD (-2%), short CXO (-9%), short CLR (-29%), short WLL (-70%)

Bravo!

Rosenstein, Jana Partners: QCOM (-27%)

Meister, Corvex: YUM (-10%)

Cooperman, Omega Advisors: GOOGL (+29%)

Robbins, Glenview: ABBV (-6%), BKD (-50%)

Gaonkar, Lone Pine Capital: MSFT (+7%)

Gundlach, Doubleline: Puerto Rican bonds (-5%)

Ackman, Pershing Square: VRX (-84%), JAH (+15%)

Get ready for some new money losing ventures at this year’s conference, scheduled to begin on May the 4th, 2016.

Nothing can stop stocks from marching higher. Oil could go to zero and CAT would still press higher, selling their equipment to drillers who would be legally obligated to buy as per their ridiculous long term contracts. There’s a lot of good deals taking place these days (extra Trump), in spite of the fact that merger cancellations are up 62% in the United Steaks over the past year.

I’ve been unwinding my XLE short for the past week, and have reduced it to less than half of its original size. It was a bad trade that will leave a mark. But I’ve been through far worse and look forward to digging myself from out the hole–something I am rather adept at doing.

The Dow surged more than 100, NASDAQS more than 40. Lads and lasses alike, rejoice in the splendour of American capitalism, a brand of winship that is unparalleled throughout all hemispheres on Earth.

Coming up next: the retarded stock picks from our best hedge fund managers at last year’s Sohn conference.

When I read that Halliburton was going to pay Baker Hughes a $3.5 billion termination fee because of the government hurdle in their way from completing the deal, I could not believe it. How is it possible that the law team at Halliburton could get this so wrong and leave the company exposed to a disastrous termination fee? I’ve never heard of such malfeasance.

Neither has Cramer, who lays into them.

Bill Ackman fired back at Charlie Munger for his connection to Coca-Cola, who, incidentally, looks like he has two coke bottles for eyeglasses, for ‘causing a health crisis’ and replacing water in Nicaragua with coca-cola–subsequently rotting the teeth of children.

Understand something, this is an issue that is very near and dear to Bill, as he has obese family members and is sensitive to the topic of children’s health. But don’t get it twisted. While he owns MDLZ, who markets their sugar-filled oreo cookies into the mouths of newborns, he doesn’t view ‘a snack’ as being the same as a ‘liquid.’

Okay, but Mondelez makes Tang son, the super satan of sugary filled soft drinks.

This whole demonization of Munger and Buffett because coke destroying kids is fucking outrageously funny. It reminds me of the cult classic movie Idiocracy, when the morons in the future were watering their crops with “Brondo” and then wondered why they faced extinction when the crops weren’t growing.

My children have never had coca-cola. It’s an idiots beverage. Americans are increasingly rejecting non-healthy choices in favor of healthy. It’s only a matter of time for Mr. Munger, and his sugar peddling goblins, to give up their plans to profit off the demise of children with soda-pop–in favor of a better, more efficient, delivery system–like a Burger King or a Tim Horton’s restaurant.

Pershing Square owns 38 million shares of QSR, holding company to both Burger King and Tim Horton’s.

Oil, gas, copper, wheat, the whole kit and caboodle are lower today, ruining an otherwise marvelous day in stockville, sans the catamites AAPL-GILD joy kills.

This is especially curious, especially since there dollar is sharply lower by 0.35%, extending its rout to more than 6% for the year.

The divergence between the market, oil and the dollar is one that, wherefore, boggles the mind, body and soul. Subsequently, I will not attempt to understand it or talk about it any longer.

In what has been hitherto been a very genteel morning filled with pleasantries and small, bubbly, bull runs, a dark and insidious storm lurks just around the bend, eagerly awaiting to cast its shadow upon the unwashed masses.

Naturally I’m commingling two separate insults that Munger, the pychotic, leveled at Valeant to combine them as one.

See what an asshole I am?

Munger, in a monotonous CNBC interview this morning said Valeant was robbing his hospital and that the company was literally ‘evil’, not just happenstance. Moreover, the companies behavior was indelibly ‘demented,’ as he likes to call them.

He summed up the whole Valeant share price debacle as something any moron could’ve figured out, subtly laying waste of Billy Boy Ackman.

Lastly, Valeant is filthy rotten sewer.

Suffice it to say, he doesn’t like VRX.

It wasn’t a natural inclination of mine to come out and blurt ‘fuck Buffett’. I’ve been listening to his interview with Becky Quick for what seems like the past 5 hours, and have agreed with much of what he’s said. But I didn’t want to talk about him or his stupid asshole friend, Charlie Munger, for reasons unbeknownst to me.

An old client of mine lives near Buffett and has told me some tales that have been repeated by lots of people who live in Omaha. Buffett, despite being the world’s richest man lives in the same old house he bought 200 years ago. He walks around town like a regular Joe, drinking soda pop. He eats at the local Denny’s and orders folksy food. The bullshit goes on and on.

Buffett, he’s such a nice guy, benevolently amassing tens of billions in personal net worth whilst eating bags of frenched fries and guzzling gallons of cherried coke.

This is an asshole of the very first magnitude.

There’s nothing worse than an asshole pretending to be a nice guy, licking icecream cones in public to look like the average Joe so people don’t want to beat you like a piñata.

Look at me–not a nice guy, complete asshole. But you don’t see me walking around town with a fucking hamburger in my face to blend in with the proletariat.

At this point in my life, I have nothing in common with Warren Buffett. His rhetoric has been repeated over and over again. It’s predictable rubbish from a man who’s a master of deception, skilled marketer of wholesome Midwest kitsch, financial genius disguised as a fucking coupon clipping ham and egger.

Keep on ignoring the price of gold, at your own peril. One day soon, the price of gold is gonna hit you like a tonne of, err, gold bricks, leveling you flat onto the pavement like a piece of chewing gum stuck to the concrete.

In a most astute and glorious fashion, President Andrew Jackson’s bullion is soaring and ripping, and also creeping, above $1,300 for this first time since 2015.

If the good $20 general were here today he’d tell you two things.

1. I saved this rotten country from the fucking Brits in the War of 1812. Fuck with my portrait on the $20, and I’ll kill ya.

2. Fuck the Fed; but gold.

S&P futures are higher by 6. It looks like a higher open.

The Wall Street lobby is strong in NYC. Erenow, the Fed’s discount window was designed to help banks during periods of crisis, to meet liquidity needs. Broker dealers and investment banks were left out of this apparatus because their businesses were ardently risk based and they weren’t responsible for the savings of the vast majority of the American people.

Back in the financial crisis, Goldman bought a small bank in order to qualify for Fed funding.

I guess they just want to forgo the formalities and blatantly permit derivative trading assholes access the discount window when their trades go bust.

“Providing these firms with access to the discount window might be worth exploring,” Dudley said in prepared remarks at a financial markets conference in Amelia Island, Florida organized by the Atlanta Fed.

Dudley is owned by Wall Street.

Don’t worry, the NIKKIE was closed on Friday, so this is nothing more than catch up bear market. The NIKKEI is down 16% for the year, underperforming amidst a sea of negative interest rate policy stupidity.

Here are some of the worst performers on the NIKKEI.

It must suck to be a manufactuer of electric glass in Japan today (I kid).

U.S. futures are flat. We don’t give a shit.