$GOOGL, $MSFT, $SBUX Sharply Lower on Earnings Miss

Alphabet is diving lower by 6% in the aftet-hours on an earnings shortfall, on both the top and bottom line.

Q1 $7.50 vs $7.96 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; revs $20.26 bln vs $20.38 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate

MSFT is lower by 4% on an earnings miss too.

Microsoft prelim Q3 $0.62 vs $0.64 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; revs $22.08 bln vs $22.11 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate

To top off the trifecta, SBUX is down 3.5% on a revenue shortfall.

Starbucks prelim Q2 $0.39 vs $0.39 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; revs $4.99 bln vs $5.03 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate

All three of these stocks were priced to perfection. It’s not a surprise to see these stocks trade down on any sign of weakness. Let’s see if the conference calls can firm up the price action.

NOTE: Visa missed as well and is slightly lower in after-hours. The company cited material weakness in emerging markets.

When you spend 50k per annum to educate a child, one would expect the institution that is receiving such monies to have the common courtesy to explain to their students the virtues of western society and why we’ve thrived above all over the past two thousand years.

A petition was set out to reinstall Western Society courses and Stanford and it was vilified to a degree that would make any hard-nosed dictator or fascist throughout history beam with pride.

I am sure there are several of you who will support the insanity by the illiberal left at Stanford, who, if given to their own biases, would have their heads cut off by the very people they endeavor to empower. Nothing about the current fringe element of the left is liberal. It’s the exact opposite. These people are intolerant, snap-chatting, morons, who scream and yell all day long about the evils of western society, while at the same time ignore the abhorrent behavior and lack of rights by inferior societies abroad. They ignore the fact that women are treated less than dogs in these societies and instead point towards wage disparities and other gender gaps that need fixing here. While western societies aren’t perfect and have many flaws, they are, by far, superior in all aspects to eastern societies– who are intolerant, bigoted and racist like you would not believe.

We’re reading a lot of headlines these days about ‘the first time this has happened since 2008’, yet markets are needling all time highs. In a report out by Moody’s, analyzing the credit downgrades of investment grade paper, the firm cites an alarming number of high quality paper being downgraded. The rate of decline from which companies lost investment grade status had, hitherto, not been seen since the dark days of 2008.

Moody’s is anticipating a further denigration of credit to continue in the not-so-distant future.

Last quarter, a total of 34 companies moved into that so-called crossover zone, for a total of 72 as of March 31. Of those, 59 are potential fallen angels (rated Baa3 on review for downgrade or with a negative outlook) compared with only 13 potential “rising stars” (Ba1 on review for upgrade or with a positive outlook).

Listed among the potential fallen angels are Barrick Gold Corp., Noble Energy Inc. and Ambev SA, the only Brazilian issuer that retains an investment-grade rating, according to Moody’s. Lear Corp. is among the potential rising stars.

Total debt for those potential fallen angels was $265 billion as of March 31, with non-U.S. issuers representing 80 percent of the total, Moody’s said. That’s up from $234 billion at the close of 2015.

None of this can take away from the profits enjoyed by market participants over the past two months. However, and most importantly, it’s paramount that you remember recent history and how a small crisis can easily bubble over into something much larger.

After starting 2008 with a 6% decline, markets rallied, in a ferocious manner, up until June of that year before succumbing to a selling frenzy that will be remembered forever, as a thing of legend. The odds of predicting another crisis to the exact month or week is extremely low. Nonetheless, we are seeing a repetition of warning signs, almost like a carbon copy from 2008, that demands attention. Otherwise, we’re nothing more than a class of morons–unable to learn from one’s history.

Finally someone had the balls to call out the absurdity of replacing President Jackson with Harriet Tubman.

Naturally, that person, aside from yours truly, is Donald Trump.

He calls the move “pure political correctness” and said he’d scrap plans to have Jackson removed. Moreover, he suggested that Tubman could be placed on a $2 bill instead.

The whole idea of fucking with the money is a giant waste of time. Instead of trying to brainwash people by shaming them into believing that America is this awful racist and divisive place, the fucking treasury should be trying to figure out ways to pay down the $20 trillion debt load. Otherwise, the Tubman $20s, after inflation, will have the purchasing power of confederate bill (pun intended).

This is wonderfully ironic. The Germans are livid over Draghi’s insane monetary policy, which is causing issues for Europe’s largest economy.

In testimony today, ECB chief, Super Mario Draghi, told Germany to buzz off and to obey.

“We have a mandate to pursue price stability for the whole of the euro zone not only for Germany,” he told a news conference.

“We obey the law, not the politicians, because we are independent as stated by the law.”

The comments came after German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble sharply attacked ECB policies, arguing they were causing “extraordinary” problems for Germany and were in part to blame for the rise of the right-wing anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Draghi repeatedly stressed that inflation remained far off the bank’s target of near two percent and argued that the euro zone economy still faced a cocktail of external risks and would be in a worse state today had the ECB not resorted to negative interest rates to accompany a 1.7 trillion euro ($1.92 billion) money-printing scheme.

“Our policies work, they are effective. Just give them time to fully display their effects,” he said. “Global uncertainties persist. Looking forward, it is essential to preserve an appropriate degree of monetary accommodation as long as needed.”

He said the bank would begin buying corporate bonds as part of its quantitative easing policy in June.

Acting to halt speculation that he was entertaining the prospect of so-called “helicopter money” — handing money directly to the public — to kickstart the economy, Draghi stated the bank had not discussed that option.

European markets are lower, across the board. I guess those degenerates really wanted some helicopter money. The schism between Germany v the bankrupted in Europe will be something to watch. Up until a few years ago, Germany seemed to be setting policy for the ECB. But ever since the Greek crisis and subsequent market scares, German austerity has been shelved. Replacing it is a form of monetary easing and degeneracy that would make any Austrian economist cringe.

I can talk about this topic all day. Vox sums up the current cabal of lunatic liberals, who’ve abandoned their principles and the people who supported them in favor of a smug, globalist, elitist agenda that reeks with fascist dictorial condescension.

This.

Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The rubes noticed and replied in kind. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The blue collar white middle class factory worker is voting GOP in overwhelming large numbers now–because the liberal establishment made a concerted effort to undermine him, in order to curry the favor of a more appealing, faster growing, demographic.

This will, inexorably, blow up in their faces.

The article is linked above. It is a must read.

The FDA, essentially, told SRPT to fuck off. It’s looking rather ominous for the prospects for their muscular dystrophy drug.

This Advisory Committee meeting was initially scheduled to take place on January 22, 2016, but had to be rescheduled because of a weather emergency. Since the initial FDA briefing materials were released, the applicant submitted additional information about clinical outcomes of patients in Study 201/202, and also made public an addendum to their briefing materials in which the applicant describes what it calls “key inaccuracies” in the briefing document FDA released in advance of the original date for this Advisory Committee meeting. As will be discussed below, and in more detail in the Cross-Disciplinary Team Leader summary document, we do not agree with the applicant’s characterization of inaccuracies in the initial FDA briefing document.”

“… patients in Study 201/202, and also made public an addendum to their briefing materials in which the applicant describes what it calls “key inaccuracies” in the briefing document FDA released in advance of the original date for this Advisory Committee meeting. As will be discussed below, and in more detail in the Cross-Disciplinary Team Leader summary document, we do not agree with the applicant’s characterization of inaccuracies in the initial FDA briefing document…”
“Based on the data submitted by the applicant, considerable doubt remains about how much, or perhaps even whether, dystrophin levels were increased by eteplirsen. The degree of uncertainty about the dystrophin data hinders discussion of its use as surrogate endpoint for eteplirsen. However, to the degree that the dystrophin data may be interpretable, the amount and distribution of dystrophin in treated patients appears to be within the range typically associated with DMD, not BMD. Data suggesting that higher levels of dystrophin were produced by eteplirsen appear unreliable.”

Piper Jaffray believes this equates to a likely denial by the FDA.

SRPT is absolutely plunging today.

The man is obsessed with Guy Fieri. How dangerous can he be?

Yes, indeed, it’s good to be King. If it were anyone else, say for example a billionaire Indian hedge fund manager, Stevie Cohen might be in some country club prison, discussing backgammon strategy. But Stevie isn’t Indian and has connections in high places, enabling him to break laws and avoid jail time, as long as the money keeps flowing in the right direction–if you know what I mean.

Oh, by the way, Stevie will be accepting new money for his new hedge fund real soon. Senator ‘batshit’ Warren went apeshit and wrote a scathing letter to the SEC over this grave injustice.

In a letter sent on Thursday to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Massachusetts Democrat said the regulator’s decision to approve the firm, Stamford Harbor Capital L.P., makes “a mockery of the SEC’s core mission to ‘protect investors.'”

“The Commission has permitted a recidivist hedge fund manager, well-known for his former company’s willingness to evade and ignore federal law, to once again profit from – and potentially exploit – investors,” she wrote, adding it is “the latest example of an SEC action that fails to appropriately punish guilty parties, deter future wrongdoing, and protect investors.”

I’m sure the penny stock busters at the SEC had a good chuckle over this Warren tirade. She, apparently, doesn’t know how the game works.

This is the most interesting dynamic out of China for me. I haven’t covered it because I’ve been perplexed by the sustained rally in the price of steel. For months now, people have said the rally could not last, yet here we are at $70 a metric ton, up from $38 back in December.

A sustained rally in the price of steel is probably the single best barometer of growth in China. It’s bullish for X, VALE, BHP, amongst others. Also, it means coking coal plays like CLF might be due for a significant upturn in business.

Ore with 62 percent content delivered to Qingdao climbed 8.8 percent to $70.46 a dry metric ton on Thursday, the highest since January 2015, according to data on Metal Bulletin Ltd.’s website. It was the biggest daily increase since a record 19 percent jump in early March. The steel-making material has rebounded 84 percent since bottoming at $38.30 in December.

Iron ore’s gains in 2016 stand in sharp contrast to the previous three years, when a slowing Chinese economy hammered demand and prices, spurring a global glut. This year, Chinese policy makers have talked up growth and added stimulus, presiding over a revival in the property market that’s boosted the outlook for steel consumption. BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest mining company, said it expects iron ore to drop again as global production increases.

“The steel mills in China are now profiting from high steel prices,” said Michael Zhu, president of trader Millennia Resources Ltd. and former global sales director of top supplier Vale SA. “Fundamentally, the reality of Chinese steel production overcapacity and the oversupply of iron ore will not be changed in the short term.”

Chinese Demand

Mills in China, which make about half the world’s supply, have increased output to a record as property prices in bigger cities jumped and higher steel prices improved margins, reversing a squeeze from last year. Crude-steel production soared to 70.65 million tons in March, according to data last week.

“As we’ve seen activity seasonally take off, they needed to purchase more, fairly quickly, and that’s brought prices back up,” Mike Henry, BHP’s president of operations and minerals in Australia, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Thursday. “Once the mills are through the restocking cycle, we do expect that we’ll see prices come back down again.”

I’m skeptical. China bulls should be pounding the table on steel and watching the price action daily.

Apparently, Macau isn’t stabilizing like the stock prices of WYNN, MPEL and LVS have been suggesting as of late.

Both Stifel and JP Morgan have downgraded LVS, after reporting abysmal earnings, citing Macau as a major source for concern.

Stifel lowers tgt to $56 from $58. They expect some pressure on Las Vegas Sands and all the Macau related names. As they’ve highlighted recently they believed these names had gotten ahead of themselves and any hiccup with the Macau story would cause a swift correction. Given the miss (not hold adjusted) coupled with the fact management noted March was a poor month for them and alluded to the fact April isn’t shaping up to be great, this could be the trigger that sends shares lower near-term.

LVS missed by 18 cents– and also on the top line.