Hong Kong Residential Sales Plunge 70% in February to 25 Year Lows

The forex business taking place between mainland China and Hong Kong is certainly responsible for this calamitous decline.

“The newspapers keep on saying the market is going down and buyers think they can get a cheaper house half a year later or one year later so are waiting,” said Thomas Fok, a property agent at Centaline Property Agency in Hong Kong’s upscale Mid-levels West district where he hasn’t made one sale this year.

Sure, blame it on the newspapers.

Property prices have declined 10 percent from their September highs amid uncertainty over the economy at home and in China, possible interest-rate increases and plans by the government to boost housing supply in the next five years. Senior Hong Kong government officials have ruled out relaxing property curbs, which include extra stamp duties and caps on mortgage levels

Rumors of Hong Kong’s real estate decline have not been wildly exaggerated.

S&P futures are down 8.

All of the panic and mania, starring the renewed collapse of commodities, forex markets gone wild, Federal Reserve induced apoplexy, have washed away with the sands of time. Over the past 15 trading days, the markets have, once again, accomplished immeasurable feats of greatness, dispatching all of the readers of Zerohedge into cesspools to die amongst the cess and the pools.

We are off just 2.2% on the S&P 500 and higher by 1.9% on the Dow for 2016. The political winds are blowing from the west, firmly in favor of the status quo with H. Clinton. The Republican Party is all but a checkered pants relic of yesteryear’s country club memory. These days are marked by grave injustices and propaganda designed to destroy the fabric of the country, for the benefit of a more global cadre of catamite ham and eggers. Many of you enjoy this brand of national suicide because you’re either too stupid to distinguish its malevolence or you’re wholly supportive of it.

Either way, stock markets rejoice in the fleecing of both the treasury and the American consumer. Henceforth, and providing the starkly puffed and helmeted face of H. Clinton remains in the pole position, markets should continue to grind higher, leveling the skeletal remains of short sellers with such a G force that their remains are reduced into dust.

Hip hip hooray.

It’s that time of the year again folks: Chinese parliament meetings. ‘Tis is the time for the largest congressional body in the world to meet and pretend that China isn’t a dictatorship, governed by a handful of people in the most belligerent command economy the world has ever known. They’ll make all sorts of comments and then leave. Some of them will make stupid comments, like this:

A Shanghai representative to the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Sunday lambasted China’s market regulators for igniting a stock crisis that is “destroying the Chinese middle class”, a rare rebuke for authorities during their biggest annual event.

It’s very likely that he will be visited by the governments mobile execution vehicle squad to be taken to the local airport for expeditious organ harvesting.

The famed and prestigious NDRC head, Xu Shaoshi said there isn’t a way the Chinese economy will experience a hard landing.

“China will absolutely not experience a hard landing,” Xu Shaoshi, head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), told reporters at a briefing. “These predictions of a hard landing are destined to come to nothing.”

“In general, I think China’s economy performance has stayed at a reasonable range (since 2015),” Xu said, adding that the Chinese economy shouldn’t be viewed through traditional perspectives.

“First, we should look from the angle that the economy has entered the ‘new normal’ period,” he said, in which growth rates have shifted and the economy’s growth engines are changing towards services from investment.

“First, we estimate the slow recovery and low growth rates in the world’s economy will continue for a period of time,” he said. “Also we could not overlook the risks from unstable (global) financial markets, falling prices of commodities and risks of geopolitics.”

Everyone pile in long to all of your favorite Chinese lottery stocks.

Ten thousand apologies to my democrats readers out there for ignoring the middle earth crawl of Hillary Clinton to the nomination. She won Lousiana and Sanders won the worthless state of Nebraska, much to the chagrin of Warren Buffett.

The shmuck, Rubio, finished third in Lousiana because no one likes him. Should he lose Florida, look for the GOP to insert Romney in the face, in order to broker the convention and stop a Trump nomination.

For the night, Trump took Lousiana, Kentucky, while Cruz took Maine and Kansas.

Democracy has never been so meaningless.

There isn’t a bigger assclown than Marco Rubio. Out of all the assclowns from all the assclowneries, Marco Rubio takes the crown, the asshat.

Big dumbo ears did nothing during tonight’s caucuses, further denigrating the GOP establishment hacks who are throwing millions down the Rubio toilet bowl.

Both Cruz and Trump are anti establishment candidates, with the former deranged by his fanatical religious beliefs and allegiance to tea party morons.

Nevertheless, I am merely a conduit to the news.

Cruz crushed Kansas by 25% over Trump.

Trump is up more than 12% over Cruz.

Cruz is leading by 6% in Maine.

And Louisiana is closing in a few minutes.

Retarded Rubio won nothing.

The blokes at HSBC are not impressed. They view the current drawdown as unimpressive and do not believe economic conditions on the ground warrant you assholes to step into stocks after a 20% mind numbing melt up.

As such, they recommend that you insert yourself as a singular brick into the wall of worry.

“Cash is king in a world with [debt] overhangs,” the team, led by Global Head of Asset Allocation Fredrik Nerbrand, said in a note published late on Thursday. “While markets have stabilized following the January sell-off, we find limited reasons to add to equity risk. We prefer to have allocations to high-yield and emerging market debt where risk premia are more appealing.”

“Unless corporate earnings start to turn up, there is very limited upside for economically sensitive assets such as equities,” HSBC writes.

Still lofty valuations
While valuations have certainly become a bit more attractive over the course of the downturn, HSBC points out that it is still hard to snap up market bargains. The team is skeptical, however, about how much of a factor valuations have been or will be in the future: “The current drawdown is hardly spectacular. Nor were valuations a reason for the sell-off or a reason why markets should stabilize at this point.”

Taking all this into account, HSBC has updated its asset allocation model, increasing its cash holdings by 11 percentage points, to 17 percent, in their six-month tactical portfolio while decreasing its allocation to German and Swedish bonds, where yields “have now dropped to levels that offer limited scope for future returns.” Meanwhile, the team is cutting its losses on Chinese equities, noting simply that the position “has not performed in line with … expectations.”

“Economic trends continue to drag lower,” the team said. “This implies further risks to corporate earnings and overall investor sentiment. A slow growth outlook also increases the possibility of greater perception of political risks. We can see that correlations between periphery bonds and equity markets have increased. This implies that markets are once again more concerned about sovereign debt overhang.”

Here is the actual report.

Most hipster anarchists dream of this movie coming true. They’d love to see some guy prancing around in a mask, blowing up government buildings. That’s because they’re idiots.

V for Vendetta is, essentially, a modern version of the Guy Fawkes plot to blow up parliament. Back in 1605, Guy Fawkes created the mask you see in V and attempted to “gunpowder” parliament. He failed and to this day the lads in Britain celebrate said failure by burning him in effigy and lighting fireworks.

How wonderful.

In this movie, however, the lads in Britain weren’t as lucky.

If you like action mixed with anarcharistic “fuck the government” rhetoric, this movie is for you.

The market feigned weakness late in the day, then steam rolled higher to conclude a very impressive week of gains for stocks. Crude oil was higher by 4%, capping off a crazed week where the majority of stocks in the index soared by 30%. This contrasts mightily with the overall glum outlook for the industry, currently plagued by job losses and looming insolvency due to over leveraged balance sheets. The one silver lining, post commodity stock melt up, is the recent buoyancy may very well pave the way for massive share offerings–in order to help companies manage their debt. I can guarantee you that investment bankers will be working around the clock this weekend to price deals, in order to buy these companies time for the underlying commodities to rebound further.

If you’re buying into energy related stocks whose balance sheets are impaired, you run a grave risk of being caught flat footed by immensely dilutive share offerings.

Having said that, in some cases, share prices might continue higher following large secondaries, depending on the mood of the market. In some instances, the market will sell the stock because of dilution. In other cases, the stock will rally, in celebration of the fact that the company might live to fight another day.

With the IPO pipeline sealed shut, advisory accounts hammered over the past 3 months, you can bet your bottom dollar the investment banks will try their worst to price secondaries now, in order to ‘save’ companies and generate fees.

If not for profit, do it for the sake of posterity. I’d like to believe my legacy can be carried on into the future, just like many of you. Do not permit your perversions of reality cloud your judgement to the point that it impairs your well being.

Oil and gas stocks are up almost 30%, on a median basis, over the past two weeks. Let’s pretend that you’re bullish and never believed the horseshit coming out from the recession club. Are you prepared to buy into stocks that have hockey stick’ up, based solely on the the tenuous tight rope concept that the economy is strong enough to grow, but weak enough to avoid further rate hikes?

Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

Come now. Don’t be an asshat. Book the gains and wait for better prices.

I must admit, this deal is very alluring. There is a scarcity value here, alongside the intrinsic value of a legendary sports franchise, that makes the 1% stake at $24 million attractive.

For the purposes of the sale, Club 9 values the team at $3 billion, then applies a 20 percent discount that acknowledges the limited influence of minority owners. “Paying anything below $24MM for a 1% stake is a good value in our view, especially considering this is the most valuable, most iconic and most recognized sports team in North America.”

Unfortunately, I hate the Yankees and hope their new stadium gets infested with locusts for opening day. Nevertheless, for wealthy Yankee fans, this is literally a once in a lifetime opportunity to own a piece of the franchise.