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Friday Failure – OPEC Does Not Agree to Extend Production Cuts
This will be interesting.
After saying they would for the last 10 days, driving oil from $47.50 on 9/11 to $51 (7.4%) on Wednesday (now $50.45), OPEC has now decided they will "wait and see" what happens between now and their March meeting. As U.S. shale oil continues to thrive and seasonal demand wanes, the surplus that has weighed on markets for three years could return. If OPEC doesn’t extend the supply curbs, the market will return to oversupply again, forecasts from the International Energy Agency indicate.
Our average on the Oil (/CL) Futures shorts is $50.48 on 10 contracts and we're waiting fo the great unwind, which probably won't happen today as the weekend is here but these contracts run until 10/20 and there are 1.267Bn FAKE!!! orders over at the NYMEX in the front four months – so we're pretty confident there will be a catastrophic sell-off at some point.
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Current Session | Prior Day | Opt's | ||||||||
| Open | High | Low | Last | Time | Set | Chg | Vol | Set | Op Int | ||
| Nov'17 | 50.73 | 50.78 | 50.32 | 50.39 | |||||||
…
Well, that's that!
The quick reaction was a 1% drop in the indexes
So thank you, Bottom 99%, for your contributions to our portfolios. We couldn't have done it without devaluing everything you own! In .jpg)
We'll look at that trade this afternoon at…
What can go wrong?
Unemployment is below their target, Inflation is above – there's really no excuse for the Fed NOT to raise rates so don't be surprised if everyone is surprised tomorrow by a quarter-point hike, hurricane or no hurricane. Of much more concern than the rates going up (though the repercussions of that alone will be tragic) is the potential unwinding of the Fed's Balance Sheet, which currently stands at $4.47 TRILLION and that's up about $3.7Tn since 2008.
Yes, I know no one cares, BUT:
Can we ignore more terrorism today?
Does anything matter?
Well, it looks like we dodged a bullet.
Don't you just love short weeks?
Meanwhile, we're watching out for Irma as she heads towards Florida and, 
Wheeeee – that was fun!
Though the portfolio is up 19.6%, we never deployed much of our $25,000, using less than $10,000 in cash to make $4,890 (49%) in less than 5 months. The SQQQ spread is losing, at the moment and is currently net $3,565…
Now what?
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Dow 22,000, Nasdaq 100 6,000, Russell 1,400, S&P 2,475!
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The reason a tax form is complicated is because it's real. Paul Ryan and Donald Trump's fantasy post-card is no different than the current 1040EZ form except it's laid out differently (and omitting details like you name, address, date, signature…) and, of course, in order for this to work you'd have to put your Social Security number on an open post card – like some kind of moron who never heard of identity theft. …
Propaganda!
To 3(%) or not to 3(%).
Oh, and don't cry if you missed 
It's always something, right?
$5,418!
Even if the damage near the refineries is controlled quickly, widespread damage throughout the area will make it hard for refinery workers to get to work — the Shell plant, for instance, has more than 3,000 workers and contractors. As you can see from this handy map, Valero (VLO) is losing 416,000 barrels a day in two hard-hit refineries and Marathon (MRO) will be down 546,000 barrels and, with 1-45 closed, it's likely to be a good week at least before they are full on-line again, probably 2 weeks.
This is a huge storm.
It's time for the Fed conference.
Total debt (including mortgages, auto loans and student loans) is expected to surpass the amounts owed at the beginning of the Great Recession by the end of 2016, 
Median household income has grown…
Trump will cut taxes!
Well, you can't say I didn't tell you so.
As we approach year 4 (11/26) for our paired Long-Term/Short-Term Porfolios, we are well on track to making 40% compounded gains off our original $600,000 investment, which should take us to $2.3M but next year – to make another 40%, we need $922,000. This is not a sustainable model because the economy isn't growing at a 40% pace yet the broad market is not that far behind us, having turned S&P 666 in 2009 to S&P 2,450 in 2017 – up 267% in 8 years which is a straight average of 33.37% a year.
$2 MILLION Dollars.
Wow, that was a fun day!
I can't believe the markets are up again.
See, this is not complicated:…
1, 2, 3, 4 – I declare a trade war!
Assembling IPhones is not a dream job but those are on the high end of of what we have exported overseas. I'm going to focus on the IPhone so I can explain to you what an idiot our President is, without making it too complex.
If it's Monday, the Futures must be higher.
Where's our Apple?
Back on May 16th, the title of our morning report was "
It has not been a good year(s) for value investors.
What's really annoying about this stage of the rally, however, is that stocks that look cheap relative to traditional fundamental metrics such as profit or cash flow have fallen so far out of favor that 
So it's hard to paint a more enthusiastic picture than the one that's already been painted because, as noted by Calvin, "Alexander contemplated his victories and he wept, because there were no more Worlds to conquer." What will we do for an encore when we only have 7M people left who are unemployed? At this pace, in 3 years, they will all have jobs and we will have 0% unemployment. What is the World the market expects down the road to justify a 20% improvement in 9 months?
Record highs!
Goldman's Chief Equity Strategist, David Kostin says the company's HNW clients are "confused" by the lack of inflation (as that's what we expect in a great economy) and he ponts back to the disparity of measurement that we touched on last week.
It was a mixed bag.
Here we are again.
Happy anniversary!
Beat crazy!
That's why Amazon doesn't have any real competition – there's no money in their business, why would anyone compete? Don't get me wrong, you can sell the crap out of a service that doesn't make any money because the people will love it but how long before they wise up? For instance, I was at the super market and I saw Starbucks (SBUX) Cold Brew Cofee with cream, cocoa and honey – 3 things I like in coffee so, even though it was $4, I had to buy one and it was…
Long-Term, the OPEC nations face a disaster of biblical proportions as their oil-dependent economies are running headlong into the end of the oil era. According to a new book. Burn Out: The Endgame for Fossil Fuels takes the view that oil prices will not just be “lower for longer”, 
Will the last short seller please turn out the lights?
And, if you think your own health care bill won't rise quite a lot more than $286.66 without Obamacare protections, then you are way too far down the rabbit hole to be saved. The repeal-only act will increase premiums for those who hold plans, according to the CBO. The office estimates that "
You'll get nothing and like it!
I'm back!
JPM missed, WFC missed and C beat but 
Wheeee, what a ride!
The cover-up is now incidental to the actual crime and now the question is whether the President knew what his campaign manager, son and son-in-law were doing or if he was completely oblivious, as he now claims. Anything other than completely oblivious is an impeachable offense for Presdident Trump so we'll have to hope it's a coincidence that:
Things are still toppy.
We're still in post-holiday, low-volume…
No, of course they won't.
What we have now, however, is a stock market that is outpacting wage growth, productivity growth, GDP growth – pretty much anything you want to measure growth EXCEPT the growth in income of the Top 1%, who are, of course, the primary owners of stocks. Their salaries have jumped about 25% in the same 5-year period but still, even that staggering amount of money isn't enough to justify the 100% rise in market prices.
You're welcome
It's not because of anything specifically he's saying – just the general loss of confidence people get every time they are reminded this guy is the President of the United States.
What a crazy vacation day.
Why are you here?
Less vacation time is simply another way the Capitalists steal from the workers. As you can see from the chart on the left, more productivity meant more wages until the 70s and, as noted above, that was also the…
Poof!
The VIX briefly spiked up 50% as the market plunged and that sent SVXY (we're short on them) plunging back down but a long way to go to our $105 target in September so we're expecting to see a general up-trend in volatility over the summer – but let's not get ahead of ourselves and see how the quarter ends first.
More of a concern than macro indicators, however, is how much money it's been costing the G20 to prop up the markets for the past decade as Golbal Debt just hit $217 TRILLION…
The banks all passed!
Seems like business as usual in America to me where the Top 10% of the population (30M) hold 75% of the nation's wealth AND make 50% of the income – yet they need tax breaks to get by….
That's why the "Fake (non-Fox) News Media" is under attack, ideas cannot be spread to the masses unless they are the State's ideas – all other opinions must be squashed or invalidated. Just the fact that I'm saying this here will cause this post to be censored at Seeking Alpha and several other places that usually syndicate our Morning Report.
And it's not really about the Top 10%, they are generally poor compared to the Top 1% but they do go along (like any good party Member) because what's good for the Top 1% is usually good for the Top 10% as…
There's a battle going on at the top of the market.
Here we are again, again.
That caused the forecasts for contributions of real Nonresidential Equipment and Inventory Investment to second-quarter real GDP growth to decline from 0.15% and 0.76% to 0.12% and 0.69%, respectively, which knocked the overall forecast futher down the line.
Be careful out there!
Getting back to the Nasdaq, although it seems outrageously high, the tech companies have come on strong with earnings – or at least Apple (AAPL) has, since that one company added $11Bn in profits or 50% of the Nasdaq's gains but 
Wow, what a ride!
We're still using the same chart.
I'm not saying AMZN buying WFM is a mistake – it's a good move for AMZN as it drops their p/e from 198 to 163 so now it only takes 163 years for AMZN to make the $995 you pay for their stock – what a deal! I'm just saying maybe the whole thing is silly and AMZN should be trading at, at most, 50 times earnings which, even if you assume that WFM is a brilliant acquisition and they double profits over the next 24 months to $6Bn, would…
$1,800,221 – that's up 300% from our $600,000 start on our paired portfolios back on 11/26/13.
The trick is to…
Maybe this time will be different and that's why we have a Long-Term Portfolio that is filled with long-term trades (which are, in turn, hedged by our Short-Term Portfolio) and 
Wheeee, this is fun!
That's it, the bears are dead.
Waiting.jpg)
Wheeeeeee!
Seriously?
What to talk about first?
Fortunately, Congress is on the case with the House having passed a bill to…
BUYBUYBUY?
While we are timid about shorting individual stocks, we are happy to do some hit and run work on the Futures and the trade ideas we had for you in yesterday's PSW Report (
Unemployment is LOW!
Restaurants are doing what every industry will have to do in a tight labor market, they are raising prices and HOPING not to lose too many customers as a trade-off. Unfortunately for restaurants, food at home is getting cheaper at the same time – making the trade-up to a meal out a more and more expensive decision for consumers.
Some regions are more bubbly than others, mostly in Texas and out west (Seattle, Denver, San Francisco) with massive gains since the last bubble burst. Yesterday's read on the Beige Book shows an economy that does not support this kind of housing recovery and just last night, San Francisco Fed President John Williams said the Fed is still on path for 2 more hikes in 2017 with a goal of 3% by 2019.
He's back!
The White House has yet to announce any terminations or staff realignment. Instead, overnight Trump took another swipe at reports that his Twitter privileges may be removed, saying that "the Fake News Media works hard at disparaging & demeaning my use of social media because they don't want America to hear the real story!"
This is gettting interesting, isn't it?
The Futures went flying this morning.
