The Future Of National Beverage Corp. (FIZZ) Stock; Cannabis Webinar
by ValueWalk - March 21st, 2019 10:50 pm
By Jacob Wolinsky. Originally published at ValueWalk.
Whitney Tilson’s email to investors discussing the LaCroix maker National Beverage Corp. (FIZZ)’s stock; Tesla; Cannabis webinar; question 3; Jamaica.
1) I’m still sniffing around National Beverage Corp, best known for its LaCroix brand of flavored sparkling water, which I wrote up as my Stock Idea of the Day in my email eight days ago.
Q4 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
The key question that will determine the future of the stock is whether we’re seeing a mere hiccup for LaCroix or the beginning of a long-term decline. To help answer this question, I’ve put together a short survey, posted here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JLS9QQS.
If you drink LaCroix and/or know someone who does, I’d be grateful if you’d take a moment to fill out/forward it. Thank you!
2) A friend forwarded me a 33-slide presentation on Tesla (TSLA), Detecting “Potential” Fraud in Real-Time, that Tom Bachrach of PFH Capital gave on Tuesday to UPenn Wharton students. You can download it here.
I don’t know him or his firm, but it’s an outstanding piece of analysis, especially the forensic accounting part that begins on page 17, which captures why I think there’s at least a 50% chance of significant fraud at the company. Pay particular attention to the “VIN Gap” he discusses on slides 28-29.
3) It’s a credit to Galileo Russell, the young guy who’s made a name for himself as a Tesla uber-bull, that he’s beginning to question all of the insane, inexplicable things that the company and its CEO, Elon Musk, are doing. Most people I’ve found do the opposite once they’ve committed to something, especially if they’ve done so publicly: they dig in their heels, block out any and all disconfirming information, and attack anyone who questions them.
In contrast, Russell did a live 28-minute YouTube session yesterday with his many followers in which he outlined his concerns Tesla and Musk and practically begged the company to raise money. Why it hasn’t done so remains a great mystery…but its failure to do so may be a major cause of the craziness we’re seeing, as Russell appears to be realizing (though he says he’s still bullish and buying the stock!)…
4) I’ve been…
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The PhilStockWorld.com Weekly Trading Webinar – 03-20-19
by clarisezoleta - March 21st, 2019 10:11 pm
For LIVE access on Wednesday afternoons, join us at Phil's Stock World – click here.
Major Topics:
00:01:50 Checking on the Markets
00:03:45 Coffee
00:07:28 HOV
00:11:56 Petroleum Status Report
00:13:04 FDX
00:25:06 AMZN
00:28:20 DIS
00:37:36 FDX Charts
00:43:34 BN$
00:55:04 TD
00:55:21 CM
01:00:29 FOMC Statement
01:10:28 Trade Ideas
01:15:26 Energy
01:19:27 Portfolios
Phil's Weekly Trading Webinars provide a great opportunity to learn what we do at PSW. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and view past webinars here. For LIVE access to PSW's Weekly Webinars – demonstrating trading strategies in real time – click here to join us at PSW!
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“It Feels Eerily Like 2007″ – DoubleLine’s Gundlach Blasts Fed’s “Unprecedented Reversal”
by Zero Hedge - March 21st, 2019 5:43 pm
Courtesy of Zero Hedge
As the whipsaw in stocks and the dollar sank in today – while the bond market remains unimpressed by the machine's liftathon today – market participants are still shaking their heads at what just happened.
One of the more outspoken of those market participants is DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach who took to Twitter this morning to express his disdain…
Three months ago the Fed predicted totally different policy than where they are now. How can they predict 2020 policy with a straight face?
— Jeffrey Gundlach (@TruthGundlach) March 21, 2019
But he was not done, in a brief interview with Reuters after the close, Gundlach unleashed on Jay Powell and rest of the FOMC warning that their sudden cautious stance on raising interest rates could backfire by creating uncertainty in the economy…
“This U-Turn – on nothing fundamentally changing – is unprecedented,” Gundlach said in a telephone interview.
“Three months ago, we were on ‘autopilot’ with the balance sheet – and now the bond market is priced for a rate cut this year. The reversal in their stance is stunning.”
Gundlach, the new "Bond King" now that Bill Gross has 'retired', oversees more than $123 billion in assets (we offer that tidbit to suggest he is worth listenig to), said he feels the Fed’s massive shift in such a short period on quantitative tightening could hurt the U.S. central bank’s credibility.
“They aren’t telling you what they are targeting. It’s like they aren’t really telling you what their motivation is,” Gundlach said.
“Just because things seem invincible doesn’t mean they are invincible. There is kryptonite everywhere. Yesterday’s move created more uncertainty.”
Gundlach, who correctly predicted the S&P 500 would post negative returns in 2018, said the benchmark index is set for another negative year.
He said the stock market, for now, “likes the fact that they (the Fed) aren’t going to give them…
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Which Nations Will Crumble And Which Few Will Prosper In The Next 25 Years?
by Zero Hedge - March 21st, 2019 5:20 pm
Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith, OfTwoMinds
Adaptability and flexibility will be the core survival traits going forward.
What will separate the many nations that will crumble in the next 25 years and those few that will survive and even prosper while the status quo dissolves around them? As I explain in my recent book Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic, the factors that will matter are not necessarily cultural or financial; being hard-working and wealthy won't be enough to save nations from coming apart at the seams.
Here are the factors that will matter in the next 25 years:
1. The ability to engage and survive non-linear change, which is rapid, unpredictable and systemic, as opposed to linear change which is gradual, predictable and limited in nature.
None of the current political systems are decentralized enough and adaptable enough to survive the non-linear era we're entering. As I explained in What If Politics Can't Fix What's Broken?, the politics of centralized compromise and incremental, top-down adjustments are wholly inadequate to dealing with non-linear disruptions.
2. The nations that cannot jettison their parasitic elites will fall; the few that find the political will to jettison their parasitic elites will have the wherewithal to survive and possibly even prosper as the global status quo collapses around them.
The problem, as we all know, is the parasitic elites rule the centralized hierarchies of wealth and political power, and they will cling to power even as the nation they rule crumbles around them. The hubris, complacency and greed of the ruling parasitic elites is near-infinite; the idea that the political and financial structures that they dominate will not survive simply doesn't exist in the parasitic elites, with the exception of a few outliers who are constructing remote bugout compounds with landing strips etc.
Unfortunately for these outliers, they can't escape satellite and drone imagery, or the loose tongues of employees, contractors, etc.
By the time the populace awakens to the precariousness of the entire status quo, it will be too late to effect meaningful change via removing the parasitic elites from power. Just as Rome was too hollowed out to survive by the end, the status quo structures will be too enfeebled to adapt quickly enough to survive.
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Selling Into The Rally: Not Everyone Is Bullish On Equities
by ValueWalk - March 21st, 2019 5:09 pm
By Michelle Jones. Originally published at ValueWalk.
The markets have generally had a bullish view of equities for much of the year so far, but not everyone is buying stocks. In fact, Bank of America Merrill Lynch reports that this year has brought the worst start to the year for equity flows since 2008.
Selling into equity strength
Last week BofAML recorded $10.1 billion in outflows from stocks, of which $5.5 billion of those outflows were in U.S. stocks alone.
Q4 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
The firm’s clients were clearly selling into strength as global stocks were up 10.6% for the week. BofAML Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett and team pointed out that the equity bull market officially turns 10 on Saturday. Over the last decade, the U.S. market capitalization has increased $21.3 trillion, which is triple the U.S. GDP’s increase of $6.5 billion.
The only other asset which saw outflows last week was gold, which incidentally has performed well toward the end of this week, finally breaking above the key $1,300 per ounce level so many experts have been watching. According to BofAML, commodities were up 12.6% the same week gold recorded outflows. Precious metals saw $1.2 billion in outflows, the highest in 28 weeks.
The only other “bearish” flow, according to the firm, was the $8.8 billion in inflows to bonds.
Hartnett and team also said their Bull & Bear Indicator dropped for the first time this year, falling from 5.1 to 4.9. The drop is especially notable because of how quickly the indicator has shifted from buy territory just a few months ago deep into neutral territory now.
In fact, their Bull & Bear Indicator was in “extreme bull” territory just last year.
Credit over stocks
Harnett and team also found that flows significantly favor credit over stocks. In fact, this past week brought the fourth-largest inflows to investment-grade bonds ever recorded at $9.5 billion.
We would also note that other sources have indicated that pension funds, which are among the biggest investors of all, have been increasingly favoring credit over the last several months. Canaccord Genuity has been tracking record-high pension flows to credit and related…
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Public Pensions Share What They’re Doing To Boost Funding Levels
by ValueWalk - March 21st, 2019 4:37 pm
By Michelle Jones. Originally published at ValueWalk.
The pension crisis has been going on for so long that it seems like every headline about it simply adds more bad news to the pile. However, there are a few good things going on at some public pension funds. There are also some very interesting trends, according to a recent study.
The National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS) conducted a study of 167 state and local government pension funds. The NCPERS Public Retirement Systems Study analyzed the funds’ “fiscal condition” and the steps they’re taking to bolster their “fiscal and operational integrity.”
Q4 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
Equity returns are higher than other asset classes
Thy found—among other things—that the three asset classes which posted the highest one-year gross returns last year are all equities. However, private equity, hedge funds and other alternatives were in fourth place. It’s interesting that PE, hedge funds and alternatives were all lumped into one group, given what we’ve seen from other studies.
For example, Canaccord Genuity has shown several times that pension funds are increasingly favoring credit and related products over other asset classes, and sometimes PE can overlap with credit. As a result, the NCPERS study makes it a bit difficult to discern exactly where pension funds are getting their returns from.
We have seen in other studies that investors in general have been boosting their allocations to PE funds, often at the expense of hedge funds.
Looking at the allocations of pension funds, the NCPERS study found “a slight decrease” in targeted allocation to equities and fixed income and a “slight increase” in targeted allocation to bonds and PE/ alternatives.
Highest returns favored equity allocations
The study also found that the pension funds with the highest one-year investment returns were those that favored equities, global fixed income, PE and alternatives, and commodities. On the other hand, these funds had lower allocations to domestic and international fixed income.
Given the strong run stocks had last year, it isn’t a big surprise that equity-focused funds did better than others, although December through a major wrench into the works for some strategies. Due…
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The ‘Big Short’ In Canada: Eisman Ups Bets Against “Big Six” Canadian Banks
by Zero Hedge - March 21st, 2019 3:35 pm
Courtesy of Zero Hedge
Over the last year, Neuberger Berman portfolio manager Steve Eisman – who gained notoriety beyond Wall Street thanks to 'The Big Short' and his portrayal by Steve Carrell in the movie adaptation – has taken seemingly every opportunity to talk his book, which apparently consists of concentrated bets against the financial systems of two developed nations: The UK and Canada.
Though UK banks largely bottomed out in October and have managed only a tepid rebound since, their Canadian peers have clawed back much of their losses from late last year. But this hasn't shaken Eisman's faith in his bet against Canadian banks, which is effectively a bet against the Canadian housing market (though Eisman doubts the fallout will be anywhere near as intense as the US housing market collapse that minted his reputation).
During an interview with the FT that was published on Thursday, Eisman explained that he's simply betting on a "normalization of credit" in the Canadian economy, where lax lending terms fueled a housing bubble that has been tentatively acknowledged as a systemic risk by the Bank of Canada. For the first time ever, the central bank late last year even started buying mortgage bonds late last year to prop up the sliding Canadian housing market help increase the tradeable float of its benchmark securities
"I’m calling for a simple normalisation of credit that hasn’t happened in 20 years," Mr Eisman told the FT, while declining to name the banks he is shorting, or the full extent of his positions. He said the effects would hurt banks and the real estate sector, but would not be as intense as the financial crisis a decade ago in the US, when he and others saw huge profits from the implosion of the subprime mortgage market. "This is not ‘The Big Short: Canada’ – I’m not calling for a housing collapse," he said.
Adding to the already precarious finances of Canadian households, more Canadians are plundering their home equity to finance everything from renovations to car purchases.
Meanwhile, Canadian home sales crashed in January…
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Fed’s Powell Wasn’t Expecting this Kind of Drama at his Press Conference
by ilene - March 21st, 2019 1:56 pm
Courtesy of Pam Martens
Jerome (Jay) Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Speaks at a Press Conference Following FOMC Announcement on March 20, 2019
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
The real drama in the market yesterday was not the 2:00 p.m. release of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) statement to hold rates steady but what happened about twenty minutes into the press conference that began at 2:30 p.m. when Fed Chairman Jerome (Jay) Powell began to answer questions from an intrepid group of reporters. The youthful, fresh-scrubbed faces from well-known media outlets presented a paradoxical contrast to the gritty questions they lobbed at the man who clearly understood that losing his cool could tank the stock market.
But despite Powell’s calm exterior, the stock market didn’t like the questions or the responses from Powell. Opacity is treasured by the masters of today’s stock market. Too much transparency or honesty sends hedge funds and dark pools running for the safety of Treasury notes. Not only did the Dow Jones Industrial Average begin a sharp descent about 24 minutes into the press conference (see chart below) but so did each of the five largest Wall Street bank stocks: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.
So exactly who were these truth-seeking reporters and what was the nature of the uncomfortable questions they asked?
Victoria Guida, Reporter for Politico, Asks About Recent Change to the Fed’s Stress Tests During March 20, 2019 Press Conference
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Nothing Happens, Then Everything Happens
by Zero Hedge - March 21st, 2019 12:07 pm
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Authored by Nick Maggiulli of Dollars And Data
After traveling the world for over five years aboard the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin returned to England on October 2, 1836. You would think that after half a decade of documenting the unknown flora and fauna of the globe Darwin would sit down and write up his theory on evolution. But, that didn’t happen. As Bill Bryson notes:
It wasn’t until 1842, six years after his return to England, that Darwin finally began to sketch out the rudiments of his new theory.
However, even this wasn’t enough to get Darwin to finish his most famous work. It would take a letter from Alfred Wallace, another English naturalist, to force Darwin to collect his thoughts. The letter, which arrived 16 years after Darwin’s initial drafts, contained Wallace’s own independently discovered theory of evolution. Darwin saw the writing on the wall and knew he had to act fast. Over the course of the next year Darwin worked furiously to finalize his ideas. He published On the Origin of Species in November 1859, over 23 years after returning from his worldwide voyage.
We look back upon history as a series of events that seem simple and logically connected. Darwin traveled the world, studied animal behavior, and then immediately came up with the theory of evolution. But that’s not how things unfolded. History isn’t so simple. It actually took over two decades of pondering and working on other matters before Darwin finalized the ideas that would revolutionize biology. Nothing happened, then everything happened.
The same can be said of investing, where mostly smooth growth is occasionally interrupted by violent fluctuations. Morgan Housel said it best when he compared investing to being an airline pilot:
Ninety percent of the job is uneventful to the point of automation; ten percent of the job is terrifying and requires complex skills and a flawlessly calm demeanor.
Nothing happens, then everything happens.
To illustrate this concept I am going to show you a different way of looking at price charts. First, I am going to show you the growth of $1 for the S&P 500 from 1990-2018 (using…
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WTF Chart Of The Day
by Zero Hedge - March 21st, 2019 12:03 pm
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Presented with no comment…
Thanks Tim Cook…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site