Financial topics

[vincecate]

I find it odd that so many people think you should be able to swing an axe/hammer at a federal agent and still have nothing happen to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EgMijMhS_U

They will probably get 10 years for the idea "that is not ok" to sink in.

[aeden]

doughnut has some good footage
those nuts are going to fed prison for a very very long time

[aeden]

https://www.jmbullion.com/sell-to-us/#buybacks
not selling yet
The $1,896 gold in 2011 is worth $2,172.96 today, so still ~ 10% to go just maybe.

https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflat ... mount=1896

Inflation adjusted

[Higgenbotham]

I moved to 8 lots short today. My break even on this trade has moved to 2862.

Moved to 9 lots short today. Break even up to 2903.

[Higgenbotham]

Key Words

‘Trouble’s coming,’ warns short-selling legend who just cashed in a roughly $100 million winning bet

Published: July 27, 2020 at 3:27 p.m. ET

By Shawn Langlois

‘This market is setting up to be one of the great short opportunities of all time. Trouble’s coming, I don’t know when, but it’s coming.’

That’s legendary short seller Jim Chanos, fresh off a $100 million win, casting gloom over the current state of the stock market in a recent interview with the Financial Times.

Chanos, who once made a killing by shorting Enron and aims to make another one with his bearish bet against Tesla TSLA, +8.65%, just earned nine-figures by shorting Wirecard ahead of its collapse, according to sources cited in the FT story.

Of the big Wirecard win, he said “it’s bittersweet. because short sellers put up with weeks and months of misery, and you feel good for hours and days.”

Speaking of misery, his Tesla short is a mess, but Chanos, with $1.5 billion in assets under management, still maintains he’s got a winner on his hands.

“Elon Musk has personified the hopes and dreams of this bull market,” Chanos said, adding that Tesla has “a culture of deception” and it “burnishes its results through aggressive accounting.”

He claimed we’re in a “golden age of fraud,” describing the current market climate as rife with euphoria, FOMO and Trumpian “post-truth” politics — “a really fertile field for people to play fast and loose with the truth, and for corporate wrongdoers to get away with it for a long time,” he said.

Chanos is certainly worth listening to, if the epic performance of his Kynikos Capital Partners fund is any indication. The long/short equity strategy, according to the FT, has delivered a 22% gain a year, on average, over the past 35 years to double the return on the S&P 500.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/troub ... =home-page

The coronavirus crisis has spawned “ebitdac”, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortisation — and coronavirus — where companies are adding back profits they say they would have made but for the pandemic.

Prolonged periods of quantitative easing — most recently to ease the economic pain of the coronavirus crisis — is “adding to inequality” by benefiting the people who own financial assets, says Chanos. He believes that the Federal Reserve ought to cut credit card rates for consumers, which are still 15-18 per cent in the US, and sees a potential political backlash against the central banks for their part in how “the rich have gotten much richer and the vast majority of people have not”.

Political risk is one of the reasons that Chanos is shorting gig economy comp­anies such as ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft and online food-delivery platforms Grubhub and Just Eat Takeaway. Not only are they losing money, but he believes that there is going to be a greater political focus on low-wage workers, which poses an existential threat to their business models.

Chanos sits on the finance committee of US presidential hopeful Joe Biden, who is supporting a new California law to strengthen legal protections for gig economy workers. A Biden administration raises the prospect of higher taxes. “I think it’s fair that rates of taxation on capital probably should go up, relative to rates of taxation on earned income. I know that makes me a communist on Wall Street but I’ve always felt that.”

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp ... CAk&uact=5

[Higgenbotham]

Now for some balance. He says he doesn't know when. His time horizon may be years if the below is any indication.

Jim Chanos: U.S. Economy is Worse Than You Think

By Lynn Parramore

JUN 30, 2017| GOVERNMENT & POLITICS | HISTORY | FINANCE


The famed short-seller offers a mid-2017 reality check for “fake fiscal news,” and economic pipe dreams, and sees “portents of even worse things”

Since the election of Donald Trump, the stock market has soared and many pundits have noted positive economic trends in the US. Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates, known for his financial prescience, is less sanguine. He sat down with INET’s Lynn Parramore to discuss the underlying components of the economy, in which he finds several areas of concern. Chanos is a member of INET’s Global Partners Council.

Lynn Parramore: Let’s talk about perceptions of the U.S. economy. You’ve pointed out that surveys asking how people feel about the economy show optimism, while actual hard numbers look disappointing. What do you make of this gap?

Jim Chanos: It’s intriguing that people are reporting they’re feeling better, particularly in the corporate sector, but even among consumers. People say they feel good about the economy and yet they apparently don’t have any money at the end of every month to keep spending.

We’re seeing weak consumer spending numbers in both auto and housing, which are big drivers of the economy. With unemployment so low and the expansion where it is, these figures should be better than they are. There are portents of even worse things when you look at state and federal tax receipts, which are down, and other leading indicators.

It could all just be a soft spot in an ongoing expansion — time will tell. But the narrative we were told is that animal spirits would take us to the next level of economic activity. That clearly is not happening in mid-2017. We’re 8 years into an economic expansion, and economists say that the modern U.S. economy has never gone more than 10 years without a recession. So as recoveries go we are well into it.

People have bought their cars and remodeled their houses and done a lot of things that one does in an economic recovery. I think incremental spending [spending based on increased disposable income] is going to be harder and harder to come by as time goes on.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspecti ... -you-think

[aeden]

But the narrative we were told is that animal spirits would take us to the next level of economic activity.
That clearly is not happening in mid-2017.

Weaker dollar will should buoy commodity's sideways to grind the way towards the $49 level on black gold.
Not looking or buying into GAAP issues in Tech.

Another Liberal wiped out by his buddy's.
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inli ... k=28CwezN5

Mainstream media is continually wrong about the relationship between gold and the dollar.

Gold's monetary demand is a function of faith in central banks. M
The values of Utility.
The lesson of the two Olive Trees.

[jcsok]

Having some of the wounds heal from previous short ES attempt, sold ES this afternoon at 3240.

[aeden]

https://neonnettle.com/news/12099-georg ... ves-matter

[aeden]

UK officials have confirmed that a "second wave" of COVID-19 has "started to roll across Europe" following a recent spike in cases.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned Thursday morning.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ ... ve-updates