Monday, January 27, 2014

Apple (AAPL): LOOK OUT BELOW!

                                                                              
Have an exit plan.  Tweet from Matt Drudge, The Drudge Report

Apple stock plunged $46 - 8% - in after hour trading this afternoon after releasing its 1st quarter fiscal year earnings.  It's irrelevant whether or not they beat estimates because the estimates are rigged by Wall Street analysts to be beaten anyway.  It lowered its outlook for 2014 and that was relevant.  The net-net of it is, as I've been saying ad nauseum, the consumer is dying on a vine.

There's a lot of mutual and hedge funds who are highly overweighted in AAPL stock.  Unless the Fed intervenes heavily tonight and tomorrow in the futures markets, the rest of this week could get ugly for the stock market.  In addion, the NYSE released monthly margin debt numbers for November and it showed a new all-time high for margin debt, by a considerable amount.  Historically market peaks occur when investor margin debt goes parabolic, which it has.

I have been warning anyone willing to listen that this is the most overvalued market in the history of this country, especially if you adjust earnings by using the GAAP accounting standards that were enforced 20 years ago.  My advice is to sell now and get your money out of the system as much as possible.  It won't be long before there's a stampede for the exits...foretold is forewarned.

13 comments:

  1. ...unless the fed refuses to let the markets crash and stops the planned taper or even increases QE. Hell, the fed could BUY stocks itself if it fears armageddon. In fact, EM turmoil could trigger CDS and derivatives defaults/cascading bank failures circa 2008/2009. I have no doubt markets should tank, but do doubt the fed letting it happen if it means complete deflationary meltdown, even if the alternative is an imminent currency crisis. We could have our QE on steroids/crack up boom first.

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    1. You hit the nail on the head.

      "..unless the fed refuses to let the markets crash and stops the planned taper or even increases QE. Hell, the fed could BUY stocks itself if it fears armageddon. In fact, EM turmoil could trigger CDS and derivatives defaults/cascading bank failures circa 2008/2009. I have no doubt markets should tank, but do doubt the fed letting it happen if it means complete deflationary meltdown, even if the alternative is an imminent currency crisis. We could have our QE on steroids/crack up boom first."

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  2. Nothing goes up in a straight line. Even during the Weimer and Post French Revolution, you had monetary crises that led to additional money printing. Markets went up and down like a roller coaster with the final outcome of a rocket to the moon. So stocks often and will go down in prelude to a crackup boom. Once bonds, stocks, retirement accounts, housing prices, everything falls, people will beg for even more money printing. The crackup boom is never a problem of excess money. The crackup boom occurs when there is never enough money because money is debt and debt is all glitter and no gold.

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  3. I see that scenario playing out before I see a market collapse. Hell , whats more monopoly money printing anyway. After all increasing the debt ceiling doesn't increase our debt.../sarcasm off.

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  4. "Last month, when the Reno City Council voted to sell off a piece of land at a loss to rescue one of its bonds from default, more than one council member said their motivation to back the deal was driven by the desire to keep Reno from becoming “a Detroit,” which filed for bankruptcy last year.

    Reno may not be on the brink of insolvency, but it is facing some pretty significant financial challenges, not the least of which is the fact its overall debt load is nearly nine times what it was 15 years ago."

    http://www.rgj.com/article/20140127/NEWS/301270009/5-reasons-you-should-be-concerned-about-Reno-s-finances

    It's not only consumerism dying. It's also Federal, State, and Local governments ability to pile on debt like they're at a buffet.

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  5. I see panic selling, panic buying, and then selling again. Volatility off the charts. The wolves have
    the herd surrounded. Only one problem..... too many wolves not enough sheep.

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  6. Went to bank and cleaned out remainder of cash. My "personal banker" asked why? I just said hookers, blow and Vegas. Full disclosure I'm single. The truth is if pressed as to why you want YOUR money, tell them it is none of their Fu@king business.

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    1. Dude, if you really told your banker the money was for "hookers, blow and Vegas," you would be my all-time hero. That's hilarious.

      Delete
  7. Request to SEC for AIG Files Nets Heavily Redacted Documents Regulator Keeps Details—and Much More—Secret Despite Request for Info on AIG Probe

    Regulator Keeps Details—and Much More—Secret Despite Request for Info on AIG Probe. The Securities and Exchange Commission recently released documents related to its probe into the near-collapse of American International Group Inc. with hundreds of redactions to keep information secret. SEC officials blacked out information more than 800 separate times in one transcript of a witness interview that lasted less than three hours. On one page, redactions left just four words remaining: "okay," "by," "in" and "did." On another page, "um hmm" is one of three short phrases left untouched. Among the blacked-out details: the names of witnesses, their lawyers, the SEC enforcement officials and even the proofreaders who checked the transcripts.

    http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303277704579346751075205642

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  8. “Go It Alone” Obama To Decree Citizens To Invest In ZIRP Treasury Bonds (Ignores Constitution)

    Among those actions is a new retirement savings plan geared toward workers whose employers don’t currently offer such plans. The program would allow first-time savers to start building up savings in Treasury bonds that eventually could be converted into a traditional IRAs, according to two people who have discussed the proposal with the administration. Those people weren’t authorized to discuss it ahead of the announcement and insisted on anonymity.

    Another bad plan from “the most transparent administration in history.”

    That’s the spirit! Get unsophisticated households to invest at 0% on the short-end of the yield curve … or take on more risk on the long-end of the yield curve at 3.7%.

    Since the Federal Reserve is the largest holder of Treasury debt (followed by China, Japan, and off-shore banks in the Caribbean), is the administration trying to provide comfort to China that we are willing to sucker our people into low yield debt?

    Or is Obama trying to sucker our own people to take heat off The Federal Reserve?

    Or is Obama trying to bail out off-shore investors in Caribbean banks?

    Whatever happened to freedom of choice? What happens when the government decides to seize IRAs?

    http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/go-it-alone-obama-to-decree-citizens-to-invest-in-zirp-treasury-bonds-ignores-constitution/

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  9. Nanex ~ 28-Jan-2014 ~ Dark Pool Echo Curves

    4. AAPL - Image alternates between Retail buying and selling at the market.
    Note how retail buy market orders always execute near (but a fraction of a penny below) the top of the NBBO (top of gray shading) and retail sell market orders always execute near (but a fraction of a penny above) the bottom of the NBBO. This is where other limit orders that set the NBBO are getting front run by internalizers. For details on how this works, read sub-penny pricing which explains what "retail price improvement" is really all about.

    http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4545.html#4

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  10. This is Your Congress – NY Rep. Threatens to Throw Journalist Off Balcony and “Break Him in Half”

    http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/01/29/this-is-your-congress-ny-rep-threatens-to-throw-journalist-off-balcony-and-break-him-in-half/

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  11. Madoff IT Guys Wrote Code to Trick Auditors, Jury Told

    Bernard Madoff’s former computer programmers created a web of simple equations to make thousands of fake transaction numbers, dates and time stamps appear realistic on documents used to trick auditors, a jury was told in the trial of five of the con man’s former top aides.

    The men, Jerome O’Hara and George Perez, wrote dozens of “special” programs during audits by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Richard Dietrich, a senior technician at International Business Machines Corp., testified yesterday in federal court in Manhattan. Prosecutors have said the programming wouldn’t have been necessary if real trading had taken place, and that the former employees knew it was fraudulent because they helped create it.

    The trial is the first stemming from Madoff’s $17 billion Ponzi scheme, which collapsed after his confession and arrest in December 2008. O’Hara, Perez and three other former Madoff employees went on trial in October over accusations they aided the fraud for decades and got rich in the process.

    The trial is the first stemming from Madoff’s $17 billion Ponzi scheme, which collapsed after his confession and arrest in December 2008. O’Hara, Perez and three other former Madoff employees went on trial in October over accusations they aided the fraud for decades and got rich in the process.

    Dietrich analyzed computers seized from Madoff’s Midtown Manhattan office and is a prosecution expert witness.

    The programmers used “a variety of techniques” for generating “pseudo-randomized” data for documents, said Dietrich, a 32-year IBM veteran who helped develop the AS400 computer system used at Madoff’s now-defunct company. The programming was used to perform tasks such as assigning random international banks as counterparties to fake trades and making false Depository Trust Co. statements, he said.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-28/madoff-it-guys-wrote-code-to-trick-auditors-jury-told.html


    interesting.........

    JP Morgan IT executive plunges to death at bank's London HQ
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/28/us-jpmorgan-man-death-idUSBREA0R12220140128

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