2/18/10 Midevening Report : Bernanke preemptively raises discount rate, causes Alan Greenspan to roll over in his grave

Aw shit, it is now on like donkey kong as the Fed is getting serious about some shit.  This ain't your Greenspan pushover, lolligagging, lobster tails and blow jobs for everyone, bubble creating Federal Reserve.  No siree, this Bernanke guy is a straight up pimp and will bitch slap the market back to reality and remind them not to take daddy's money before they get too uppity on him.  With the markets running off of a 3 day orgy filled with earnings, mediocre economic news, and a potential bailout to get the EU out of the greek headlock in which they have been painfully trapped, Bernanke had had enough.  We all remember when the fed minutes were released yesterday and one of Bernanke's henchman, T-Ho (Fed Reserve of KC bank president Thomas Hoenig) started to warn Ben about getting high off his own supply by keeping rates too low.  Well Benny B took that to heart and after the market closed he took out his pimp hand and smacked the shit out of the market by surprisingly raising the discount rate to 75bps while yelling "That's right market, don't forget, I'm you're daddy.  Come on, say it.  Who's your daddy?  Let me hear it.  You know you want it tight in the discount window."  This is the first time the rate has been increased in three years and will likely halt the market's rally tomorrow.

Aside from Bernanke trying to win his cock-off with the market, macro news was mixed today with the Philly Fed saying manufacturing had picked up again and new orders are at their highest levels in 5 years (of course in Philly, those new orders are for Uzis, Butterscotch Krimpets, and fecal matter to make the city even shittier than it is).  New claims for unemployment also came out today and were worse than expectations, rising by 31k to 473k as opposed to falling as analysts had expected.  Money McBags has been through this before, but if you're an analyst, can you at least get the direction correct?  For fucksake you have a 50% chance, I mean it's not like the 33% chance you have in guessing "man, woman, or tranny?" with Kathleen Turner.  Finally the PPI came out today (as opposed to the pee pee eye that landed R Kelly on trial) and was up 1.4% signalling inflation.  While the core rate was only up .3%, it was still worse than the .1% expectation.  The point is, inflation is coming and it's a good thing Bernanke looks to be proactive about it.

WMT had their earnings announcement today and beat earnings expectations yet had negative same store sales growth as a result of declining traffic.  Their guidance for Q1 was also almost as bleak as John Tyler's 1844 re-election campaign or Heidi Montag's Celebrity Jeopardy! prospects as they said it will be a challenging quarter.  The stock was down moderately today but if Bernanke is determined to quiet the market, shares of WMT may become more interesting if they fall another 5%.

Finally in small cap news WILC was down 10%.  Really?  No, really?   There are people who want to puke out a company trading at less than 4x EV/EBITDA, less than 10x earnings (or 5x earnings if you take out the 50% cash they have on the balance sheet), with growth prospects to potentially double revenues?  Seriously?  Unless you think CEO Gee Willi Zwi Williger is blowing smoke out of his shofar and is fooling his auditors and submitting his financials in crayon on the back of a discarded yarmulke, there is absoltuely no fucking reason to be selling this stock here.  It is still cheaper than a pail of salt water on the sunken island of Atlantis or the self respect of an 18 year old wanna be model on her first Hollywood casting couch.  Yeah, Money McBags knows it is a weird fucking company (he broke it all down for you way back in 2009) and he also knows that the volume on this stock tends to be thinner than a bulimic with an oversensitive gag reflex, but for fucksake, what is it going to trade down to?  Cash?  A business earning money with no debt and growing is going to trade down to cash (which is only 50% downside from here)?  If that's the case than Money McBags clearly has no idea what he is doing and needs to get of this business and into whatever idiots do, like maybe politics, making oven mitts, or running the LA Clippers.  Unless this company is completely full of shit like a constipated political consultant, it is a fucking screaming buy.  And yes Money McBags owns it, so yes he is talking up his book.  Full fucking disclosure, as always.