Did I miss something yesterday? Jeesh, Money McBags takes a day off to fine tune his factors of production and Europe decides to mimic Ben Bernanke's "too big to count" strategy by printing up enough Euros to finally finish off the Bialowieza Forest or to get 36 very straight hours with the lovely Ashley Dupre. Perhaps the EU just wanted to test out the theoretical economic J-curve as part of some bs study by INSEAD to help future business leaders understand the value of exporting, but if they really wanted to devalue their currency, they should have just married it to Mickey Rourke. But hey, as long as the EU is content to continue to tickle John Maynard Keynes' shriveled balls with their embracing of debt, perhaps they'll go shock thumb on Sir Thomas Gresham's law by creating a shittier currency than the Euro in order to reinflate the dying currency's value. Ugh. This bail out continues to promote moral hazard and serves to merely put a band aid on a gun shot wound or a regular condom on Lexington Steele. Giving more money to countries who spent it like Kirtstie Alley at a Sizzler on rib night is just bad business. If your kid ran up a credit card bill, odds are you'd take it the fuck away from them and not increase their credit line which is basically what is happening in Europe. So Greece, Spain, Lucy Pinder, keep buying the shit out of whatever you want because Jean-Claude Trichet and Christine LaGarde have the printing presses on full bore and it's lend one lend one free day across the continent. And Europeans, start spending those Euros because the currency is about to become as worthless as campaign funds to John Edwards, binoculars to Stevie Wonder, or a lap dance to Richard Simmons.
The market however is rallying again today as apparently the UK is talking about instituting budget cuts. What is encouraging is that Britain is doing this despite its current hung parliament (and an English parliament hasn't been this hung since the aptly named Dick Long dangled his legislation in the House of Commons in the late 1600s). With all of this commotion in Europe, let's not forget that China may still be a problem as inflation is rising with home prices up 12.8%. China continues to boom with retail sales up 18.5% and bank lending in the month of April up to $113B. Hey EU, why not just quit screwing around and sell yourselves to China and be done with it. With China's economy bubblerific, it would be a bit like AOL buying Time Warner, but that worked out well for everyone right (and by everyone, Money McBags means Steve Case)?
In US news, the SEC is getting exchanges to institute new circuit breakers to stop stocks from falling too much too quickly. In this way the SEC hopes to remanipulate the market from the high frequency traders who currently manipulate it. Money McBags still has no faith in the current market structure after last week's crash that was only stopped by dumb luck. In macro news, wholesale inventories in the US rose .4% in March which was a tick below analyst guesses but puts wholesale inventories at their eight month high which is marginally not bad news for the economy.
In stock news, LM beat expectations, announced a potential $1B buyback, and apparently cured cancer as the stock is up 13%. They earned $.39 per share which bested analyst guesses of $.35 even though they still had $10.9B of outflows. LM also announced a "profit boosting" plan which consists of boosting more people out of jobs to increase overall profit as the investment manager continues to lose assest (though at a much slower pace). Alternatively, Priceline is down 10% today causing investors to all ask the questions "Priceline is still in business? Will they take Beenz?" Apparently PCLN's guidance was weaker than Money McBags knees after encountering the lovely Raven Alexis as they warned of a slowdown in their international business for the upcoming quarter thanks to a series of events including the Iceland volcano erupting, the weakening of the Euro, and a week long Hanna Hilton marathon on Spice.
In small cap news, CRUS continues to rally after apparently Jim Cramer slathered all over it last night. Money McBags has been pimping CRUS for quite a while now even though he sold it the other day to mitigate his risk (but hey, who needed the extra 20% upside, ugh). Money McBags thinks $1.20 in eps is not unreasonable for CRUS which puts the company at ~10x + $2 in cash. He wouldn't be buying here because Cramer's picks tend to get a pop up before sliding back down, but this is a solid growth company (you can read for yourself if you just type CRUS in to the search box here, speaking of which, Money Mcbags would love to search Hayley Atwell's box). Money McBags is still concerned about the market structure and the influence high frequency traders have so he is not sure fundamental analysis is really all that worthwhile right now. If you believe in the markets though, KITD is ridonkulously cheap after the sell off last week and has yet to rebound. The issue that Money McBags is trying to work through though is KITD's reliance on Europe with 70% of their revenue coming from European companies. Money McBags will ponder this as he swapped his holding into GLD but will be back analyzing companies tomorrow.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
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