5/7/10 Midday Report: The market has no clothes (and sadly, it resembles Abe Vigoda)

Holy fucking shit.  You'll have to excuse Money McBags today because he is still trying to put his limbs back on after jumping from his penthouse apartment during yesterday's volatility which saw the market drop by 9% in 20 minutes.  Whether it was spurred by riots in Greece, a fat finger (or as Portia Di Rossi would call it, "heaven"), or a broken flux capacitor, it is clear that high frequency trading exacerbated the problem and Money McBags is freaked the fuck out.  As a dedicated reader of zerohedge, Money McBags applauds their foresight into, and explanation of, this problem and it is enough to make anyone want to pack it up and join the circus (though if Money McBags were to join the circus, he hopes it would be the Circus of the Stars so he could have the lovely Brooke Shields tame his lion).  Anyway, all of you should read this explanation or simply watch this as Money McBags can offer no better insight in to what happened yesterday and frankly, is liquidating a lot of his shit right now because playing a game where the rules change at any time and you have no control over them is not something Money McBags wants to be a part of unless the game involves Heather Vandeven and the rule changes all involve tickling.  What happened yesterday has made Money McBags feel sicker and more disgusted than he imagines Rosie O'Donnell's kids will feel when they find out where their other mother puts her mouth at night.  If you want more proof of what a sham the current market is, NASDAQ is cancelling the trades of 296 stocks from yesterday.  So if you bought at the drop and made a fuckload of money, you are now left holding a dick sandwich without the bread.  But hey, Money McBags has lost money on trades before so why won't NASDAQ go back and retroactively cancel those?  Who the fuck does Money McBags have to market manipulate or high frequency trade with to get someone to throw him a fucking trade break?  Something about this whole thing smells fishier than Oprah Winfrey's tampon after a 5k.  The market as we know it might be dead, so be smart, and be ready.

In macro news, who gives a shit, but if you do, the US added 290k jobs and yet unemployment rose to 9.9%, as apparently they hired one person to do all 290k jobs.  Economists guessed that 190k jobs would be added so the report was slightly better than expectations but 66k of the jobs added were temporary government jobs to deal with the census so before we reach for any bottles of Dom over a growth in jobs, lets be realistic about what is actually happening.  And to try to keep people's minds off of what happened to the market yesterday, the government revised the jobs numbers from each of the last 2 months upwards.  That's right, March's job adds were revised upward from 162k to 230k and February was revised up from a loss of 14k to a gain of 39k.  Hey, why not just revise each month to a gain of fucking 1MM as long as we are making shit up.  Money McBags believes any of those numbers like he believes in the Lochness monster, dividing by zero, or the existence money shots in lesbian porn.

In stock news today, it doesn't matter.  Everything is being manipulated.  Money McBags hedged his portfolio earlier this week with EPV and has been adding FAZ and GLD.  He has also sold his favorite little companies for fear of liquidity issues.  So bye bye CRUS, KITD, and CTGX.  It is a sad sad day but one must not fight the market.  Money McBags still believes in their stories and will buy them back once (and if) the market settles.  If it settles up from here, he's ok with that.  Money McBags made good money on all of those so lets take some profits off the table while the market drops like John Edwards' popularity or Hillary Duff on her engagement night.  Money McBags needs some time off rigt now because what he thought was real may be faker than Tom Cruise's marriage.  So try to enjoy the weekend.  Money Mcbags will likely be back Monday and will try to analyze companies and perhaps the market will have rallied all the way back by then and all of you who are buying right now will be enjoying bottles of Cristal and blumpkins in your seaside cabana, but be careful out there, because the retail investor is the sucker in this game and it is always better to be the suckee, than it is to be the sucker (unless you are from Transylvania).

And remember to speak well of Money McBags.

5/5/10 Midday Report: Investors celebrate May 5th with Sink-o de Marketo celebration

Buenos dias on this lovely Cinqo de Mayo as investors smack the market like a pinata in hopes of breaking it open to catch some falling CDS.  Things remain ugly today as Europe is still on the verge of going bankrupt thanks to Greece's steroidal Wimpy strategy of having a gyro today while promising to pay for five of them on Tuesday.  Unfortunately this strategy is finally coming back to bite Greece on its hairy proktos.  Fear continues that Spain and Portugal will be next to need bailouts while even more fear continues that Heidi Montag will put out a new album or Alan Greenspan will find someone to listen to him again.  Moody's put Portugal on review telling the country that they need to start paying down their debts, show up to class on time, and stop throwing spitballs at Spain.  Moody's is threatening to cut Portugal by two notches from the contrived "Aa2" to the less contrived "AaYour'efucked."  Of course as always, Money McBags cares what the rating agencies have to say as much as he cares about John Meriwether's advice on starting a hedge fund or Fabulous Fab Tourre's sales pitch for subprime bonds.  Moody's will likely be late once again to the dance with their downgrade of Portugal as by the time Moody's figures it out, Portugal will long have fled the prom in a fit of tears after busting out of their prom dress and leaving their assets exposed and devalued.  Making matters worse in Europe is that Europeans hate to shower and it's getting hot outside, but making matters even worse than that is that three people were killed when Greek workers protested the new austerity measures yesterday. On the bright side, that is one way for the government to extinguish the debt, though on the negative side it's a bit morally lacking.  In the protests a bank branch also burned to the ground, luckily, the bank only held subprime debt and thus was worth more as ash than as a solvent entity.  And finally, EU central banker Axel Foley Weber warned about “grave contagion effects” of the Greek debt crisis for the rest of Europe but added that it doesn't mean the EU should use every instrument necessary to quell it such as more bailouts, rate changes, or sticking bananas in tailpipes (though if it is Kristin Bell's tailpipe and Money McBags' banana, Money McBags will heartily disagree).

In US macro news, ADP reported that 32k jobs were added to the economy and it was the third month in a row of increases while Challenger, Gray & Christmas stopped by for some milk and cookies before reporting that planned layoffs decreased by 40% from the previous month.  Also, mortgage applications soared to a 7 month high thanks to the ending of the federal home buyer tax credit and an extra strong dose of meth while the ISM reported that service industry expanded at the same pace as last month as a result of a Viagra milkshake and being shown Carmen Electra workout videos.

In stock news, News Corp put up a good quarter thanks to revenues from Avatar which Money McBags will see as soon as he grows a vagina.  The company is trading down 5% though as they warned of a likely fourth quarter profit decline due to rising costs and lower revenues in their Fox network TV business, decelerating revenue in their cable business, and lower revenues in their film division as they are replacing Avatar with a film slate including the sequeals Alvin and The Chipmunks Get Rabies, The Thunder From Down Under Presents: What Happens in Vegas, and My Big Fat Greek Bankruptcy.  In other market news, GOOG is up today on news they are going to start selling e-books and investors realizing that GOOG is only a nut hair away from world domination.

In small cap stocks, Money McBags' biggest small cap holding KITD is getting pounded like they walked up to Brock Lesnar and told him not only is his mom a whore, but she's like a shotgun because one cock and she blows.  KITD has ~70% international revenue so with Europe about to join Atlantis and Chritsina Applegate's breasts in the annals of fictional places that once really existed, it is not a surprise that there is some movement down.  That said, Money McBags believes in this company and is in it for the long term (and by long term, he means until CEO Kaleil Tuzman sells to CSCO or whomever).  Tomorrow pay attention to EBIX reporting quarterly results which Money McBags is sure will look good but will lack any semblance of detail as that business is more obfuscated than John Goodman's belly button or Tiger Woods' sense of dignity.  On any metric the company is a screaming buy yet the red flags with CEO's disdain of the Street, his self promotional nature that makes Kim Kardashian seem like a recluse, and his penchant for changing auditors like Ben Roethlisberger changes alibis, is alarming.  Money McBags is going to stay away but if any of you can get comfortable with whatever it is in the insurance business they are doing other than installing johnson rods, you could have some nice upside.  FHCO also reports tomorrow and with any luck they will have been protected from the European debt disease.  FHCO has had a nice run on good earnings and a newly declared dividend and remains a strange and small company which Money McBags likes.  He doesn't own it as it ran a bit too much for him but he's going to reconsider after they report the Q.  Money McBags did make a couple of trades today by hedging his portfolio with EPV and selling his CIT shares for no reason other than to take profits and get some risk off the table.  CIT should actually fare well with new CEO John Thain, a cleaner balance sheet (but who really knows for sure how clean it is no matter what the 10k says), and a valuation of right around book value.  Should the market continue to drop, Money McBags will look to re-enter CIT while should Abigail Clancy's knickers drop, he will look to re-enter her.