They Can't See It Coming

Globalization is run by a country club of arrogant self-absorbed dumbfucks who can't possibly envision a world that doesn't have them installed at the top. They'll be the most surprised when it all ends, we know that much...

Last night, Steve Jobs' errand boy, Tim Cook, got roasted on 60 Minutes for tax evasion and mass outsourcing. His response as to why Apple outsources everything to China, is because they can't find the right skills in the U.S.

In other words, corporations outsourced all of the skills, and now they can't find any. It's human history's biggest circle of jerks: 

Apple's profit margins are under a daily magnifying glass by armies of Wall Street analysts, with each minor change causing gyrations in the stock - and 99% of Tim Cook's compensation is tied to the stock. BUT, the cost advantage has nothing to do with it...sure:

Apple is currently trading like the brains behind the company left the building four years ago. When Steve Jobs died, the accountants took over, and they "invented" iPhoney6++:

As it is in the Energy industry right , corporate Mad Men still have literally no clue they are putting their own companies out of business en masse...Why? Because today's self-nominated "best and brightest", are the biggest dumbfucks on the planet. 

Corporate profits:

Financial Deathstar 2.0: Implosion Sequence

Fake-believe time is ending...I hope the consumption zombies enjoyed it, because the tab is "everything"...

"They convinced themselves that they were the first society in human history to borrow their way out of a debt crisis. And that printing money to buy stocks was the secret to effortless wealth"

MW: Dec. 18, 2015
This is How Much Money There Is In the World

World stocks ex-U.S. with commodities

"The Wealth Was Almost As Fake As The People Who Believed In It"

Along with the rest of the S&P 500, Microsoft is laying itself off to prosperity. The stock peaked on Thursday 5% above the current level...

Fact check please. Microsoft hasn't been this expensive since Y2K when its growth rate was about 3x higher...
https://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/pe_ratio

Stock buybacks are covering up declining net income, mostly due to ongoing write-offs of failed businesses:
Microsoft Financial Statements (Archive)

"We make money the old fashioned way: Operating system monopoly, mass layoffs for stock buybacks, and Fed money printing"

Microsoft with Fed balance sheet

Conned By Corrupt Dunces. AGAIN.

The definition of an Idiocracy is a society that never learns, and that trusts the same serial psychopaths over and over again. At some point, people have to look in the fucking mirror and realize they're the problem. The liars have 11% approval, but the lies are obligatory. The circus exists for their entertainment...

"Jobless Consumer" sentiment with the imaginary economy:

To someone who just fell off the turnip truck, this must all seem very exciting - getting ass raped by Wall Street for the very first time. The cherry is broken. 

Personally, going through this for the third time, I'm sick of being conned by the biggest dumbest sociopaths in human history. My lesson came in 2000. So following that binary fiasco, when the psychopaths took interest rates down to 1% post 9-11 and called them "Patriot loans" to launch the housing bubble "recovery", I was disgusted. Entire families were obliterated to fund Wall Street's "Big Short", which is now an Idiocratic "comedy" in theaters near you. 

I thought Lehman surely had to be the end of the chicanery. But in 2008, stoned zombies saw their consumption-oriented lifestyle flash before their eyes, so they sold their soul to Bernankenstein at 0%.

Now for 7 years straight, reality has been hunting down the Idiocracy like Louis Cypher in Angel Heart. Reminding them one asset class at a time, of the price they paid to monetize the future. 0% is a Faustian Bargain - poverty capital with a redemption value of $Everything. 

Granted, financial security will come and go, and most of what is "needed" will be easily tradeable or purchased for pennies on the dollar when human history's largest flea market gets underway: The inevitable puking out of decades of accumulated junk no one really needed in the first place. 

But mental and physical resilience are a whole other story. It's priceless. And those who haven't been accumulating it, are not going to last very long. 

Trapped In The Hotel Californication

Lowest inflows since 2009:

Dec. 18, 2015

Jim Cramer: 'Tis The Season to Liquidate

"Cramer could only explain the decline of the averages on Friday as a repercussion of being in the heart of liquidation season"

"there have been more failed hedge funds this year than any time since 2008."

"managers [sell] before everyone goes on vacation and they get stuck with a market that is too thin to handle their sales,"

Nov. 23, 2015 Business Insider:
The Stocks Hedge Funds Love Most Right Now

#2: Facebook
#3 Google
#5 Amazon
#6 Apple
#7 Microsoft

Liquidation Visualized
S&P with Fed balance sheet (blue) and total NYSE volume (red)

Money Flow

Too late

S&P 100 Implied Volatility (Original VIX):

Terminal Idiocracy: The Hardest Landing

The psychopaths bought into their imaginary recovery this week, with the first interest rate hike since 2006. Skynet stopped out shorts on Wednesday and then stocks, bond yields, and commodities fell hard Thursday and Friday...

"QE4 will fix this..."

Stocks:

52 week range of average S&P stock:

Treasury Bonds (yields):

Junk bonds and interest rates (log scale)

"They were well stocked for the holidays. For the next decade..."
Inventories - sales

Global Macro
Canadian dollar, U.S. deflation, Emerging Market currencies, EM debt, commodities:

LIMIT DOWN: The *New* Economy Doesn't Exist

The old economy got sold with nothing to replace it. The *new* economy is a marketing gimmick that is the figment of greed and stupidity on an unparalleled scale...

Today's GreedBots thought that they could lay everyone else off and still be wealthy. That their almighty stocks would hold value in the face of declining profits and revenue. 

They called this "the new economy", consisting of profitless internet startups and venture capital firms, in total employing about .001% of the total population.

To cash in on the non-existent "New economy", corporations laid off their workforce and used 0% poverty capital to buyback stock. Waiting for the jobless consumer to appear - the same strategy used by the self-imploding Energy industry. 

It's all a figment of the imagination of the greediest society that ever walked the earth. And to say that it's going to end suddenly and violently, is an asinine understatement. 

"Fourth quarter earnings estimates continue trending lower...Analysts are now expecting S&P 500 earnings per share to fall 4.4 percent year over year in the fourth quarter...Wall Street analysts entered the fourth quarter with expectations for only a 0.7 percent decline in earnings per share."

Four quarters of declining profits are in the books, and this latest quarter ending Dec. 31st, will be the fifth...

"It's called the *new* economy. Stupid"

"We don't need those old industries, we have revenueless Biotech and profitless internet"

Leveraged loans: aka. stock buybacks and *special* dividends

IPO Mutual Fund

Humpty Dumpty Time

December Options expiration week is historically one of the strongest weeks of the year for stocks. Wall Street lets its hedges expire and otherwise goes ALL IN for the traditional "Santa Rally". This year, it's not working out that way...

What Wall Street is banking on...Literally:

MW: Nov. 30, 2015

Since 1928 December HAS NEVER Been The Worst Month of the Year

What is actually happening this December, as of yesterday:

"another troubling statistic...this month’s moves are bucking a typically placid trend for December...since 1990 the VIX has bottomed out for the year in December more than in any other month"

This week the Dow closed 137 points lower than last week, despite traversing an asinine 1,500 points up and down during the week...

An 8% gyration to end down on the week...

No surprise, realized volatility is not going down

"FANG" rolled over this week (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google)

And we know what happened last time...

And the world's largest cap stock is trading like a brick. And we know what happened last time...

And equal weight S&P:

Financials

Wednesday. Immediately Post-Fed release:

Keeping Up With The Dow Joneses: Faking It Is A Full Time Job

The Dow is down -4% on the year. It's at a level first reached in July 2014.

The Dow is currently at 17,128, having traversed 49,561 points year to date. Yes, you read that right. Adding up the daily high-low range equals almost 50,000 Dow points.

In other words, the Dow has traversed 290% of its current value mid-year, to end up -4% lower.

Burning money. Literally
Price / volume:

Distribution
NYSE Up volume / total volume:

Flash Crash 2.0: Third Wave Down At All Degrees of Trend

Ugly close on the lows...

The trend line was backtested. Twice.

S&P with NYSE Momentum

Equal weight (red) and cap weighted S&P 

It's time to drop the Google hammer again...

Apple in liquidation mode, because...
First it's overowned. Second on 60 Minutes Sunday night Tim Cook will get roasted regarding Apple's "tax avoidance schemes". Third channel checks show iPhoney sales are falling. Fast...

The Bank of Japan disappointed dopium whores. Dollar is getting shellacked...

Black Swan diving into pavement

"No blind man saw that coming"
Dow Transports: