sell! sell! sell!

[tiznow]

Netflix a one trick pony only can take that so far..

apple/Netflix marriage makes a ton of sense IMO

also the other thing about Amzn and goog I like and why they will be the big 2 by far IMO looking out 30 years ... is they all inclusive and willing to incorporate others into their ecosystem.. Speaking of Spotify chop.. Just got email from Amazon saying the echo can now use that service ... Echo adding new features all the time..

as for automakers taking their time.. They will just get bailed out if times get tough... As is always the case when u backstop an industry u will get shitty innovation/product.. Germans/Asians just way better at the car game ..

 

[tiznow]

Another interesting option for Apple is time warner..

dont to see how Apple doesn't make a big move in media fairly soon.. They too late to the game to try to build from ground up ... Still don't understand why they dragged their feet on Apple TV they had been talking about it for a long time... And their will be increasing pressure to do something now that most consumers like me have little reason to upgrade past iPhone 6 other than phone getting old/iOS issues..

cook just a terrible ceo.. happy to get rich off jobs legacy... Netflix merger would also give Apple access to reed ... who built Netflix from ground up...

 

[CHOPTALK]

Cook is awful.
Ive thought that from day 1.
If Jobs was truly one of a kind(which he was) how could anyone expect there not to be a huge dropoff?

I could have told them the Iwatch is not going to be a game changer.
Nobody wants a watch you have to charger every 24 hrs.

They have run out of ideas.

I like the hardware . I own at least 1 of almost everything they sell except the watch.

But they are becoming a yesterday company that needs new leadership in the worst way.

If you look at the liabilities that they have taken on the last few years they are not as well off as you think.

They have almost as much outstanding debt as cash.

Someboby better go do something with cook before it's too late.

 

[eek.]

plus they are making tech easily accessible to the non techies.. My mom is ancient in that respect

Android phones for example are really dumb terminals where the user is pushing a button and other markets have learned from this

Computers are different and more complex for users because they can program themselves

 

[tiznow]

Cook is awful.
Ive thought that from day 1.
If Jobs was truly one of a kind(which he was) how could anyone expect there not to be a huge dropoff?

I could have told them the Iwatch is not going to be a game changer.
Nobody wants a watch you have to charger every 24 hrs.

They have run out of ideas.

I like the hardware . I own at least 1 of almost everything they sell except the watch.

But they are becoming a yesterday company that needs new leadership in the worst way.

If you look at the liabilities that they have taken on the last few years they are not as well off as you think.

They have almost as much outstanding debt as cash.

Someboby better go do something with cook before it's too late.

i don't understand why anybody uses their products other than the smart phones.. And Samsung has caught up at this point.. Only reason I'll stay is I've heard people go from iPhone to android and weren't happy... And I won't have to
learn something new etc..

guess if you are into graphic design type stuff Apple makes sense.. Closed systems suck in general.. It seems to work ok for smart phone market ... Problem with open system for smart phone is communication between phones issues uses various apps etc..

corporate shill mba trained types always do poorly leading in tech world .. Apple now Microsoft umtil they get somebody with vision .. Nadella for Microsoft is a stud..

 

[tiznow]

1850 not far away..

Linkedin getting mauled.. Wow.. tech land valuations overall got way ahead of itself during the latest fed bubble..

 

[tiznow]

Restaurant bubble (helped fluff employment) seems to be popping/have popped too..

Lots and lots of iPos during the latest bubble .. All struggling mightily now.. shake shack, noodles, Zoe's, wing stop, .. The list goes on and on all in the gutter..

 

[tiznow]

Oil prices holding up well today so far in the face of the carnage.. Oil rout was just the opening shots.. Now everything else playing catchup..

will be interesting to see if that was bottom on oil or it has another low yet to come.. Either way it's likely a lot closer to the bottom than pretty much everything else..

commodities in general tend to lead the declines into a recession..

 

[tiznow]

Gold closing strong yet another green day for the barbaric relic.. as market dumps ..

 

[eek.]

[h=1]iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs[/h]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35502030

 

[tiznow]

At first when I read I was like no way they would stoop to that level now that I investigated it makes more sense

if your home button breaks for security reasons you need to have apple repair.. All other 3rd party repairs won't disable it

We protect fingerprint data using a secure enclave, which is uniquely paired to the Touch ID sensor. When iPhone is serviced by an authorised Apple service provider or Apple retail store for changes that affect the touch ID sensor, the pairing is re-validated. This check ensures the device and the iOS features related to touch ID remain secure. Without this unique pairing, a malicious touch ID sensor could be substituted, thereby gaining access to the secure enclave. When iOS detects that the pairing fails, touch ID, including Apple Pay, is disabled so the device remains secure.

 

[tiznow]

http://hussman.net/wmc/wmc160201.htm

The Gas Pedal Is Useless When The Spark Plugs Are Gone
John P. Hussman, Ph.D.
All rights reserved and actively enforced.
Reprint Policy
Among the central lessons that investors should understand, before the completion of the current market cycle teaches it again, is this: the interpretation of nearly every piece of information - valuations, economic data, central bank action - is conditional on the status of market internals. While long-term investment returns are tightly correlated with good measures of valuation (e.g. MarketCap/GVA), investment returns over shorter portions of the market cycle are primarily driven by the willingness or aversion of investors to accept risk. Historically, the most reliable measure of investor risk-preferences is the behavior of market internals across a broad range of individual stocks, industries, sectors, and security types, including debt securities of varying creditworthiness.
When market internals are broadly favorable, market overvaluation tends to be ignored over the short-run, and is typically followed by either flat returns or even more extreme levels of overvaluation. However, once internals deteriorate, signaling increasing risk-aversion among investors, the same market overvaluation is often associated with stock prices that drop like a rock (see The Hinge).
When market internals are broadly favorable, weak leading economic data tends to be associated with only a temporary soft patch in economic growth. However, the same weak leading economic data, combined with deteriorating market internals, has a dramatically higher probability of being followed by recession (see When Market Trends Break, Even Borderline Data is Recessionary).
The same is true of central bank action. There is no direct cause-and-effect mechanism that links central bank actions to the stock market. Rather, the effect of central bank action is dependent on the preference of investors to seek or avoid risk. When market internals are favorable and investors are inclined to speculate, safe, low interest (or zero interest, or negative interest) liquidity is viewed as an inferior asset to be abandoned like a hot potato. Since somebody has to hold every dollar of monetary base at every moment in time, Fed-created liquidity never actually comes “off the sidelines” - it just changes hands from one uncomfortable holder to the next. The key, however, is that in order to provoke yield-seeking speculation, a large segment of investors must be convinced that buying stocks or other risky assets will not subject them to capital losses. Uniformly positive market internals are an indication that investors broadly share that belief.
In recent years, quantitative easing by central banks has turned the entire global financial system into one massive, yield-seeking carry trade in speculative assets. But the key to the carry trade mentality is that investors only "reach for yield" in riskier securities so long as they feel confident that the extra yield won't be wiped out by a decline in price. In contrast, if market internals are unfavorable, and particularly if valuations are still elevated, a drop in the level of interest rates may be unwelcome, but it’s not enough to provoke risk-averse investors to abandon safe liquidity and take on the risk of losing 10%, or 20%, or 50% of their money. Once market internals deteriorate, central bank easing fails to provoke speculation, on average. The gas pedal is useless when the spark plugs are gone. Worse, central bank easing, in the context of unfavorable market internals, is typically a response to unexpected economic weakness. As a result, such “panic” easings are often followed by a further collapse.
Recall, as I noted in The Line Between Rational Speculation and Market Collapse, that the Fed began cutting interest rates on February 11, 1930 - nearly two and a half years before the market bottomed. The Fed cut rates on January 3, 2001 just as a two-year bear market collapse was starting, and kept cutting all the way down. The Fed cut the federal funds rate on September 18, 2007 - several weeks before the top of the market, and kept cutting all the way down.
In the context of the recent half-cycle advance since 2009, remember also that it was not Fed easing that put the bottom in, so to speak. What ended the crisis was the March 2009 decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to abandon mark-to-market rules and allow banks and financial companies to use "significant judgment" in valuing their troubled assets. In hindsight, regulators went right along. The specter of widespread defaults vanished with the stroke of a pen (followed by a million sharpened pencils in accounting departments up and down Wall Street). Central bank easing does not, in itself, provoke speculation. Rather, the market response is dependent on investor risk-preferences, as indicated by market internals. Fed easing only reliably benefits the stock market when market internals are alreadyfavorable. Historically, it has been best to respond directly to internals than to jump the gun in the belief that central bank action will shift their condition.
Panic at the Bank of Japan
Last week, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, supported by a slim 5-4 board vote, announced a move to cut short-term interest rates to negative -0.1%, effectively charging banks for deposits held with the BOJ. While the knee-jerk response to central bank easing moves is invariably positive, investors should be careful to recognize the context surrounding this move. Based on the broad market action of Nikkei component stocks, market internals in Japan have deteriorated sharply since December, in contrast to most of the period since August 2012. Following a doubling of the Nikkei over that horizon, the current policy shift comes at a time when both valuations and market internals in Japan have shifted to the most unfavorable status in years.
A few charts may offer some perspective. First, note the recent breakdown in the Nikkei, after a long advance since 2012. This retreat has been broad-based, with concerted weakness across numerous industries and sectors. In this environment, one might question whether the loss of a fraction of a percent in interest annually is likely to provoke investors to expose themselves to potentially major losses in a market with no internal support. That’s the same question that one could have asked in the U.S. markets in February 1930, or January 2001, and September 2007, all which were followed by major market collapses despite repeated and aggressive easing by the Fed.

What’s somewhat striking is that having moved the Japanese monetary base from 20% of GDP to more than 75% of GDP in recent years, with very little economic response, anyone would seriously call this liquidity “ammunition.” From an economic perspective, the expansion in the BOJ balance sheet has been accompanied by a precisely offsetting collapse in monetary velocity, with little effect on either real GDP or inflation. From a speculative perspective, while the Nikkei Index remains lower than it was in 1986, 30 years ago, investors have demonstrated risk-seeking inclinations in recent years, holding the Nikkei above its 40-week average during most of the period from 2012 until mid-December of last year.
At present, however, one should take quite a negative signal from the BOJ's action, because it's clearly a response to deteriorating economic prospects. A favorable shift in market internals would be supportive of speculation in Japan, but that possibility should be monitored explicitly. One can’t rule it out, but there is no inherent or reliable tendency for central bank easing to reverse unfavorable market internals, or to avoid steep further market losses (recall 2000-2002 and 2007-2009 in the U.S.).
All of this madness goes back to Ben Bernanke, who was the intellectual architect of quantitative easing, and who successfully encouraged Japan to pursue this policy in 2000. Thoughtful, informed policy is typically conducted within a carefully considered "range" having reasonable upper and lower bounds. Bernanke’s abandonment of every such bound has produced policies that are, quite literally, deranged.

Again, when market internals are unfavorable, and particularly when valuations are still elevated, a drop in the level of interest rates may be unwelcome, but it’s not enough to provoke risk-averse investors to take on the risk of losing 10%, or 20%, or 50% of their money. Central bank easing relies on a scarcity of risk-aversion in order to have a material effect on speculation and stock prices.
The chart below is a Japanese version of the study I presented in When an Easy Fed Doesn’t Help Stocks, and When it Does. In this case, market action is classified based simply on whether the Nikkei average is above or below its 40-week moving average. As we observe in the U.S., central bank easing in Japan only reliably benefits the stock market, on average, when market action is alreadyfavorable, indicating a preference among investors to accept market risk. Notably, even BOJ tightening is associated with gains in the Nikkei index, provided that investors are inclined to take risk. In contrast, once market support breaks, neither BOJ easing nor BOJ tightening is associated with subsequent gains in the Nikkei.

The upshot is that valuations, economic data and central bank actions have to be interpreted within the context of prevailing market internals and the investor risk-preferences that they convey. When investors are risk-averse and internal support has dropped away, a small change in interest rates is simply not sufficient to encourage risk-seeking. Understand that the context of the recent move by the Bank of Japan is materially different than the context that the BOJ has operated under since 2012.
The current move does not reflect bold action on the basis of historically-informed cause-and-effect relationships or sound economic theory. Central bank actions in Japan and elsewhere merely reflect the continuation of demonstrably ineffective, deranged, and historically baseless experimentation. There is no material impact of QE on the real economy. On this point, it’s simply not true that “we have no counter-factual.” Rather, one can show that economic outcomes of the U.S., European, and Japanese economies in recent years have been no better than what would have been predicted based on prior values of purely non-monetaryvariables alone.
In contrast to most of the period since 2009, central bank actions are now joined by an environment that has shifted to risk-aversion. When investors are risk-seeking and market internals are favorable, quantitative easing can certainly add speculative fuel. When investors feel confident that they can earn positive returns on risky assets, zero-interest liquidity is a hot-potato, and creating more of the stuff encourages speculation. In contrast, once risk-aversion sets in among investors, QE loses its ability to promote speculation because risk-free liquidity becomes a desirable asset rather than an inferior one. Investors should not expect favorable outcomes from this environment.
As usual, I should emphasize that if market internals improve measurably, the immediacy of our downside concerns would ease considerably. But we are monitoring that prospect directly and explicitly, rather than assuming that central bank easing will automatically produce this improvement. Aside from short-lived, knee-jerk responses, there is no historical basis to assume that central bank easing will promptly encourage fresh speculation in an overvalued market that has lost internal support. To the contrary, as investors should recall from February 1930, January 2001, and September 2007, central bank easing in an internally-weak market environment has typically been a panic response to unexpected economic deterioration. Such actions should be interpreted as the panic signals that they are.

 

[tiznow]

More of the same in early going.. everything but gold/silver down

sub 1850 s&p close pretty much says with near certainty that recession here ..

 

[eek.]

It does now look like the big slide has finally started


They didn't half try to fight it off though

 

[tiznow]

They distributed bubbled stocks to the suckers for 2 years during the topping process .. Now time to whipe out a majority of the gains since QE bubble started ... We were at 1850 back in Jan of 2014... Fed bubble/bust round 3 nearing completion as we enter the bust phase which doesn't last that long.. Rinse wash repeat..

 

[tiznow]

They trying to hang onto 1850..

this area really key.. Clean breakdown will signal to everybody watching run for the hills..

 

[eek.]

Will be interesting to watch how gold does now, this is your moment Tiz! (probably)

Tizdoom gold backed debentures now on sale!

 

[tiznow]

Gold has done extremely well in terms of jpy during their long term deflation..

Last 3-4 years was just a cyclical bear inside a long term secular bull.. It won't end till fiscal sanity returns.. That day seems a long ways away..

 

[tiznow]

Starting to get a clean break of 1850.. Nother bubble goes pop global recession here we come..

So how long until the fed tucks it tail between its legs, says oops, and reversed course.. Hilarious.. Won't matter as described by hussman above..Lol all about Peyton from commish when all D

 

[tiznow]

Lol a text cut and paste somehow/accidentally got attached to end of last post.. As far as Peyton comment ..