Month: July 2019

Facebook Spikes To Record High After Revenue Beat, Despite Anti-Trust Probe

After paying a record fine and agreeing to adjust the management structure over privacy breaches – and facing a DoJ probe – Facebook shares soared intraday ahead of tonight’s earnings, and prices soared even higher after hours as the company showed better than expected revenues and Daily Active Users.

Key highlights include (via Bloomberg):

  • Daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.59 billion on average for June 2019, an increase of 8% year-over-year.

  • Monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.41 billion as of June 30, 2019, an increase of 8% year-over-year.

  • Mobile advertising revenue – Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 94% of advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2019, up from approximately 91% of advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2018.

  • Capital expenditures – Capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, were $3.78 billion for the second quarter of 2019.

  • Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities – Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities were $48.60 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2019.

  • Headcount – Headcount was 39,651 as of June 30, 2019, an increase of 31% year-over-year.

 

 

Finally, as we noted yesterday, Facebook acknowledges that the FTC has opened an anti-trust investigation into the company.

But that doesn’t seem to have spooked investors as they buy the stock up to a record high

 

 

 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Y0uWqN Tyler Durden

Stocks, Bonds, & Silver Soar As Traders Bet On ECB ‘Shock And Awe’

Ugly European PMIs seemed to cement the confidence for at least one big whale that Draghi (or Lagarde) will signal tomorrow a willingness to deliver “shock and awe” with more rate cuts (buying yards and yards of Dec Euribor Futs)…

Total volumes in the Dec20 euribor contract were over 370,000 ahead of the close, a new record high.

And while German stocks outperformed (implicitly benefiting from the ‘weaker’ euro that may come from a huge rate cut)…

 

As European bank stocks slumped again along with the yield curve…

 

Greek 10Y bond yields plunged back below 2.00% (and remain below the 10Y UST) despite record levels of debt-to-gdp…

And before we leave Europe, as a reminder, Friday marks the 7th anniversary of Draghi’s “Whatever It Takes” moment (which has left EU stocks up over 50%, but banks barely positive)…

So more of the same…

 

Chinese stocks extended yesterday’s gains in the morning session but faded in the afternoon…

 

US markets were mixed with Dow red (Boeing and CAT) as Small Caps soared (squeeze) to their highest close since May and Nasdaq gained (despite the DoJ’s probes)…

NOTE – S&P and Nasdaq Record high

Small Caps soared on the heels of another well-time short-squeeze…

 

The Dow was weighed down by Boeing and Caterpillar…

 

Nasdaq futs plunged overnight along with the mega-tech stocks after news of the DoJ probe… but the machines bid them all back to the moon, alice…

NOTE – FB earnings tonight

FANG Stocks opened gap-down and exploded higher all day…

 

Equity and Credit protection costs plunged this week (but HY is lagging)…

 

VIX plunged to an 11 handle today, bond vol has compressed…

 

Treasury yields were lower across the curve led by a 4bps drop in the long-end dragging the whole curve to unchanged on the week (despite an ugly 5Y auction)…

 

The yield curve re-inverted…

 

And Deutsche suggests there’s a long way to go for rates yet…

 

The Dollar ended the day unchanged after early weakness…

 

Cryptos pumped and dumped today but all remain red on the week…

 

Bitcoin was unable to get back to $10,000…

 

Oil spiked on the big inventory draw then collapsed very suddenly on the day, gold gained but silver outperformed…

 

Silver just keeps on surging, now at new 13-month highs…

 

Silver has outperformed gold for 8 straight days, crushing the gold/silver ratio from 26 year highs…

 

Oil prices jumped on US inventory draws and dumped on headlines that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will coordinate to resume oil output from the neutral zone shared by the neighboring nations…

 

Finally, its different this time…

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Zkm0ZK Tyler Durden

Michael Moore Joins Chorus Of Defeated Democrats Panning “Frail, Forgetful” Mueller Testimony

Robert Mueller’s dual Wednesday testimonies were, by most accounts, a total disaster for Democrats hoping to bolster the case for impeaching President Trump. 

Not only were there no smoking guns, Mueller’s stumbling, fumbling, confused performance alone was a massive backfire for Democrats looking to spotlight the former FBI Director – whose ‘stellar reputation’ as a career public servant melted away to reveal a befuddled old man who was clearly unfamiliar with his own report.

Don’t take our word for it. Filmmaker Michael Moore perfectly captures the somber tone amongst Democrats panning Mueller’s Wednesday performance. 

“frail old man, unable to remember things, stumbling, refusing to answer basic questions…I said it in 2017 and Mueller confirmed it today,” tweeted Moore, adding “All you pundits and moderates and lame Dems who told the public to put their faith in the esteemed Robert Mueller — just STFU from now on.”

Moore was joined by the likes of Chuck Todd, Michael Isikoff, and NeverTrumper Bill Kristol. 

“On optics, this was a disaster,” tweeted Todd. 

“Impeachment’s over,” said ANC News Senior National Correspondent Terry Moran. 

CNN’s Oliver Darcey tweeted “Seems pretty clear at this point that Mueller is not the best spokesperson for his own report.”

Yahoo News’ resident deep state conduit Michael Isikoff even agreed, “Mueller seems increasingly befuddled.” 

Even NeverTrumper Bill Kristol struggled to find a silver lining.

White House counsel Jay Sekulow sums it up:

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2JO1FGW Tyler Durden

People Are Abandoning iPhones For Androids, Study Says

According to a new study by BankMyCell of 38,000 people, iPhone retention is down 15% from 4Q18 to 2Q19 versus the following year, with 73% of respondents saying they will continue buying Apple products. That means the iPhone retention rate is at the lowest level since the smartphone trade-in website started tracking in 2011.

Infographic: Loyalty Is Waning Among iPhone Users | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

The study said 24.5% of users traded in their iPhones in 4Q18 (just around the time the iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max debuted), moved to a new smartphone brand (mostly Samsung and LG).

BankMyCell indicated that Samsung loyalty was one of the highest out of all smartphone brands. Only 7.7% of Galaxy S9 users made the transitioned to an iPhone, and 92.3% remained on the Android operating system. In comparison, a quarter of users traded in their iPhone X for an Android device.

Apple has struggled over the last year to convince consumers that they need a +$1,000 iPhone X. In return, sales have been lackluster for iPhones over the $1,000 mark. The most affordable iPhone, the iPhone XR, starts at $749, making the mid-tier price range more appealing to consumers.

Kantar Group published a report at the end of 2Q19, said iPhone devices accounted for 36% of phone sales in the US, down -2.4% from the same quarter YoY. Meanwhile, Android sales were up 2.5% and had 61% of all sales.

This comes at a time when global smartphone shipments are collapsing worldwide, Gartner global research stated, estimating that shipments will decrease by 68 million shipments this year.

However, Macalope of Macworld called BankMyCell’s study flawed and shouldn’t be trusted.

“You can’t compare results for different demographics and declare them meaningful. You’re not controlling for anything…The only constant here is the gullibility (or culpability) of the technology press.

If BankMyCell were interested in meaningful results, it would have compared its own results over two years if it couldn’t get CIRP’s demographic breakdown. But it’s clearly not…If the methodology is crap, then you can’t trust the numbers.”

Nevertheless, if BankMyCell’s survey is right about the iPhone retention rate in decline, it could mean that consumers are ditching overpriced iPhones for cheaper smartphone brands. The transition also suggests that Apple’s innovation machine has died.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2y6Ikdp Tyler Durden

YouTube Bans Dave Collum’s “Conspiracy Theory” Podcast For “Violating Its Hate Speech Policy”

Over the weekend, we published a write-up about Cornell professor and long time Zero Hedge friend Dave Collum appearing on the Quoth the Raven podcast to share his views about a wide range of conspiracy theories, ranging from 9/11 to the Las Vegas shooting.

The appearance was prompted by a recent tweet Collum put out, in defense of being a conspiracy theorist. The Tweet sparked a massive social media response and outpouring of reactions, both pro and con.

On the podcast, Collum and host Chris Irons tapped into every major conspiracy theory over the last couple of decades, as well as several current events and the world of finance. Topics included, but weren’t limited to:

  • Why Collum thought Jeffrey Epstein could have been working for “powerful people” and “setting people up”

  • Why Collum didn’t buy the mainstream 9/11 narrative

  • The Las Vegas shooting details and questions about whether there was only one shooter

  • Negative interest rate policy across the globe and central banking effects on the global economy

The article and the interview challenged the mainstream consensus on a number of items, which is why it should surprise absolutely nobody that, by Tuesday morning, YouTube had removed the video because – as it said with little certainty – it “thought the video violated the company’s hate speech policy.”

Collum himself responded jokingly in a Tweet Tuesday morning:

In an e-mail shared with Zero Hedge, YouTube wrote to Quoth the Raven podcast host Chris Irons that “Content glorifying or inciting violence against another person or group of people is not allowed on YouTube. We also don’t allow any content that encourages hatred of another person or group of people based on their membership in a protected group.” 

In response, podcast creator Irons has set up a GoFundMe account that states, “I need to have a backup in case I begin to get censored not just on YouTube, but on other social media.”

As we always do, we encourage our readers to listen to the episode and judge for yourself whether or not there was any “hate speech” here:

Irons also released a video response to the ban later in the day on Wednesday:

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Yi8uEO Tyler Durden

Mueller Hearings Another Summer Movie Disappointment

“Not everybody will read the book, but people will watch the movie,” said a Democratic staff member on the Judiciary Committee, who requested anonymity to discuss preparations for the hearing.

Oops. Turns out adapting a book into a movie is hard.

In calling Special Counsel Robert Mueller to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, the Democrats had one job, but they could not quite figure out what that one job was going to be and they could not manage to do it. Ostensibly, the purpose of Mueller’s testimony was to focus the public’s attention on the findings of the Mueller report and thereby stoke the outrage that had failed to manifest when the written report was released. In principle, this is a reasonable goal since it is hard to grab the attention of average voters and deliver to those voters some complicated information about the doings of government officials. Public testimony might cut through the clutter.

If the Democrats wanted to make a movie, they did a pretty poor job of it. Giving in to the political interests of individual politicians, the committee divided its time up among the many members of the committee so that everyone could get a participation trophy. Since each member had very little time with Mueller, they had no interest in giving Mueller any time to develop lengthy answers to questions. There was less speechifying than often dominates hearings, but the questions tended to a less-than-edifying “yes or no” form that only managed to put things on the record that were already on the record. If the goal is to tell a coherent story about what happened in the months leading up to the election and the months after the inauguration, fragmenting the hearing into a multitude of short, disconnected exchanges is not going to advance that goal.

For some reason, the members thought it would be a good idea to ask rapid fire questions (the Intelligence Committee did a better job on this in the afternoon). There are circumstances where asking as many questions as possible in a limited time might be a useful thing to do, but this wasn’t one of them. If the goal is to highlight, simplify and dramatize the damning details of a report that the general public has not read, speeding through a string of complex yes-or-no questions is not going to advance that goal.

Democrats hoped that Mueller would take the public stage and act more like former FBI Director James Comey. Mueller was no Comey, and Democrats should have known better. Mueller had done all that he could to signal to Congress that he would not be a dynamic witness at a public hearing, and legislators pressed on. Mueller had little interest in going beyond what had already been stated in the report, and he was not inclined to provide an oral summary for the television cameras. Mueller acted liked the cautious lawyer that he had been advertised to be, but the Democrats wanted and needed a more animated, less guarded partisan.

The Mueller hearing was another summer movie flop, and now Democrats will have to figure out whether and how to try to reboot the franchise.

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Robert Mueller’s Testimony Convinced Everyone of Exactly What They Already Believed

Few surprises emerged from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees today, with the combined five hours of hearings proving to be one big exercise in confirmation bias.

Democrats used their questioning of Mueller to highlight his investigation’s discovery of wrongdoing by associates of President Donald Trump. Republicans did their best to emphasize inconsistencies in Mueller’s statements and cast doubt on the competency and integrity of the former FBI director and his investigative team.

Mueller largely gave short, perfunctory “yes” or “no” answers to the questions posed to him. And that’s when he chose to answer questions at all. Mueller repeatedly told the representatives quizzing him that their queries were outside his purview, touched on ongoing investigations, or had already been answered in his report.

Judging by the reaction on Twitter, it was a very disappointing performance:

The one possible bombshell today came from an exchange in the Judiciary Committee hearing between Mueller and Rep. Ted Lieu (D–Calif.). Mueller had answered yes when asked by Lieu if he declined to indict Trump because of an existing Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion stating that a sitting president couldn’t be charged with a crime.

This answer briefly confirmed the notion that Mueller had found evidence of illegal activity committed by the president and was only prevented from indicting him by Justice Department policy.

However, Mueller walked back this answer in his afternoon testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, saying that that OLC opinion prevented him from making any determination, period, of Trump’s culpability in obstructing justice.

“What I wanted to clarify is that we did not make any determination in regard to culpability,” said Mueller in response to a question from Rep. John Ratcliffe (R–Texas).  “We did not start that process.”

These flat or confused responses from Mueller left the elected officials questioning him to do little more than grandstand.

This generally worked to Republicans’ advantage, as their accusations of bias and prosecutorial overreach were met with mild pushback from the Mueller. Democrats’ attempts to get Mueller to state for the cameras all the bad things his report uncovered went over poorly.

In this way, Mueller’s testimony landed in the same way so many scandals and revelations about the Trump administration have, with Democrats just as incensed as ever, and Republicans spinning a narrative of a conspiracy against the president.

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YouTube Bans Dave Collum’s “Conspiracy Theory” Podcast For “Violating Its Hate Speech Policy”

Over the weekend, we published a write-up about Cornell professor and long time Zero Hedge friend Dave Collum appearing on the Quoth the Raven podcast to share his views about a wide range of conspiracy theories, ranging from 9/11 to the Las Vegas shooting.

The appearance was prompted by a recent tweet Collum put out, in defense of being a conspiracy theorist. The Tweet sparked a massive social media response and outpouring of reactions, both pro and con.

On the podcast, Collum and host Chris Irons tapped into every major conspiracy theory over the last couple of decades, as well as several current events and the world of finance. Topics included, but weren’t limited to:

  • Why Collum thought Jeffrey Epstein could have been working for “powerful people” and “setting people up”

  • Why Collum didn’t buy the mainstream 9/11 narrative

  • The Las Vegas shooting details and questions about whether there was only one shooter

  • Negative interest rate policy across the globe and central banking effects on the global economy

The article and the interview challenged the mainstream consensus on a number of items, which is why it should surprise absolutely nobody that, by Tuesday morning, YouTube had removed the video because – as it said with little certainty – it “thought the video violated the company’s hate speech policy.”

Collum himself responded jokingly in a Tweet Tuesday morning:

In an e-mail shared with Zero Hedge, YouTube wrote to Quoth the Raven podcast host Chris Irons that “Content glorifying or inciting violence against another person or group of people is not allowed on YouTube. We also don’t allow any content that encourages hatred of another person or group of people based on their membership in a protected group.” 

In response, podcast creator Irons has set up a GoFundMe account that states, “I need to have a backup in case I begin to get censored not just on YouTube, but on other social media.”

As we always do, we encourage our readers to listen to the episode and judge for yourself whether or not there was any “hate speech” here:

Irons also released a video response to the ban later in the day on Wednesday:

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Yi8uEO Tyler Durden

Bill de Blasio Panders To Unions Over Educating Poor Kids

Speaking recently before the country’s largest union, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio came out against the very concept of charter schools.

“I know we’re not supposed to be saying ‘hate,’ our teachers taught us not to. I hate the privatizers, and I want to stop them,” de Blasio said. “Too many Republicans, but also too many Democrats, have been cozy with the charter schools. Let’s be blunt about it: We need to hold our own party accountable, too.”

As head of the nation’s largest school system, de Blasio’s prejudices are also having a direct impact on individual lives. In New York City, 123,000 students out of a public school system of 1.1 million attend charter schools. Unsurprisingly, the mayor’s remarks drew hot fire from the hometown tabloids.

“His anger isn’t aimed at the man in the mirror, who spent $800 million in taxpayer money promising and miserably failing to deliver ‘fast and intense improvement’ in struggling traditional public schools,” snarled the New York Daily News.

The hostility that New York progressives—especially white New York progressives—have against charters is already taking a toll on poor minority kids stuck in failing districts.

The state legislature last month elected not to lift the cap on the number of charters allowed in New York City despite overwhelming demand from parents.

As local political personality and columnist Errol Louis noted, in the 2017-18 school year, about 59 percent of black students attending charters passed the state math test, compared with only 25 percent in regular district schools. The stats for Latino students follow the same pattern.

One charter school in the Bronx recently saw every single one of its eighth-graders earn a perfect score on the state algebra exam, despite being situated in the nation’s poorest congressional district.

Half of kids attending traditional public schools in the same district failed the test.

What used to be a fairly mainstream Democratic idea, championed by the likes of former Pres. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and pre-presidential-campaign Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.), has now become something candidates feel like they need to furiously backpedal from. And according to one recent survey, those reformist tendencies are not likely to be seen again from a Democrat any time soon.

De Blasio’s political career has been marked by the extent to which he’s willing to sell out his constituents—in this, case minority kids in failing schools—to advance his own political career. Sadly, that puts him in the mainstream of the modern Democratic Party.

Edited by Mark McDaniel.

Temptation March by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Divider by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

“Pencil, Writing, Close, A.wav” by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk) of Freesound.org

Photo Credits:

Gabriele Holtermann-Gorden/Sipa/Newscom

Carter Smith/Polaris/Newscom

Pete Souza/ZUMA Press/Newscom

Rob Bennett/Mayoral Photography Office

Rob Gallbraith/Newscom

Jeff Topping/Polaris/Newscom

Richard Ellis/ZUMA Press/Newscom

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Mueller Hearings Another Summer Movie Disappointment

“Not everybody will read the book, but people will watch the movie,” said a Democratic staff member on the Judiciary Committee, who requested anonymity to discuss preparations for the hearing.

Oops. Turns out adapting a book into a movie is hard.

In calling Special Counsel Robert Mueller to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, the Democrats had one job, but they could not quite figure out what that one job was going to be and they could not manage to do it. Ostensibly, the purpose of Mueller’s testimony was to focus the public’s attention on the findings of the Mueller report and thereby stoke the outrage that had failed to manifest when the written report was released. In principle, this is a reasonable goal since it is hard to grab the attention of average voters and deliver to those voters some complicated information about the doings of government officials. Public testimony might cut through the clutter.

If the Democrats wanted to make a movie, they did a pretty poor job of it. Giving in to the political interests of individual politicians, the committee divided its time up among the many members of the committee so that everyone could get a participation trophy. Since each member had very little time with Mueller, they had no interest in giving Mueller any time to develop lengthy answers to questions. There was less speechifying than often dominates hearings, but the questions tended to a less-than-edifying “yes or no” form that only managed to put things on the record that were already on the record. If the goal is to tell a coherent story about what happened in the months leading up to the election and the months after the inauguration, fragmenting the hearing into a multitude of short, disconnected exchanges is not going to advance that goal.

For some reason, the members thought it would be a good idea to ask rapid fire questions (the Intelligence Committee did a better job on this in the afternoon). There are circumstances where asking as many questions as possible in a limited time might be a useful thing to do, but this wasn’t one of them. If the goal is to highlight, simplify and dramatize the damning details of a report that the general public has not read, speeding through a string of complex yes-or-no questions is not going to advance that goal.

Democrats hoped that Mueller would take the public stage and act more like former FBI Director James Comey. Mueller was no Comey, and Democrats should have known better. Mueller had done all that he could to signal to Congress that he would not be a dynamic witness at a public hearing, and legislators pressed on. Mueller had little interest in going beyond what had already been stated in the report, and he was not inclined to provide an oral summary for the television cameras. Mueller acted liked the cautious lawyer that he had been advertised to be, but the Democrats wanted and needed a more animated, less guarded partisan.

The Mueller hearing was another summer movie flop, and now Democrats will have to figure out whether and how to try to reboot the franchise.

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