Category: zerohedge

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

It’s too early to declare victory and too early to assume the virus can be completely eradicated in a few weeks on the SARS model.

Many people are already anticipating the end of the coronavirus pandemic and a quick return to “normal life” and renewed global growth. But if we examine the history of previous pandemics and the spread of this contagious virus, we reach a much different conclusion: “Wave 2” and “Wave 3” arising after the initial wave recedes are distinct possibilities.

The corporate media and conventional economists in the U.S. and China’s PR machine share a common goal: reassure consumers in the U.S., China and the rest of the world that everything will return to normal soon and they should continue buying stuff they don’t need (5G phones, etc.) with borrowed money.

Meanwhile, authorities in China are tracking down everyone with a Wuhan residency ID card in the hopes that quarantining every one of the tens of thousands of Wuhan residents who traveled before the citywide quarantine took effect will stop the pandemic.

There are two problems with this official assumption that house-arresting everyone from Wuhan will end the pandemic:

1. Given that Wuhan residents traveled freely around China for the month before the citywide quarantine, infecting people in other cities, there is now a pool of carriers who did not come from Wuhan, so quarantining everyone from Wuhan won’t stop these people from infecting others.

2. Much of the dirty, poorly paid work in China’s cities is done by “illegal migrants” from rural areas who don’t have official residency in the city. These people may have lived and worked in Wuhan but do not have Wuhan ID cards. They make up another reservoir of virus carriers who it will be difficult to track down and quarantine via residency permits and ID.

As mentioned previously, many of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese with overseas jobs returned home for New Years and are now anxious to get back to their jobs in other countries. Those without symptoms who are outside locked-down cities are free to find “work-arounds” to exit China by whatever means are available. Some consequential percentage of these people might be asymptomatic carriers of the virus.

As the city-wide quarantines limit the spread of the virus, victory will be declared and the quarantines will be lifted. But since the reservoirs of the virus have not been eliminated, the virus will start spreading again once the quarantines are lifted. This is “Wave 2.”

Pandemics tend to decline in summer and then re-emerge in Fall. These renewed pandemics may be even more consequential than the first wave.

If an effective vaccine is developed and billions of doses are made and distributed globally by Fall, then a re-emergence will have been thwarted. But that’s a tall order, and there may be areas where the vaccine (assuming one is developed) is not universally distributed.

A re-emergence in Fall would be “Wave 3.” Perhaps this wave will be limited to impoverished nations without adequate healthcare systems; perhaps the virus mutates in some unexpected way. It’s too early to declare victory and too early to assume the virus can be completely eradicated in a few weeks on the SARS model.

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My recent books:

Audiobook edition now available:
Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World ($13)
(Kindle $6.95, print $11.95) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 (Kindle), $12 (print), $13.08 ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

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If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

An app developed by a Democratic digital nonprofit group that botched the Iowa caucus results is run by former staffers for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Obama’s presidential campaign, as well as Google, Apple and former DNC employees.

The app was created by Shadow, Inc., which was acquired in January 2018 by the nonprofit, ACRONYM and paid $60,000 by the Democratic Party for “website development“ – which, according to the Huffington Post, was used to develop the app which caucus site leaders were supposed to use to upload the results at their locations. According to the Post, Shadow CEO Gerard Niemira, COO James Hickey and product manager Ahna Rao worked together on the Hillary for America campaign.

As the Washington Examiner reports, the Nevada Democratic Party also paid Shadow $58,000 for “website development.”

Perhaps even more disturbing, however, is FEC filings which reveal Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s campaign paid the software company tens of thousands of dollars on July 23, 2019 for “software rights and subscriptions.” Buttigeig, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, claimed victory on Monday night before any official numbers were in, saying in a tweet that he was “going on to New Hampshire victorious.” His campaign claims they paid Shadow for “text messaging services to help us contact voters.”

ACRONYM CEO Tara McGowan was notably very excited after Buttigieg announced his candidacy.

the CEO of the company that owns Shadow lol https://t.co/0eIlvpHY82

— Tim 🕊🌿🐊 (@timtakestime) February 4, 2020

ACRONYM, meanwhile, has distanced themselves from Shadow, Inc., claiming that they are merely “an investor.” In a late Monday statement, spokesman Kyle Tharp stated last Monday that the nonprofit is “not a technology company,” and has “not provided any technology to the Iowa Democratic Party, Presidential campaigns, or the Democratic National Committee.”

ACRONYM also clarifies that it does not wholly own Shadow, saying that Shadow has “other private investors.”

But ACRONYM has previously said that it is “launching” Shadow — so the ties between these two organizations are obviously close.https://t.co/qCKmygQezs

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) February 4, 2020

Shadow’s App was supposed to make reporting caucus results faster and more convenient, only to completely fail on Monday after numerous Iowa Democrats reported major problems trying to download the app and upload results.

In a Tuesday morning statement, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price acknowledged that Shadow’s app was at fault, and that backup procedures had taken longer than expected.

“While the app was recording data accurately, it was reporting out only partial data,” said Price. “We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed.”

The party says they used paper documentation to verify that the app’s data was “valid and accurate,” and that the results will be released “as soon as possible today.”

In yet another stunning statement from the Director-General of the World Health Organization, up is down, war is peace, and caution is dangerous.

Having once again earlier denied that the novel coronavirus is a ‘pandemic’, saying instead that it’s an epidemic with “multiple foci,” and with people dropping down dead on the streets in China (and being forced into ambulances), WHO Director-General Tedros reiterated his previous stunning praise for China’s “forceful measures” to halt the spread of the virus.

However, a member of the World Health Organization’s emergency committee on coronavirus has accused China of not reporting cases fast enough in the early stages of the outbreak last month, raising fresh questions about Beijing’s response to the health emergency. John Mackenzie, emeritus professor at Curtin University, said it defied logic that there was no increase in new cases at the same time that Chinese officials were holding local political meetings in January.

“There must have been more cases happening that we weren’t being told about. I think they tried to keep the figures quiet for a while because of some major meeting they had in Wuhan but I think there was a period of very poor reporting, or very poor communication,” he said, calling Beijing’s response “reprehensible”.

“I think [China] were very quick to let WHO know . . . about it being a novel disease, they were very quick in being able to isolate the virus and share the genome sequence but I think on some of the more government public health type issues, they have been rather recalcitrant.”

Additionally, Tedros appeared to blast the rest of the world, advising countries NOT to impose travel or trade restrictions on China, saying that such measures can cause “fear and stigma.”

This is happening at the same time as China is blocking travel to Macau and enforcing martial law almost nationwide.

Since when did the WHO not err on the side of caution? This is stunningly irresponsible advice.

We are reminded of Peak Prosperity’s Chris Martenson’s comments that WHO appears to be prioritizing money over human life.

The W.H.O. then proceeded to downplay the risk to public health and took pains to make it clear it doesn’t recommend placing restrictions on global trade & travel at this time. What?!? When we may be in dealing with a viral outbreak as (or more!) virulent than the Spanish Flu? (aka The Great Influenza)

Folks, this is nothing less than a political decision to keep business/commerce flowing without regard to public health. The W.H.O. has chosen money over people’s lives.

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

It has been a bad few days for the establishment, really bad.

In a 51-49 vote, the Senate refused to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump and agreed to end the trial Wednesday, with a near-certain majority vote to acquit the president of all charges.

As weekend polls show socialist Bernie Sanders surging into the lead for the nomination in the states of Iowa, New Hampshire and California, the sense of panic among Democratic Party elites is palpable.

Former Secretary of State and Joe Biden surrogate John Kerry was overheard Sunday at a Des Moines hotel talking of the “possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party — down whole.”

Tuesday, Trump takes his nationally televised victory lap in the U.S. Capitol with his State of the Union address, as triumphant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a humiliated Speaker Nancy Pelosi sit silently side-by-side behind him.

Democrats may declare the Trump impeachment a victory for righteousness, but the anger and outrage, the moans and groans now coming off the editorial and op-ed pages and cable TV suggest the media know otherwise.

History, we are told, will vindicate what Pelosi and the Democrats did and stain forever the Republican Party for voting to acquit.

Perhaps, but only if some future Howard Zinn is writing the history.

Reality: The impeachment of Trump was an attempted — and failed — coup that not a single Republican supported, only Democrats in the House and their Senate caucus. The impeachment of Trump was an exercise in pure partisanship and itself an abuse of power.

What was the heart of the Democrats’ case to remove Trump?

Trump failed to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to the White House, and held up military aid to Kyiv for several months, to get Zelenskiy to hold a press conference to announce that Kyiv was looking into how Hunter Biden got on the board of a corrupt energy company at a retainer of $83,000 a month while his father was the chief international monitor of corruption in Ukraine.

The specific indictment: Trump’s suspension of military aid imperiled “our national security” by denying arms to an “ally” who was fighting the Russians over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here.

And what was the outcome of it all?

Zelenskiy got his meeting with the president. He got the military aid in September. He did not hold the press conference requested. He did not announce an investigation of the Bidens.

No harm, no foul.

How did President Obama handle Ukraine?

After Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and intervened to protect pro-Russian secessionists in the Donbass, Obama’s White House restricted U.S. lethal military aid to Kyiv and provided blankets and meals ready to eat.

What punishment did House and Senate Democrats and anti-Trump media demand for the pause in sending weapons for Ukraine?

Capital punishment, a political death penalty.

Democrats demanded that a Republican Senate overturn the election of 2016, make Trump the first president ever impeached and removed, and then ensure that the American people could never vote for him again.

Nancy Pelosi’s House and the Democratic minority in the Senate were demanding that a Republican Senate do their dirty work and keep Trump off the ballot in 2020, lest he win a second term.

For four years, elements of the liberal establishment — in the media, “deep state” and major institutions — have sought to destroy Trump. First, they aimed to smear him and prevent his election, and then to overturn it as having been orchestrated by the Kremlin, and then to impeach and remove him, and then to block him from running again.

The damage they have inflicted upon our country’s institutions is serious.

U.S. intelligence agencies are being investigated by U.S. Attorney John Durham for their role in instigating an investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign. The FBI has been discredited by exposure of a conspiracy of top-level agents to spy on Trump’s campaign.

The media, by endlessly echoing unproven claims that Trump was a stooge of the Kremlin, discredited themselves to a degree unknown since the “Yellow Press” prostituted itself to get us into war with Spain. Media claims to be unbiased pursuers of truth have suffered, not only from Trump’s attacks, but from their own biased and bigoted coverage and commentary.

The NSC and State Department have been exposed as employing individuals with an exaggerated view of their role in the origination and the execution of foreign policy. Disloyalty and animosity toward the chief executive appear to permeate the upper echelons of the “deep state.”

Not in our lifetime have the institutions of government and the establishment been held in lower regard.

Almost all now concede we have become an us vs. them nation.

How we accomplish great things again, giving our seemingly unbridgeable differences, remains a mystery.

A globalized world is full of complex supply chains that wind in and out of countries. When one country goes offline, the chain breaks, and that’s exactly what’s happening in Asia. 

Yonhap News reports that Hyundai Motor Co. and its sister Kia Motors Corp. suspended production lines in South Korea after it was hit with a parts shortage from China as the coronavirus outbreak continues to leave entire manufacturing hubs shut down.

Hyundai is expected to close four South Korean plants by Friday. 

The plants are expected to reopen on Feb. 10 or 11, but that entirely depends if manufacturing plants, cities, and transportation networks open in China. 

“If auto parts factories in China resume operations on Feb. 10 or 11, production losses from lack of parts will be limited,” the spokesman said. However, if the factories in China where Hyundai sources parts from remain closed through early next week, then severe supply chain disruptions will be seen, causing production output to crater in South Korea. 

Vice President Ha Eon-tae, head of Hyundai’s main plant, emailed workers at Ulsan plants on Monday, specifying how production suspensions are imminent because part suppliers in China remain closed due to the virus.

According to the local union, Kia, which is 34% owned by Hyundai, has had output reduced in Hwaseong and Gwangju, outside of Seoul, for similar issues.

Hyundai and Kia, together, are the world’s fifth-largest carmaker by sales. If production lines in South Korea are halted and extend past next week, then a slump in economic output could weigh down South Korean 1Q GDP figures. 

The fallout from the virus could force investors to reprice growth across the world. This would undoubtedly weigh on risk asset prices that remain near all-time highs. 

Update (1135ET): Thanks to the parabolic melt-up in Tesla’s share price, its market capitalization has now surpassed that of Netflix…

Making Tesla the most-valuable, junk-rated company in the world.

We do note, however, that TSLA’s bonds still trade dramatically cheap relative to NFLX’s bonds…

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Update (1035ET): While TSLA remains up over 10%, its notably off its highs as Citron Research unleashes its latest short on the carmaker:

We love $TSLA and promised never to be short again. BUT when the computers start driving the market, we believe even Elon would short the stock here if he was a fund manager. This is no longer about the technology, it has become the new Wall St casino.

— Citron Research (@CitronResearch) February 4, 2020

And price is starting to wobble a little…

TSLA is now more over bought than Bitcoin was at the peak of its bubble in 2017…

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On a morning when one of Tesla’s biggest bulls, New Street’s Ferragu downgrades the stock, saying:

“Limited sources of further appreciation in the next 12 months. .. We see 2020 playing out fine, but it is largely expected, and we see some risks on the stock: end of the short squeeze, 1Q20 miss on gross margins”

It is up almost 15% in the pre-market – topping $900 for the first time ever…

But Ron Baron was on CNBC earlier saying he isn’t selling a single share and sees Tesla rising to $1TN in revenue in 10 years.

Nothing to see here…

While the move is clearly a continuation of the historic squeeze that has crushed any residual shorts in the name, and may be an attempt by Musk, who has pulled his borrow, to put prominent Tesla short David Einhorn out of business, it was assisted by Ron Baron speaking on CNBC, and predicting that Tesla revenue will hit $1 trillion in ten years. In short, Tesla is the new Volkswagen… and bitcoin. Is this surge real? Well if it is was, Tesla would be selling stock here and prefund itself for the next decade. That it isn’t, tell you all you need to know.

So where does it stop?

If it’s like Bitcoin, maybe $1200?

It it’s like the VW squeeze in 2008, maybe $1600?

And it it’s the South Sea Company, it could hit $1800…

Updated for today’s price action. We can do it! pic.twitter.com/QQHvU76Q2m

— Keubiko (@Keubiko) February 3, 2020

TSLA is now 1.5% of the QQQ Nasdaq 100 ETF. For every 10% move in TSLA, Nasdaq is up ~14 points.

Trade accordingly.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The Iowa Democratic Party declined to have a new voting application vetted by the Department of Homeland Security, the agency’s Acting Secretary Chad Wolf said on Tuesday.

The app, developed by Shadow Inc., was blamed for some of the problems during the Democratic caucuses on Monday night. The issues led to the results of the caucuses being delayed.

“Our cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency has offered to test that app from a hacking perspective,” Wolf said during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

“They declined, so we’re seeing a couple of issues with it.”

Homeland Security’s @CISAgov offered to test the Iowa Caucus app. They declined. See @DHS_Wolf interview https://t.co/GoQeEMZbuJ

— Heather Swift, DHS spokesperson (@SpoxDHS) February 4, 2020

There was no evidence of a hack, Wolf said.

“Right now, we don’t see any malicious cyber activity going on. No one hacked into it. This is more of a stress or a load issue as well as a reporting issue that we’re seeing in Iowa,” he said.

“Given the amount of scrutiny that we have on election security these days, this is a concerning event, and it really goes to the public confidence of our elections.”

The Iowa Democratic Party didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about how the party tested the app. Party officials declined to provide details about the app when asked by multiple outlets before the election. Troy Price, the chairman of the state party, told NPR that the state party worked with the national party’s cybersecurity team and Harvard University’s Defending Digital Democracy project.

“We as the party have taken this very seriously, and we know how important it is for us to make sure that our process is secure and that we protect the integrity of the process,” Price said.

“We want to make sure we are not relaying information that could be used against us.”

Party spokeswoman Mandy McClure said late Monday that the election results were delayed due to “quality checks” and inconsistent reporting, but said the app developed by Shadow did not go down and was not hacked. Ballots provided a sound paper trail that was being used to tally the results, she added.

No email addresses or phone numbers were listed on Shadow’s website. The company is full of “campaign and technology veterans” who have built and put into place technology for Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s campaigns as well as Google, the Democratic National Committee, and the AFL-CIO union, the company said.

“Our passion is to create a permanent advantage for progressive campaigns and causes through technology,” it stated. No staff members were named on the site.

Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) cheer next to an Iowa flag at his rally in Des Moines, Iowa on Feb. 3, 2020. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)

Several high-level Shadow executives, including CEO Gerard Niemira, worked on Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Niemera was previously the chief technology officer and chief operating officer at ACRONYM, a nonprofit digital strategy firm.

Shadow was created in part from investments by ACRONYM, founder and CEO Tara McGowan said in January 2019.

In a statement issued overnight, the nonprofit attempted to distance itself from Shadow, noting it was one of multiple investors into the company.

“We are reading confirmed reports of Shadow’s work with the Iowa Democratic Party on Twitter, and we, like everyone else, are eagerly awaiting more information from the Iowa Democratic Party with respect to what happened,” ACRONYM spokesman Kyle Tharpe said in a statement.

ACRONYM did not provide any technology to the DNC, Iowa Democratic Party, or presidential campaigns, the statement said.

Robby Mook, Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, also distanced himself from the app on Monday night after people drew attention to the Des Moines Register reporting last week that Mook and experts in a number of fields “simulated the different ways that things could go wrong on caucus night.”

“Sorry, folks,” Mook wrote on Twitter.

“I did NOT have anythjng [sic] to do with building the Iowa caucus app. I dont know anything about it, had no role in it, and dont own a company that makes mobile appa [sic].”

Shadow was paid $58,000 in August 2019 by the Nevada Democratic Party and the Iowa Democratic Party paid the company over $63,000 in late 2019. The Nevada Democratic Party didn’t respond to a request for comment. Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign also paid Shadow over $42,000 last year for “software rights and subscriptions.”

Buttigieg said early Tuesday that “all indications” showed that he won the Iowa Democratic caucus.

President Trump’s approval rating is the highest it’s ever been, coming in at 49% in a new Gallup poll, which also found that 63% of Americans approve of the way Trump is handling the economy. Trump’s ratings for handling foreign affairs and foreign trade also topped out at 47% and 50% respectively, his best numbers to date.

While Democrats maintained roughly the same level of hatred for Trump, his gains came from higher ratings among Republicans and independents – with approval ratings among Republicans up 6% to 94%, and up 5% among independents to 42%.

Democratic approval is down 3%, dropping Trump from 10% to 7%. No surprises there.

What’s interesting is that the 87-point gap between Republican and Democratic approval in the current poll is the largest in Gallup history, “surpassing the prior record, held by Trump and Barack Obama, by one point.”

More from Gallup:

The Jan. 16-29 poll was conducted in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial that will likely result in the president’s acquittal. The poll finds 52% of Americans in favor of acquitting Trump and 46% in favor of convicting and removing him from office.

In addition to possibly reflecting sentiment regarding his impeachment, Trump’s increased approval rating may also result from other issues, including:

• The recent military action in Iran. More Americans in the new poll approve (53%) than disapprove (45%) of the U.S. military action that resulted in the death of a leading Iranian military general. Iran retaliated but, despite fears of escalation, no further military action has been taken by either side.
• Foreign trade. During the poll’s field period, Trump also signed the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement.
• The economy. Americans’ confidence in the economy is higher than at any point in the past two decades. Similarly, national satisfaction is the highest in nearly 15 years.

Sixty-three percent of Americans now approve of the way Trump is handling the economy, up six points from the prior reading in November. It is the highest economic approval rating not only for Trump, but for any president since George W. Bush enjoyed stratospheric job approval ratings in the first few months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Gallup also notes that as President Trump’s approval rating has gone up, so has that of the GOP, with 51% of Americans viewing the Republican Party favorably, up from 43% in September. 

Views of the Democratic party rose slightly from 45% to 48% over the same period, while 48% of Americans identified as Republicans or leaning towards that party vs. 44% Democratic identification or leaning.

The polling company observed similar trends when Bill Clinton was impeached – with his approval rating spiking to a personal high of 73% after the House impeachment vote – a level he maintained through his acquittal by the Senate in early 1999.

Authored by Dmitri Speck via Acting-Man.com,

Bonanza Season

In the 18 December 2019 issue of Seasonal Insights I discussed the strong seasonal advance in precious metals around the turn of the year. In silver it begins in mid December and continues until the end of February. A roughly similar pattern can be observed in platinum and palladium, while seasonal buoyancy is at least to some degree evident in gold as well.

Long-term silver and platinum seasonal charts from the late 2019 issue of Seasonal Insights : the seasonally strongest phase lasts from mid December until late February. [PT]

You may well wonder: what is the trend in precious metal stocks? Are they typically advancing around the same time of the year?

Mining Stocks Track Precious Metals Seasonality

Take a look at the seasonal chart of the HUI gold mining index below. This is not a standard chart depicting price moves over a specific time period. Rather, the seasonal chart shows the moves in the HUI in the course of a calendar year averaged over the past 25 years.

HUI seasonal pattern over the past 25 years: the HUI typically rallies strongly in February

As the chart illustrates, gold & silver mining stocks typically begin to rally in mid December. In January they continue to gain ground in a choppy and somewhat muted advance. Then prices rise very steeply until the end of February. Thereafter the seasonal average declines again.

In short, the strongest seasonal advance in precious metals mining stocks lies directly ahead.

Seasonal Strength is Driven by Fundamentals

Thus gold and silver mining stocks track the seasonal pattern in precious metals. The seasonal advance in precious metals in turn is very likely mainly driven by purchases of industrial users (fabrication demand). Many industrial processors place large buy orders at the beginning of the financial year, once planning for the new year has been completed and new orders to replenish  inventory can be booked.

Industrial silver processors in medias res. Clockwise from the top left: silver strip coiling machine, continuous cast LBMA ingot shape, silver billet extrusion, induction vacuum casting machine, gold strip for coins, silver strip, silver dore casting machine.  [PT]

By extension the seasonal rally in precious metals mining stocks is therefore underpinned by fundamentals as well.

An Annualized Gain of Almost 100 Percent

The strongest part of the seasonal rally takes place between 28 January and 18 February. The average return achieved in this time period over the past 25 years was 4.03 percent. This is equivalent to an annualized gain of 98.75 percent, which represents an extraordinarily strong seasonal advance.

The following bar chart shows the returns generated between 28 January and 18 February in every single year since 1994. Green bars indicate years in which gains were posted, red bars indicate losses.

HUI: return between 28 Jan and 18 Feb in every single year since 1994 in percent. Prices often rise very strongly.

As the chart illustrates, the distribution of returns is not exactly uniform. The reasons: the gold mining sector is highly speculative, and it was furthermore frequently mired in bear markets in the past 25 years, which have a negative impact on performance in all time periods of the year.

However, as a result of this, gains achieved in these mere 15 trading days can be all the more spectacular. For example, in 2016 the HUI index rallied by a remarkable 36.65%.

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As can be seen, individual shares or sectors often exhibit unique seasonal patterns on account of various fundamental drivers. As there are a great many listed stocks, it is possible to use seasonality as a diversification tool. Moreover, at any time in the course of a calendar year certain individual stocks stand out in terms of their seasonal performance. In other words, investors can take advantage of numerous opportunities  throughout the year. On our web page www.app.seasonax.com or with the help of the Seasonax app on Bloomberg or Thomson-Reuters Eikon you can examine the seasonal patterns of countless individual shares (to be precise: at www.app.seasonax.com you can analyze more than 22,000 different stocks!).

Now that the trial of “creepy porn lawyer” Michael Avenatti is underway, New York city tabloids like the New York Post are bringing us all of the juiciest updates from the prosecution’s case.

The first bombshell dropped on Tuesday: As it turns out, Avenatti mislead the clients who brought him the ‘dirt’ on Nike that Avenatti allegedly used to try and extort the sportswear giant into a $25 million payoff (he demanded that Nike hire him to conduct an internal investigation).

Instead of sharing his plans with Cal Supreme Gary Franklin, the youth basketball coach who first tipped off the lawyer about Nike’s illegal ‘sponsorships’ of college basketball recruits, Avenatti kept his clients in “total darkness” as he tried to shake down Nike.

Jeff Auerbach, a witness in the Avenatti trial who allegedly introduced Franklin to Avenatti, said Avenatti deliberately misled them.

“I trusted that [Avenatti] was going to go to Nike and try and achieve Gary’s goals,” Jeff Auerbach told jurors.

But when they met up to discuss Avenatti’s meetings with Nike’s lawyers, Avenatti would allegedly make vague statements like saying things “went great” while failing to mention his quest for a rich payday, or the involvement of celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos, who was never charged but was cited anonymously in the original indictment.

Auerbach told the jury that he and Franklin decided to bring the Nike dirt to Avenatti because they thought he would be “diplomatic” about it.

Their motivation was simple: Thanks to Nike’s intrusions, Franklin was fighting to regain control of his team. But instead of helping them, the pair were allegedly met with “utter shock and horror” as Avenatti repeatedly violated their trust in a string of events leading up to his arrest.

“It would be detrimental, damaging and totally averse to meeting Gary’s objectives,” Auerbach replied when asked by prosecutors whether he and Franklin genuinely wanted to expose Nike’s conduct. “We were trying to forge a new future.”

Nike lawyer Scott Wilson previously testified that Avenatti kept threatening that he had reporters on “speed dial”, and wouldn’t hesitate to leak the story to the press if Nike didn’t cave to his demands.

“I’ll take $10 billion off your client’s market cap,” Avenatti infamously warned according to court filings. “This is gonna be a major f–king scandal.”

Avenatti claims he was simply advocating for Franklin, which prosecutors say can’t possibly be true since he left Franklin out of the loop.

The disgraced lawyer is also facing charges in California related to deceiving clients, though his alleged deceptions in that case are even more egregious: He allegedly forged documents to help conceal from a client that some settlement money owed to the client had finally come in. Instead of handing it over, Avenatti used the money to try and save a coffee shop that he owned.