iftttwall – Page 26111

The Birthing Of Trump’s America: The Swindlers Vs. The Swindled

Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Beyond the Kubler-Ross maelstrom of denial, anger, depression, etc., besetting this spavined republic, lies the actual grief provoking it all — especially the shocking loss of national purpose embodied by the muppets and puppets onstage nightly vying to bring out the worst in us in an election season far from just silly. Judging from their demeanor in the so-called debates, the candidates seem not only sick of their opponents but of themselves, a fitting outcome perhaps in a nation that hates what it has become.

The moment that got me in Sunday night’s Democratic boasting contest, hosted by CNN, was Hillary crowing about the great achievement of Obamacare — getting thirty million uninsured Americans on some kind of health plan! The part she left out, of course, is that most of those plans have deductible ceilings in the multiple thousands of dollars, guaranteeing that the policy holder goes bankrupt if he/she seeks medical help. Who does she think she’s fooling, anyway? This sort of arrant lying is what drives millions into the camp of Trump.

Even valiant old Bernie muffs every opportunity to explain the death-grip that Wall Street crony politics has on this land: the US Department of Justice did nothing under six-plus years of Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute criminal misconduct in banking. And then President Obama, who is ultimately responsible, did absolutely nothing to prompt that Attorney General into action or replace him with somebody who would act. Obama’s lame excuse back in the days when informed people were still wondering about this, was that the bankers had done nothing patently illegal enough to warrant investigation — a claim that was absurd on its face.

Obama didn’t do any better with the regulating agencies that are supposed to make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, especially the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged with keeping financial markets honest. There was nothing that difficult about those criminal matters now fading in the nation’s memory: for instance, the bundled bonds (CDOs) of “non-performing” mortgages designed to pay off the issuers handsomely when they failed. A child of ten could have unpacked the Goldman Sachs Timberwolf bond caper. Eventually Goldman and others were slapped with mere fines that could be (and were) written off as the cost of doing business. What a difference it would have made if Lloyd Blankfein and a few hundred other bank executives were personally held accountable and sent to cool their heels in federal prison.

As the politicians are fond of saying, make no mistake: this was Barack Obama’s failure to act. Likewise, regarding the Citizens United Supreme Court’s decision that equated arrant corporate bribery of public officials with “free speech;” Mr. Obama (a constitutional lawyer by training) had a range of remedies at his disposal, foremostly working with the then-majority Democratic congressional leadership to legislate a new and clearer definition of so-far-alleged corporate “personhood,” its duties, obligations, and responsibilities to the public interest — and its limits! Not only did Mr. Obama fail to act then, but nobody in his own party even coughed into his-or-her sleeve when he so failed. And now, of course, nobody remembers any of that.

The effects of all this fundamental dishonesty have thundered through our national life to the degree that American society is now divided into the swindlers and the swindled, loosing the monster of collective Id known as Trump on the public. This is what comes of attempting to divorce truth from reality, which has been the principal business of American life for several decades now. When truth and reality become de-linked, a society literally doesn’t know what it is doing. With that goes the collective sense of purpose, replaced with bromides and platitudes such as Trump’s “make America great again,” and Hillary’s “In America, every family should feel like they belong.”

Unbeknownst to the cable news hustlers, events are in the driver’s seat, not the personalities of the puppets and muppets in the spotlight. Come July, there may not be anything that could be called the Republican Party. And Hillary is the first leading contender for the highest office with a possible indictment looming over her. Yes, it’s really there percolating on the FBI’s front burner. Even if the machinery of justice trips over itself again on that, imagine how the questions behind it will color the final battle for the general election. We also fail to appreciate how, if there is just a little more trouble in banking and financial markets before November 8, we can’t even be certain of holding the general election.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1R0lpQO Tyler Durden

A. Barton Hinkle on Israel, Gay Marriage and the Right to Withhold Consent

What does the Israel boycott movement and gay marriage have to do with each other?

A. Barton Hinkle explains:

Both of those issues have turned up in this year’s Virginia General Assembly, although one has received far more attention than the other. Israel turns up in a bill that takes a swipe at the BDS movement, which urges boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel for its treatment of Palestinians.

The BDS movement is woefully misguided and deeply flawed. But it has every right to be. Nothing in the Constitution protects the rights of only those who are correct on the merits of an issue. Yet a bill in the House of Delegates (HB1282) would have prohibited state contractors from boycotting goods from Israel…

During a recent Editorial Board meeting with opponents of the legislation, one BDS activist pointed out that, after all, people should be free to do business—or not do business—with anyone they pleased. The government should not tell people with whom they must conduct commerce.

And that is a valid argument.

But many of those who might sympathize with that argument regarding BDS find it abhorrent in another context.

The House of Delegates has passed a religious-freedom measure that some call a “license to discriminate.” It stipulates that a government entity cannot take action against a person who holds a religious objection to gay marriage.

View this article.

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Turkey’s Crackdown on Free Press Makes it Barely a Democracy Anymore

Turkey, a NATO ally with aspirations of #FreeMediaCannotBeSilenced joining the European Union (EU), is increasingly resembling a dictatorship. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest slouch toward authoritarianism was last week’s seizing of the nation’s best-selling newspaper, Zaman.

Zaman was an independent media source and frequently critical of Erdogan’s regime. But after the government takeover of its offices by gunpoint, and the firing of its senior editorial staff, the paper is now loaded with pro-Erdogan stories. Sevgi Akarcesme, the former editor-in-chief of the paper, wrote on Twitter, “In less than 48 hours, the new admin turned seized Zaman into a propaganda piece of the regime in Turkey.”

Almost immediately, access to the paper’s website was blocked, reporters’ email were accounts locked, and the deletion of 30 years worth of digital archives began by the new government-installed editorial leadership.

The Guardian wrote yesterday that “Turkey is a country at the mercy of one man’s bad temper” and Erdogan’s “personality is not suited to any kind of adversity.” Indeed, such little tolerance for dissent exists in present-day Turkey that almost 2,000 people have been prosecuted for “insulting the President” in the past year and a half. The New York Times reports that “among the offenders are journalists, authors, politicians, a famous soccer star, even schoolchildren.”

Mapping Media Freedom reports that of the 15 journalists killed around the world since July 2014, 7 have died in Turkey. In 2012, Reports Without Borders called Turkey “the world’s biggest prison for journalists” and that same year, the Committee to Protect Journalists released an exhaustive report titled, “Turkey’s Press Freedom Crisis.”

The International Press Institute recently released a press release which read in part:

IPI condemned Turkish authorities’ presentation of an indictment seeking to imprison two well-known journalists for life over reports claiming that Turkey’s intelligence agency secretly armed Islamist rebel groups in Syria. The journalists, Cumhuriyet Editor-in-Chief Can Dündar and Ankara Bureau Chief Erdem Gül, are currently being held in pre-trial detention at Silivri Prison, west of Istanbul. Delegates from a coalition of leading international free expression and press freedom groups travelled to Silivri on Jan. 27 to demonstrate support for Dündar and Gül and to protest officials’ refusal to grant them – and Turkish journalists in general – permission to visit the pair.

While Turkish journalists have thus far borne the brunt of a widespread and multifaceted crackdown on free expression, foreign journalists have also been targeted. Last September, Turkey deported a Dutch journalist, Fréderike Geerdink, whom prosecutors had accused of spreading terrorist propaganda. In August, authorities detained three foreign VICE News reporters on similar terrorism-related offences, two of whom, both British nationals, were released shortly thereafter. The third, Iraqi citizen Mohammed Rasool, was held until last month.

Writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, Joel Simon says that Turkey’s Turkey Tear Gas Zaman transformation into a “neo-authoritarian state” has come about in part because Erdogan feels no pressure from the international community’s toothless condemnations of his assault on the free press:

The escalating media repression in Turkey also shows the “name and shame” strategies that are the mainstay of human rights advocacy are no longer effective. This approach requires systematic documentation of the abuses being committed, then relentless and sustained pressure on the local government to address them. It’s a strategy that works well when officials care about what the rest of the world thinks. In Turkey, that no longer appears to be the case.

The endless press conferences, international delegations, solidarity visits to newsrooms, and meetings with Turkish government officials may have tempered some of the worst abuses, but they have failed to shift the balance.

The EU is set to meet with Turkish leaders today, but since the Brussels-based bureaucracy desperately needs Turkey’s support in stemming the flow of migrants and refugees into Europe, and also relies on the country to battle ISIS-linked extremists, it’s unlikely the EU will apply any significant pressure over its ongoing human rights abuses.

Watch footage below of police using tear gas and water cannons to chase away demonstrators amassed outside Zaman’s offices, who reportedly chanted “free press cannot be silenced” before being attacked by authorities:

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BlackRock Can Buy Gold Again: IAU Suspension Lifted After 300 Million New Shares Registered

Something strange happened on Friday: as a result of the 20% YTD surge in the price of gold and “surging demand”, BlackRock announced it had temporarily suspended the creation of new shares of its $7.8 billion gold Exchange Traded Product IAU “until additional shares are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

Today, Blackrock explained what happened: in a nutshell, as a result of a surge of investor buying of IAU between February 19, 2016 and March 3, 2016, the “Trust issued and sold a total of 24,900,000 Shares in excess of the total Shares registered.” Effectively, IAU was in violation of SEC rules after selling 25 million shares more than it had registered for. The temporary suspension also meant the ETP could not satisfy investor demand for gold on Friday as it was prohibited from creating new share units.

Blackrock called the failure to register earlier “inadvertent.”

To promptly remedy this non-compliance, BlackRock filed an S-3 statement this morning, registering another 300 million IAU shares,which as the chart below shows boosts its total eligible shares outstanding by nearly 50%.

The increase in shares brings the new eligible total far above the total Blackrock had available as of the gold price in 2011, and also above the last peak in IAU outstanding shares which peaked around 700 million.

This also means that there are no more structural limitations preventing IAU to buy as much gold as there is demand.

The filing can be found here, and the relevant language is below:

On March 20, 2015, the Trust filed an automatic shelf registration statement registering 120,000,000 Shares (the “Prior Shelf Registration Statement”). Between February 19, 2016 and March 3, 2016, the Trust issued and sold a total of 24,900,000 Shares in excess of the total Shares registered on its Prior Shelf Registration Statement (the “Excess Shares”). The failure to file a new automatic shelf registration statement of which this prospectus is a part before the Trust sold more than the Shares registered on the Prior Shelf Registration Statement was inadvertent. On March 3, 2016, the Trust became aware of the error and immediately suspended the issuance of additional Shares pending the filing of a new automatic shelf registration statement of which this prospectus is a part. The Excess Shares were not registered at the time of their initial sale, and may not qualify for an exemption from registration, under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”). Authorized Participants and other investors who purchased Excess Shares could have rescission rights. If rescission rights are exercised by these investors, the Trust may be required to reacquire the Excess Shares at a price equal to the price originally paid for such Excess Shares, plus interest owed to the investor on such Excess Shares. Any such investors who no longer own the Excess Shares they acquired may have the right to collect damages from the Trust in lieu of the rescission rights described above. If investors were successful in seeking rescission and/or damages, the Trust would face financial demands that could adversely affect its reputation, business and operations. Additionally, the Trust may become subject to penalties imposed by the SEC and state securities agencies. If investors seek rescission and/or damages or the Trust elects to conduct a rescission offer, the Trust may or may not have the resources and will need to sell gold potentially at unfavorable prices to fund the repurchase of the Excess Shares.

Something curious: in the filing BlackRock revealed that it may have to sell gold in the fund in order to buy back the shares that were inadvertently not registered and pay interest to investors who purchased the shares. Those investors “may have the right to collect damages” from the fund, the filing said. One almost wonders if BlackRock will be selling those 24.9 million IAU shares just as gold is undergoing its next surge.

We wonder if any other gold ETPs will do the same “inadvertent mistake” and oversell gold, just to have the freedom of selling millions of gold-backed shares at their sole discretion to cover the costs from “repurchasing the Excess Shares”?

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Iron Ore ‘Frenzy’ Sends Dry Bulk Shipper Stock Up 340% In 2 Days

The “berserk” iron ore market has created a tsunami of utter idiocy and short-covering across many sectors, most egregiously – dry bulk shippers. DRYS is up 18%, DSX up 20%, and NM up 25%, but Eagle Bulk (EGLE) is the big winner as the mania underlying iron ore combined with an earlier filing said to amend forebearance as the company tries to find financing alternatives, spiked the stock up 340% in 2 days.

Up 340% in 2 days… back to unchanged on the year…

Eagle Bulk Shipping Inc. owns a fleet of dry bulk vessels and transports a range of major and minor bulk cargoes. The Company transports iron ore, coal, grain, cement, and fertilizer along worldwide shipping routes.

And the utter farce is that while Iron ore prices surge on the heels of China’s NPC, they ironically stated that they will rationalize capacity – thus implying notably less exports (and therefore less demand for dry bulk shippers)

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1QBTc6M Tyler Durden

This University of Oregon Study on Feminizing Glaciers Might Make You Root for Trump

Glacier What does gender theory have to do with climate change and the depiction of glaciers in popular culture? You can decide for yourself by reading what must be the least essential paper ever written: “Glaciers, Gender, and Science—A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental climate change.”

The recently published, utterly incomprehensible paper was co-authored by a team of historians at the University of Oregon, and funded via a grant from the National Science Foundation. I hope American taxpayers feel like they got their money’s worth. From the abstract:

Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.

You are probably wondering whether I am trolling you. You might be checking the date to make sure this isn’t an April Fool’s joke. Surely a satirist who set out to write a deliberate parody of left-wing papers using the jargon of the earnest social justice warrior could not have done a better job than a paper on “just and equitable human-ice interactions.”

But the paper is real—very real. The University of Oregon, in fact, put out a glowing press release touting its existence.

“What I’m trying to do in my research is provide more of a human story about how shrinking glaciers, warming temperatures, changing precipitation, how that plays out for different people,” said lead author Mark Carey, an associate dean of Oregon’s history department, in a interview accompanying the press release.

I’m sure Carey is well-intentioned, but if his goal was to put a human face on climate change, he failed. The paper is simply impossible to read with a straight face. It employs liberal buzzwords—colonialism, marginalization, masculinist discourses, etc.—with such frequency that the entire thing comes off like a joke. Just try to follow along with this paragraph:

Feminist and postcolonial theories enrich and complement each other by showing how gender and colonialism are co-constituted, as well as how both women and indigenous peoples have been marginalized historically (Schnabel, 2014). Feminist glaciology builds from feminist postcolonial science studies, analyzing not only gender dynamics and situated knowledges, but also alternative knowledges and folk glaciologies that are generally marginalized through colonialism, imperialism, inequality, unequal power relations, patriarchy, and the domination of Western science (Harding, 2009).

Remember, this is a paper about how to feminize a giant hunk of ice.

In his write-up of the study, Powerline’s Steven Hayward quips, “This is why you get Trump.” He’s not wrong. Disaffected college students are rebelling against the hegemonies of leftist dogma and political correctness that rule their campuses—and “Trump!” is, sadly, their rallying cry. In a country where working class people are being forced to fund research on the postcolonial gender theory of melting ice caps, is it any wonder some of them are rooting for a charismatic demagogue who promises to bully their tormentors?

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The Next Democratic President Will Be Terrible on Education Policy

Never forget! ||| avclub.com Democrats are congratulating each other for having a “deeply substantive” presidential debate last night in Flint, Michigan. “Clinton And Sanders Show Republicans What A Real Debate Looks Like,” ran Jonathan Cohn’s headline at The Huffington Post. “The end result,” wrote MSNBC’s Steve Benen, “was two candidates who obviously take their responsibilities and their platforms seriously.”

It’s certainly true that there weren’t any dick jokes last night. But it’s also true that much of the actual substance being discussed was some of the most warmed-over, non-factual, trade-unionist liberalism since the 1970s. There was the knee-jerk opposition to international trade agreements, the open threats to corporations who dare move manufacturing plants, the anti-scientific hostility to an energy source that is contributing directly to the reduction of carbon levels, and one of the most dispiriting exchanges on public education this side of a Bill De Blasio press conference.

After frontrunner Hillary Clinton trial-ballooned the deeply unfortunate (if revealing) notion of federal “education SWAT teams,” CNN moderator Anderson Cooper asked a very direct and clarifying question: “Secretary Clinton, you’ve been endorsed by two of the biggest teachers’ unions. There’s an awful lot of great teachers in this country. It’s an incredibly difficult job, one of the most difficult jobs there is. But union rules often make it impossible fire bad teachers, and that means disadvantaged kids are sometimes taught by the least qualified. Do you think unions protect bad teachers?”

Bolding mine. Clinton, who has built a long career advocating every government intrusion under the sun in the name of protecting the children, ignored this relevant question entirely, then pivoted to the wholly made-up bogeyman of teacher-hating austerians:

You know, I am proud to have been endorsed by the AFT and the NEA, and I’ve had very good relationship with both unions, with their leadership. And we’ve really candid conversations because we are going to have to take a look at—what do we need in the 21st century to really involve families, to help kids who have more problems than just academic problems?

A lot of what has happened—and honestly it really pains me—a lot of people have [been] blaming and scapegoating teachers because they don’t want to put the money into the school system that deserve the support that comes from the government doing its job.

This is embarrassing, child-damaging nonsense. Per-student K-12 spending has nearly tripled since 1970, while test scores have remained essentially flat. Whatever the problem is with public education, lack of money ain’t it.

Anderson Cooper, to his credit, attempted to get an actual answer to his question:

COOPER: So just to follow up, you don’t believe unions protect bad teachers?

CLINTON: You know what—I have told my friends at the top of both unions, we’ve got to take a look at this, because it is one of the most common criticisms. We need to eliminate the criticism.

You know, teachers do so much good, they are often working under [the] most difficult circumstances. So anything that could be changed, I want them to look at it. I will be a good partner to make sure that whatever I can do as president, I will do to support the teachers of our country.

Bolding mine, because I want you to re-read that snippet, and reflect on the kind of mindset that could produce it. There are few politicians in American life who have expended more oxygen on selling public policy through the emotion-tugging argument of helping vulnerable children than Hillary Clinton. And yet she cannot bring herself to say “We’ve got to take a look at this because we need to protect the children“; instead, it’s because “We need to eliminate the criticism.”

This is akin to positing that the real problem with the Veterans Administration scandal is those dastardly Koch brothers, and yes, that also happened at a recent Democratic presidential debate. There really is no excuse for waking up in 2016 as a 68-year-old with a four-decade career in public life and suggesting that teacher-tenure rules are some kind of newly posited obstacle to quality public education. Those noted union-busters at The New Yorker magazine were sounding the alarm about “rubber rooms” seven years ago. Clinton of late has been embracing President Barack Obama tightly enough to strangle a healthy goat, and yet Obama’s own Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, is an up-front critic of how teacher tenure negatively affects children.

It’s not just Clinton, of course. Both she and Bernie Sanders support expensive universal pre-K, even though objective studies have demonstrated again and again that universal pre-K doesn’t move the needle on student performance. And Sanders is such a committed centralizer, such a single-issue anti-Wall Street crusader, that he cannot see any other culprit for Detroit’s lousy schools than Washington’s greedy Republicans. From last night:

We have a Republican leadership in congress now fighting for hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the top two-tenths of one percent, but somehow we can’t come up with the money to fix Detroit’s crumbling public school system. Somehow we cannot make sure that Detroit has qualified and good teachers. Somehow we can’t make sure that there are summer programs for your children, and after-school programs for your children. Somehow we cannot do what other countries around the world, is provide quality childcare and pre-K.

We have got to change our national priorities, no more tax breaks for billionaires, and large corporations. We are going to invest in our children, and have the best public school system.

It takes a SWAT team. ||| WXYZ-TV Detroit spends more than $14,000 per year per K-12 student. And starting last month, it is paying more for debt service than current teachers. That kind of profound managerial dysfunction needs to be pinned first of all on the dysfunctional managers, who are neither Washington Republicans nor Wall Street bankers.

So Bernie wants to throw federal dollars at the problem by taxing the greedheads. Hillary wants to, uh, throw federal dollars, restore local control, and send in a SWAT team? I wish I was making that up:

Number one, I would reinstate a program we did have during the 1990s where the federal government provided funding to repair and modernize public schools, because a lot of communities can’t afford to do that on their own.

Secondly, I would use every legal means at my disposal to try to force the governor and the state to return the schools to the people of Detroit—to end the emergency management.

Number three, I want to set up inside the Department of Education, for want of a better term, kind of an education SWAT team, if you will.

I won’t, thanks.

Meet the California teacher whose lawsuit Arne Duncan praises, and Hillary Clinton condemns:

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As JPM Goes Short, Goldman Says “Never Better Time To Buy S&P Calls”

Shortly after JPMorgan's historically correct forecasters unleashed their "short stocks" prognostication, we joked that if only Goldman would go "long" the S&P500, then the confusion about what is really going on would be eliminated instantly. And so the alarm bells on this bounce should be ringing loud and clear as Goldman just told its portfolio manager clients that "S&P 500 calls are more attractive now than at any time on record."

With JPMorgan "going underweight US equities for the first time in this cycle," Goldman Sachs would like to sell S&P 500 Calls to its portfolio manager clients…

Our model suggests SPX calls are more attractive than at any time on record over the past 20 years.

Specifically, our GS-EQMOVE model estimates there is a 21% probability of a 5% up-move over the next month based on the current levels of S&P 500 Free Cash Flow yield, Return on Equity, ISM new orders and US Capacity Utilization.

However, the options market is only pricing in a 5% chance of such a move. While a 5% up-move is far from guaranteed (there is a 79% probably it doesn’t move up 5%), the options market is pricing less than 1/4th the probably as our model suggests is warranted by the fundamentals.

Call buying in this environment offers strong risk-reward and allows investors to gain upside exposure while limiting risk. Call buyers risk losing the premium paid.

Looking back through time, there were four months when calls were almost this attractive: Jan-2007, Nov-2006, Feb-2001, and Jan-1996. The SPX was up as much as 1.6%, 2.0%, 2.0%, and 4.1% during the months that followed, respectively.

Finally, we note the small print, as Goldman also suggests – though much more quietly – that Puts are also attractive vs. history (85th percentile)

So to sum up: the awkwardly correct forecasters at JPMorgan say it is time to short stocks, and the Gartman-esque Goldman Sachs (1 for 6 in top 2016 trades, got crushed on its gold recos, and just crucified anyone who was short iron ore overnight) would like to sell S&P 500 calls to its clients… Trade Accordingly.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1QBOaY9 Tyler Durden

WTI Crude Spikes To $37, Brent Over $40 After Genscape Report

Stocks are up thanks to another mindless spike in WTI Crude this morning after Genscape reported a smaller than expected build at Cushing. WTI spiked over $37 and Brent back above $40 on the news as Futures and ETF shorts cover.

WTI back above $37 for the first time since Jan 6th…

Futures shorts covering in size…

And Oil ETF Shorts have collapsed back to “norms”…

Finally we are worried for Dennis Gartman’s health as he has just $7 until potentially bad things happen:

As he said on CNBC “we won’t see crude above $44 again in my lifetime.”

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Gartman Flip-Flops Again: Two Days After “Covering Shorts”, Is Now Reducing Longs

If it’s a day ending in -day, it means a Dennis Gartman flip-flop is on deck. Here is a brief reminder of his “calls” from just the last few days:

Friday, February 26: Gartman covers his shorts, turns bullish.

We have been short one unit of equities in rather global terms, by being short one third of a unit of US equities; one third of a unit of the EUR STOXX 50 and one third of a unit of the Nikkei. The trade started off properly and almost immediately we were profitable; however we are now almost at a small loss on the trade… We wish to cover the position immediately upon receipt of this commentary, taking a very small profit and refraining from taking a loss and living to fight another day and in the end succeed.

Tuesday, March 1: Gartman is “selling the market short again.”

We are selling the markets short once again, having been short recently and having covered that short only a “short” while ago. But we are sellers once again this morning, noting that as the global markets have rallied they have done so on lesser volume on balance. Volume should follow the trend and the trend and volume are pointing lower, not higher.

Wednesday, March 2: Gartman says “we were stunningly, shockingly, stupidly wrong” as he covers shorts, goes long… again.

In our retirement funds here at TGL we moved swiftly to cover our short positions and we moved just as swiftly to buy what we could, when we could and where we could. We covered our derivatives positions and we urge everyone to do the same… immediately. We held on to our long positions in tanker stocks and we actually bought some of the oldest of the old guard dividend paying stocks mid-day just because the market was loudly telling us that we had no choice but to do so.

This is the same day that Gartman also said he “ran to cover our US dollar denominated gold position mid-day and we shall argue strongly that those still long of gold in US dollar terms, as noted above, should do the same.” Gold soared, especially after the whole Blackrock share creation fiasco.

* * *

Which brings us to today and the following latest flipflop, when we find Gartman once again “reducing our long positions” as it would be “ill advised to suddenly turn bullish of equities”:

At this point, it would be ill advised to suddenly turn bullish of equities but instead at this point it might even be rational and reasonable to consider reducing long positions and become more and more neutral of equities…. we are “short” of a small but important position in derivatives that has reduced our net long exposure to the markets to something only modestly long. Likely we shall be adding to our derivatives positions while reducing our long positions today in order to bring our “net” exposure to something far smaller than it is.

And then this pearl:

Turning to gold, we are obviously not about to change our position here, having been long of gold in EUR and Yen denominated terms for years in the case of the later and for nearly a year in the case of the former, putting to bed, we hope, the reports amongst the blogs that we change our tune rather often. Clearly we do not.

Clearly.

And then the always amusing performance update:

For those who wish to follow our progress, we are up 12.3% for the year-to-date, outperforming our International Index rather pleasantly and outperforming the S&P too by 14.4%. We have been quite lucky thus far this year. We are simply hoping that our good fortune thus far obtains through the remainder of the year. If we continue to “Do more of that which is working and less of that which is not”… perhaps our most important Rule of Trading…

Because flip-flopping every other day pays.

Sarcasm aside, with JPM saying to short, and now Gartman joining on the short side, this makes “life”foralgos difficult, as they are not sure how to trade a market in which the otherwise credible JPM equity team is aligned with the Gartman pemafade. We are confident Goldman will break us out of this unpleasant deadlock soon enough.

However, all of the above is meaningless, if oil continues to surge: with WTI approaching $37, it means that Gartman has only $7 left to live.

We hope oil crashes promptly, or else the market may soon lose what has become the one most flawless leading “indicator” alive.