Tag: finance

Coulter Drops Out of Berkeley Speech, Citing Cowardice Amongst Conservative Groups; Based Stickman and Others Promise to Attend

The great civil war of 2017 was supposed to commence on April 27th, at Berkeley. The lightening rod was going to be Ann Coulter, vehemently hated conservative firebrand by the left, who would’ve induced sheer and utter panic amongst the ANTIFA thugs who are, seemingly, unable to deal with freedom of speech.

Unfortunately, Coulter canceled the speech, blaming conservative sponsors are the reason for her change of heart.

“There will be no speech,” she wrote in an email to Reuters on Wednesday, saying two conservative groups sponsoring her speech were no longer supporting her. “I looked over my shoulder and my allies had joined the other team,” she wrote.

The group accused of acquiescing to ANTIFA demands are the YAF (Young America’s Foundation), who said in a statement issued today that they were afraid of violence purported by the left.

“As of 4:00 p.m. today, Young America’s Foundation will not be moving forward with an event at Berkeley on April 27 due to the lack of assurances for protections from foreseeable violence from unrestrained leftist agitators,” they continued. “Berkeley should be ashamed for creating this hostile atmosphere.”

“Ms. Coulter may still choose to speak in some form on campus, but Young America’s Foundation will not jeopardize the safety of its staff or students,” they concluded. “For information on Ms. Coulter’s plans, please contact her directly.”

This prompted a series of tweets, designed to both shame YAF and Berkeley.

And here is the final kick in YAF’s small balls, Coulter thanking liberals for advocating for the first amendment.

Other conservatards have pledged to show up at Berkeley without Coulter, citing other firebrands who will be attending the rally in the hopes of striking death blows to ANTIFA.

The Based Stickman, aka An American Hero, will be in attendance, so maybe, just maybe, the civil war will commence, as previously scheduled.

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

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Why We Have A 2nd Amendment: Venezuela Plans To Give Firearms To Loyalists To Purge Growing Resistance

Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

After enduring shortages of food and medicine for years, as well as a total collapse of their currency, the people of Venezuela have had enough. Last week it was estimated that 2.5 million people marched against the Maduro regime, which had previously tried to strip away the powers of the opposition-led parliament. It’s estimated that as many as 6 million people may have taken to the streets to protest throughout the country.

In the lead-up to the protest, which had been planned for weeks by opposition political parties, President Maduro issued an alarming proclamation that didn’t receive nearly enough press. He promised to expand the nation’s armed militia, and hand out firearms to as many as 400,000 loyalists.

The Bolivarian militias, currently at approximately 100,000, were created by the late Hugo Chavez to assist the armed forces in the defense of his revolution from external and domestic attacks.

 

Speaking to thousands of militia members dressed in beige uniforms gathered in front of the presidential palace, Maduro said that vision remains relevant as Venezuela continues to face “imperialist aggression.”

 

“A gun for every militiaman!” he cried.

If you know your history of communist regimes, you understand what comes next. Maduro’s response to millions of hungry pissed off people, is to arm his die-hard supporters, who will be able to purge the starving masses that dared to cross him. They may not face much resistance, because in 2012 Venezuela banned private firearm ownership.

Venezuela has brought a new gun law into effect which bans the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition.

 

Until now, anyone with a gun permit could buy arms from a private company.

 

Under the new law, only the army, police and certain groups like security companies will be able to buy arms from the state-owned weapons manufacturer and importer.

 

The ban is the latest attempt by the government to improve security and cut crime ahead of elections in October

 

Venezuela saw more than 18,000 murders last year and the capital, Caracas, is thought to be one of the most dangerous cities in Latin America.

Do you see how that works? Maduro’s socialist policies turned that country into a crime-ridden hell hole, (and eventually turned their capital city into the most violent in the world). Instead of abandoning their centrally planned economy, which would bring prosperity to all and lower the crime rate, Maduro took away everyone’s guns. Now that his socialist policies are bringing Venezuela’s population to brink of starvation and revolution, he decides to arm his violent and dimwitted loyalists. He has set up the perfect conditions for a genocidal purge of everyone who opposes him.

I’d say that this would be a fine lesson for any would-be socialists in this country, but they don’t seem eager to learn. Neither did many Venezuelans, who elected these control freaks nearly two decades ago. They could have looked at any socialist experiment from the 20th century, and realized that it always leads to starvation and mass murder. Instead they let themselves be conned by what is now the oldest and most deadly political trick in the book.

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California Farmland To Plunge “20% Or More” As Returns Sink To Lowest Level Since 1992

Last August we questioned whether California farmland was overvalued by $70 billion (see our aptly named post: “Is California Farmland Overvalued By $70 Billion?“).  Our reasoning was fairly simple, as we argued such a draconian outcome was the inevitable result of large institutional buyers scooping up 1,000s of acres of Cali farmland and massively overplanting almonds because, at least at the time, it was the hottest crop earning the highest returns…and that’s what NYC hot money likes. 

Unfortunately, chasing short-term returns by massively overplanting a permanent crop with a 25 year useful life and creating a huge supply bubble in the process rarely works out all that well.  Here’s what we said 9 months ago:

But the Midwest is not the only place where farmland has bubbled over.  California farmland has been bubbling up for years now with unplanted farm ground with “decent” access to water currently selling for $20,000 – $30,000 per acre.  Land with mature almonds, California’s cash crop, is more likely to trade at $30,000 – $40,000 per acre.  This bubble, like so many others, has been caused in large part by institutional capital “reaching for yield” in a low interest rate environment…yet another Fed bubble lurking under the surface.

 

The plan was relatively simple, in the absence of attractive fixed income yields, large asset managers (like TIAA mentioned above with $850BN of AUM) decided to purchase hard assets like farmland instead.  Farmland could then be planted with the highest value crop, which just happens to be almonds in California, to drive attractive ROICs on invested capital.  A few simple charts illustrate perfectly how the story played out. 

And, right on cue, almond prices crashed leaving land owners with a ~4% ROIC, down from 16%, on land they likely purchased for north of $35,000 per acre.

Almond P&L

 

And, as we noted at the time, we would be a bit reluctant to underwrite California farmland to a 4% return.  We would be looking for ROICs closer to 8% – 10%, at a bare minimum, which, at current almond prices, implies that acreage needs to come down around 45%-55% from the $35,000 per acre level. 

Almond

 

Now, fast forward just 9 months and indeed it looks as though developed California farmland has already dropped from ~$35,000-$40,000 per acre to ~$25,000 and, at least according to one prominent appraiser in the heart of the Central Valley, we’re just getting started.  As Michael Ming of Alliance Ag Services told the Bakersfield Californian, he sees California farmland shedding another 20% of it’s value in 2017 which would put it squarely at the top end of our previously forecasted range.

A new report on the outlook for Kern County ag land values shows water emerging as a major deciding factor in what land is worth, according to Michael Ming, a broker for Alliance Ag Services LLC.

 

His report shows that, depending on a piece of land’s water source, the value could decline this year by up to 20 percent — or more.

 

Such as almond acreage, which shot into the stratosphere in 2015, selling for between $40,000 and $28,000 an acre and have now settled back to between $28,000 and $20,000 an acre, according to Ming’s report.

Ironically, despite record rain in recent months, the next leg down in California farmland will be driven by a lack of water for farmers.  In addition to most of the record rainfall in California, what farmers refer to as ‘surface water’, being washed out to sea and/or reserved for “environmental” purposes the state is also getting ready to restrict farmers’ access to groundwater as well…which means land in certain areas will basically be un-farmable.

Meanwhile, as the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) pointed out recently, returns on California farmland actually turned negative in 1Q 2017 for the first time in years. 

 

Of course, while California farmland declines are the most pronounced they’re certainly not an anomaly as returns for farmland owners all across the country posted their lowest Q1 returns since 1992. 

 

And, given that large pension funds, like TIAA mentioned above, have been among the largest buyers of farm land, pensioners should brace themselves for the next leg down in the funding levels on their quarterly pension statements.

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Tillerson, Mattis, Coats Call North Korea “Urgent National Security Threat”, Prepared To Act

Following President Trump's North Korea briefing, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats have issued a joint statement making it very clear where America goes next…

Past efforts have failed to halt North Korea's unlawful weapons programs and nuclear and ballistic missile tests. With each provocation, North Korea jeopardizes stability in Northeast Asia and poses a growing threat to our allies and the U.S. homeland.

 

North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons is an urgent national security threat and top foreign policy priority. Upon assuming office, President Trump ordered a thorough review of U.S. policy pertaining to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

 

Today, along with Chainnan of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford, we briefed members of Congress on the review. The president's approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programs by tightening economic anctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners.

 

We are engaging responsible members of the international community to increase pressure on he DPRK in order to convince the regime to de-escalate and return to the path of dialogue. We will maintain our close coordination and cooperation with our allies, especially the Republic of Korea and Japan, as we work together to preserve stability and prosperity in the region.

 

The United States seeks stability and the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. We remain open to negotiations towards that goal. However, we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies.

Certainly does not leave too much room for any more 'sabre-rattling' from Korea. Having sent a carrier group (or 2 or 3), ported a nuclear Sub, test-fired its nuclear missiles, America appears to have shown its 'stick'…

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This Bubble Finally Burst – Which One’s Next?

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Like so many other high-flying Silicon Valley startups, Clinkle was supposed to ‘make the world a better place’.

Founded in 2011 by a guy barely out of his teens, the company picked up early buzz after proclaiming they would disrupt mobile payments. Or something.

Silicon Valley venture capital firms were apparently so impressed with the idea that they showered the company with an unprecedented level of cash.

(Given that investing in an early stage company is high-risk, investors might provide a few hundred thousand dollars in funding, at most. Clinkle raised $25 million.)

The company went on to burn through just about every penny of its investors’ capital.

There were even photos that surfaced of the 21-year old CEO literally setting bricks of cash on fire.

At the end of the farce, Clinkle never actually managed to build its supposedly ‘world-changing’ product, and the website is now all but defunct.

This is rapidly becoming a familiar story in Silicon Valley.

For the last 6-7 years, Silicon Valley startups have been able to raise unbelievable amounts of cash.

Yet so many of those companies haven’t managed to turn a profit. Ever.

There’s some of the big names like Uber and AirBnb which are supposedly worth tens of billions of dollars despite having racked up enormous losses.

(Last year ride-sharing company Lyft promised investors that it would cap its losses at ‘only’ $600 million per year. . .)

But there are countless other examples of startups being anointed with absurd valuations and continually replenished with fresh capital even though they keep losing money… and have no plan to ever make money.

Snapchat’s investment prospective summed it up best:

“We have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability.”

It’s as if the more money these startups lost, the more popular they became with investors.

Clearly that was unsustainable.

In business, profit (or even more specifically, “levered free cash flow”) is the most important metric.

No company is born profitable; it takes time for entrepreneurs to create and build a financially sustainable business.

In the meantime, startups sometimes need outside investment capital to keep going.

Early stage investors take a risk that the company’s founders and management will be able to execute on a plan that turns a big idea into profit.

But there’s supposed to be a plan. There’s supposed to be an objective to reach profitability as quickly as possible.

Silicon Valley investment firms ignored this basic principle for years, dumping their investors’ savings down the toilet into loser companies with no hope of profitability.

It was a bubble, plain and simple… and now that bubble seems to have burst.

According to Dow Jones Venture Source, venture capital firms in Silicon Valley pared down their investments in tech startups by 30% in the last several months after reaching peak insanity in late 2015.

Unprofitable, unsustainable companies that used to easily be able to raise capital during the bubble years are now struggling to find new investors.

Many are starting to go out of business. For others that manage to successfully raise more capital, the terms are much more strict and conservative.

It’s a new reality, and one that makes more sense: lower valuations, a push for profitability, less insanity.

It makes me wonder, though– if the startup bubble in Silicon Valley can burst, why shouldn’t the bubble in the larger stock market?

In some respects there’s very little difference between the two.

The average stock is trading at a record high valuation despite tepid performance.

And some of the most popular companies are as financially unsustainable as Clinkle was.

Netflix might be my favorite example.

The company’s most recent earnings report for the period ending March 31, 2017 shows, yet again, negative Free Cash Flow of MINUS $422 million.

Not only is that a record loss, it’s 62% worse than in Q1/2016, and over twice as bad as Q1/2015.

Netflix just keeps losing more and more money.

Remember, “Free Cash Flow” is a MUCH better indication of a company’s financial health than profit because it takes into consideration all the capital they must reinvest back into the business.

In the case of Netflix, management must constantly make new ‘capital investments,’ i.e. acquire more content to deliver to their viewers.

If they don’t keep updating their content library, Netflix will go out of business.

So the company has been steadily accumulating huge losses and burning through cash.

They make up the shortfall by going deeper into debt, which is clearly unsustainable.

Don’t get me wrong– as a consumer, I love Netflix.

But it seems nuts that a company with such an unsustainable financial model could be so popular with investors and worth an all-time high $66 billion.

Something is wrong with this picture.

And these investment fundamentals just don’t seem that different than the insanity from the Silicon Valley startup scene over the last few years.

The Silicon Valley bubble has already burst. Given so many similarities, it seems foolish to bet that the stock market bubble will stay inflated forever.

Do you have a Plan B?

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Stocks Stumble As Treasury-Bill Curve Inverts. ‘Animal Spirits’ Slump

So to sum up – US testfires a Nuke, Govt Shutdown looms, Trump Tax plan is a wishlist with no details, Canadian mortage lenders collapse, and animal spirits tumble – stocks close unchanged… so we thought this would help…

 

Bonds and Bullion were bid after the Trump Tax plan was unveiled and banks and stocks sank…

As Citi noted, while the market isn't jumping around on this but there is a bid in US fixed income, taking USDJPY down towards 111.00. All in all, a classic buy the rumor, sell the news on an underdelivered (but fairly presented as such) "big announcement" from the Trump Administration.

Trannies fell for the second day in a row, but The Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq all desperately clung to unch amid late day selling…

 

Stocks still positive post-French-election…

 

But Small Caps ripped to new record highs… because fun-durr-mentals…

 

We note that there was a desperate VIX crush after stocks began to sink following Trump's Tax Plan – have to keep the smoke-and-mirrors dream alive… Despite two good runs at trying to break 2,400, they failed…

 

Of course all the headlines were surrounding the wishlist of tax Trump's tax reform plan but in the meantime, Canada's mortgage lenders collapsed…

 

The Peso and The Loonie tumbled on chatter of a NAFTA withdrawal notice executive order…

 

Government Shutdown concerns grew notably once again (despite hope for a stopgap funding bill) with the short-dated curve inverting notably…

 

'Animal Spirits' have tumbled to 2-month lows…

 

One has to wonder at the market's confidence when 5Y Treasury yields tumble at the announcement of a "pro-growth" tax reform plan…

 

In fact the entire Treasury cirve flattened and fell after the tax plan…

 

But hey Twitter ripped 10% on the biggest revenue drop YoY since the IPO…

 

 

The Dollar ripped higher to run stops from Trump's "strong dollar" comment bounce but the Tax Plan today sparked selling…

 

USDJPY was today's big mover…

 

The machines tried 3 times to juice stocks (via VIX) but each time it fell back to USDJPY's reality…

 

On the heels of a bigger than expected crude draw, WTI kneejerked higher but RBOB pumped and dumped as inventories rose…

 

Gold ansd Silver were bid (as the dollar sank) after Trump unveiled his wishlist tax plan…

 

Finally we thought this was interesting – stock and bond performance since the S&P top in October 2007…

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CoreLogic: “Mortgage Performance Is Beginning to Deteriorate”

By Sam Khater of CoreLogic

The contours of a typical economic expansion and recession are strongly driven by loan performance. When times are good, lenders expand loan production to more marginal borrowers but when loan performance begins to deteriorate, lenders become more conservative, which often exacerbates an economic downturn. Therefore, an understanding of the credit cycle is important to understanding the economic cycle.

While loan performance improved across various loan types throughout the first five years of the expansion, over the last year three of the four major types of loans began experiencing a deterioration in loan performance (Figure 1). The exception to the deterioration in credit performance was real estate, which continues to improve. However, a closer look reveals performance is deteriorating, albeit from pristine levels of performance.

The most common methods of evaluating mortgage performance are delinquency or foreclosure rates. While they are fine to gauge credit trends, they are backward looking and a lagging performance indicator. There are several methods to address that shortcoming, such as transition rate analysis, which tracks early stage changes in performance and is forthcoming in our new Loan Performance Insights Report, or vintage analysis, which controls for time by typically focusing on only a year’s worth of loan production and allows for a much more nuanced view of performance.

Analyzing the vintages for the performance of the first 10 months of each year allowed me to evaluate 2016 using the most recent data. While loan performance after only 10 months for any vintage may seem to be an early starting point to evaluate performance, historically after 6 to 9 months performance has very strong persistence and remains on a similar track years later. Since 2010 was the first full year of the expansion vintage and underwriting has remained roughly similar since then, it is a good starting point for the analysis in the post great recession world.

Analyzing the 2010 to 2016 vintages reveals three important trends. First, the 2016 vintage was the first year in which the serious delinquency rate after 10 months was worse than the prior year (Figure 2). Second, there is clear clustering for certain years when the economy was weak versus when it was healthy. For example, ten months into the year, the 2010 and 2011 vintages had a 0.32 percent serious delinquency rate compared with 0.21 percent average for 2012 through 2014. Performance in 2010-2011 was weaker because the economy was still recovering from the recession and home price growth was nascent. Third, the trough in performance was during 2015 when the serious delinquency rate 10 months into the year was only 0.13 percent, the lowest rate in the last two decades. The stellar 2015 performance reflects a combination of the highest economic growth since the Great Recession, a labor market approaching full employment and steady home price growth.

During 2016, economic growth slowed by a substantial full percentage point and affordability cracks began to show, causing the serious delinquency rate for that vintage to worsen modestly to 0.17 percent at the 10-month mark.

While performance for the 2016 vintage is still very good from relative to the last two decades, it is beginning to worsen. Historically, when the mortgage credit cycle begins to deteriorate it continues to do so until the economy bottoms and the credit cycle begins to improve again.

While the deterioration in mortgage performance is very small and rising from very low levels, it is important to track because turning points are critical but difficult to identify in real time.

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“Cowboy Of Wall Street” Gets Two Years In Prison For Bond Price-Rigging After All

Remember Jesse Litvak?

He was the Jefferies MBS bond trader who was the first to get busted in January 2013 for rampant skimming off the bid and ask when trading with clients. We first profiled him over four years ago, and in that period he has repeatedly made headline news, most recently in January when Litvak was initially found guilty at a trial although on just one of 10 counts, after his first conviction was reversed on appeal. Well, moments ago Litvak made headlines again when learned his new punishment, and as Bloomberg reports he was disappointed: it two years behind bars and a $2 million fine for lying to a customer about bond prices.  His main transgression: fabricating bid/ask prices when talking to clients seeking to trade mortgage-backed bonds with him, in addition to “bending the truth or even falsifying chat transcripts in order to maximize his earnings.”

As Bloomberg writes, “Litvak’s arrest in January 2013 marked the onset of a crackdown on shady sales practices in the opaque world of securities backed by assets such as home loans. The probe has led to charges against at least seven other traders and the departure of nearly two dozen. Three former traders at Nomura Securities go on trial next week.”

“These were the cowboys of Wall Street,” said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. “If you were a bond trader, you could almost do anything you wanted, and not anymore.”

Indeed: this is in line with what we predicted back in January 2013 when we said that “the days of rampant skimming on top of the bid/ask spread, and with them record bonuses for bond traders and salesmen, may just ended with a whimper not a bang, and all bond traders hoping to make millions by misrepresenting what the true purchase or sale prices are to buysider clients, even if completely voluntary on both sides, may want to seek employment elsewhere. They have Jesse Litvak to thank for it.”

For those unfamiliar with Litvak’s colorful history, here is a brief reminder from Bloomberg:

Litvak was initially convicted of 15 counts of securities fraud during his first trial in 2014 and ordered to spend two years in prison and pay a $1.75 million fine. An appeals court reversed the conviction and sent the case back for another trial, saying that he should have been allowed to present evidence from his own expert that misrepresentations between financial professionals were common.

 

After his second conviction, Litvak’s lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall to sentence him to a pay a fine plus eight months of confinement at his home in Boca Raton, Florida, where his wife  has a dental practice. They said the circumstances surrounding his conviction have changed “dramatically,” given he is only facing punishment for one count instead of 15. They also argued that the government has handled similar bond-trading infractions via regulatory sanctions and fines, rather than criminal prosecutions.

“We come before your honor with different circumstances that compel a different result,” Dane Butswinkas, one of Litvak’s attorneys, told Hall on Wednesday. “The different outcome is a factor. The other resolutions of cases that are similar is a factor.”

Prosecutors disagreed, and instead demanded a harsher punishment than what Litvak received the first time, saying he showed no remorse, blamed one of his alleged victims and criticized the jury that convicted him. Federal guidelines called for a sentence of 9 to 11 years, they said. Litvak had “every advantage in life” and his career gave him “wealth beyond the dreams of most Americans,” along with a multimillion dollar apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and a “luxurious” six-bedroom vacation home in New York’s Hamptons, according to prosecuters’ court filings.

On Wednesday, Judge Hall said a key witness’s testimony about Litvak’s tactics was “very compelling.” He “regularly and repeatedly” misrepresented prices, she said.

“The investors were harmed because they paid more money to Jefferies and more likely more than they would have paid if Mr. Litvak hadn’t lied,” Hall said. Hall last week rejected Litvak’s request to throw out his latest conviction. He will have to look to a federal appeals court in Manhattan if he hopes to avoid prison.

* * *

Why is a big deal being made out of this case? Simple: there are many in the same boat as Litvak. As Bloomberg concludes, The case has been closely monitored by bond traders, especially others who have been charged in the crackdown on deceptive sales tactics.

Next week jury selection is set to begin about an hour to the north, in Hartford, in the trial of three former Nomura Holdings Inc. traders. Ross Shapiro, Tyler Peters and Michael Gramins are accused of similar conduct. A former Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. mortgage-bond trader, David Demos, was indicted in December on fraud charges for allegedly lying to customers.

* * *

As for Litvak, third time may be the charm: “while prosecutors in the Litvak case proved their case to the jury, Henning said it “wasn’t the wide ranging fraud it was first touted as” and may get another close look from a federal appeals court.”

“The government achieved one important thing with its prosecution” of Litvak, Henning said, “sending a message to financial firms to be more careful. Firms have put a much greater emphasis on compliance, even in dealing with sophisticated clients.”

What he really meant is that the message sent by the government was far simpler: break any and all laws – as Wall Street continues doing to this day, just look at Deutsche Bank – but don’t get caught.”

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Dilbert Creator Reflects On President Trump’s First 100 Days

Authored by Scott Adams via Blog.Dilbert.com,

Everyone observing politics seems to agree on two things about a president’s first 100 days in office:

1. 100 days is a meaningless, arbitrary marker for a president’s performance that is likely to be more misleading than useful.

 

and…

 

2. Let’s treat it like it is important! Reeeeeeee!

The thing that fascinates me the most about this situation is that the so-called “pro-science” people are giving Trump low grades for his first 100 days.

Allow me to connect some dots.

In science, you don’t have much of an experiment unless you have a control case for comparison. For example, you can’t know if a drug helped with a particular disease unless you study the people who didn’t take the drug at the same time as those who did.

But the pro-science people forget this concept when thinking about politics. Where is the control case for Trump’s first 100 days?

Is it George Washington’s first 100 days?

Is it Jimmy Carter’s first 100 days?

And which prior president came to office in 2017 with identical problems and the most polarized political environment in history?

And just how long is it supposed to take to revise Obamacare? Do we compare it to the time Abe Lincoln repealed and replaced Obamacare? Or how about the time those other presidents repealed and replaced Obamacare in the year 2017? 

I saw an article in Politico that is too dumb to link to, saying it is objectively true that Trump has had a bad first 100 days. This is a perfect example of what I call the “two movies on one screen effect.”

I’m almost certain that many Trump supporters would say these facts are objectively true too:

Economic confidence is up.

 

Trump signed a bunch of executive orders. You might not like them, but that’s more about you, not about his job performance.

 

China is putting the screws on North Korea (finally)

 

Trump erased the “puppet of Putin” charge by prudent application of Tomahawk missiles. That’s an accomplishment, even if you don’t like it.

 

Trump erased the “Trump is Hitler” hallucination that the Clinton side spray-painted onto him during the election. (That’s a big deal.)

 

Trump got a qualified Supreme Court judge, albeit the hard way.

 

Healthcare is moving along briskly from the first plan that was terrible to something that is approaching feasible. That’s progress, not failure.

 

Tax reform will probably be slower than we want, but most observers expect something good to come of it.

 

International relations look fine. The only awkward relationship is with Putin, and that’s the awkward relationship Trump’s detractors want.

 

Illegal immigration is way down because of Trump’s persuasion.

Now let’s look at the things President Trump did wrong in his first 100 days:

You can criticize Trump’s actions against women’s reproductive rights, both on the topic of Planned Parenthood funding and his Supreme Court pick. But calling those things failures or successes depends on your political views, not on Trump’s job performance.

 

I think you could make an objective case against Trump for putting economics above the environment. But you’d have to ignore the fact that a stronger economy almost always puts you in a better position to keep the environment clean. (Trump says that.) You don’t see clean air and water in poor countries.

 

President Trump reversed a bunch of campaign statements from impractical positions to more practical ones. Is that failure?

 

President Trump said a bunch of things that did not pass the fact-checking, surprising literally no one. And as usual, none of it mattered in any way except that it made us focus on whatever topic he wanted us to focus on.

 

President Trump’s staff and advisors are reportedly doing a lot of in-fighting for influence. But that sounds more like a healthy situation than a Trump-is-dictator situation. It would be worse if there were no differences of opinion in the group.

 

President Trump has been slow to fill lots of government positions. But has any of that mattered to your life? I haven’t noticed, personally. Was the Secretary of Whatever supposed to come over and mow my lawn?

 

President Trump did not release his tax returns, so we imagine there are problems there.

 

President Trump incorrectly claimed that his staff had been “wiretapped.” It turns out that they were only legally surveilled in an indirect way. Which only sounds different to his critics.

Generally speaking, the criticisms of President Trump’s first 100 days (and in general) are based on imaginary stuff:

Imagined problems on his tax returns.

 

Imagined blackmail by Russia.

 

Imagined poor performance based on imagining a control case of another imaginary president doing the same job at the same time, but doing it faster.

 

Imaginary belief that doing things you prefer he not do is similar to not being competent.

 

Imagined staff problems that are bigger than they are.

 

Imagined nuclear holocaust that happens because of Trump’s imaginary insanity.

 

Imagined problems caused by his ignoring of facts that don’t matter.

 

Imagined future climate calamity. (They could be right, but for now it is imaginary because complex models have a bad track record.)

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0.2% Of Nasdaq Companies Accounted For 45% Of Its Recent Gains

Just five of the more than 2,500 companies in the Nasdaq Composite Index are largely responsible for Tuesday’s first-ever close above 6,000.

The big five are Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc., Google’s owner.

Together they accounted for about 45 percent of the Nasdaq’s rise from 5,500, reached on Jan. 6, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

As a reminder, the Big 5 account for over 10% of total US stock market capitalization now… a record high…

The question is, of course, what happens next?

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