Down goes the Dow

I'm sorry' but I can't find the site you copied from. Why would you post information that you know is wrong?

Analyst,

Nothing is wrong.

Igy

Analyst,

Here you go:

https://us.spindices.com/documents/additional-material/sp-500-eps-est.xlsx

As I said contact Howard Silverblatt at S&P if you have complaints. He would probably consider you a troll however.

Igy

Actually I think I'll complain to you since you left out some information. You wrote that 228 of 311 beat expectations, but you forgot to mention that another 22 MET their expectations. So less than 20% missed. Isn't this good news? Why are you complaining about earnings with numbers like this?

Analyst,

You can take it anyway you want.

Igy

Analyst,

Your complaint is about non-GAAP numbers which I consider fantasy. Complain to Warren Buffett, like me he dosen't like non-GAAP accounting.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/01/mind-the-gaap-buffett-warns-of-deceptive-earnings.html

Igy

Analyst,

If you are going to pursue a Wall Street career additional reading is in order to re-educate your doubting mind:

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/03/15/mind-the-gaap-gap-even-for-blue-chip-stocks/#:bf5-tTCxTwyQZA

Igy

If you consider them fantasy, why did you post them? Do you even know what you're doing? Where's coach d?

coach d save the Wall Street analyst from himself.....

I don't need saving. Take my old name. It's yours.

good god I hate donald trump

I'm buying gold tomorrow. Just some insurance. that guy is a loose canon.

Well, I took the plunge today and bought Apple at 94 and change. I went against my own advice of a few days ago when I suggested 90 would be a good entry point.

I actually changed my mind when I was thinking about the traditional automakers. Their stock prices have languished for several years now even as they record record profits and have great balance sheets. I'm now convinced traditional automakers are trending down based on this narrative that Apple, Tesla, Google, Uber, etc. are going to take over the future of transportation and push Ford and GM aside. I still don't believe this narrative. But I figure a good way to put my mind at ease is to hedge my bets and buy some Apple. IF Apple is so great and smart that they somehow know how to build a car better than Ford, than they will have a great future ahead of them. Therefore Apple stock should pop from these levels. If not, than it means I'm right about Ford and they will continue to churn out good profits. At some point that stock has to pop.

I also bought Tesla a few months back at 195 and I hold XLK (S&P 500 tech component). Now I think I have good diversity with the future of automakers that provides good upside potential yet low risk.

That said, I tend to agree with GOI that the market will ultimately drift down over the coming months.

What I'd ask is whether you would buy some subprime mortgages from Goldman Sachs because their company analyst told you how great their company mortgage products are. With a couple of exceptions like Standard and Poors and Zacks, this is the level of objectivity you get from Wall Street analysts as I see it.

Analysts that work for brokerage companies are part of equity marketing. Their job is to come up with ideas for stock brokers to sell to clients: That's how they get paid. Their bonuses depend on how much stuff gets sold. So when those guys go to companies to analyze them, the objective is to be able to market the company to brokerage clients, not necessarily to provide objective information for those clients. The analysts utilize "inside" information to write reports to promote their careers, and companies utilize analysts to lowball expectations, so they can beat those expectations.

Along the same vein, I still remember around the 1998-2000 period when Michael Price, who was fund manager of Mutual Shares (a pretty hot mutual fund back then), did an interview with Barrons in which he had very good things to say about Micron Technology in Igy's back yard. A few months later, Price admitted to Barrons that he sold his entire stake in Micron.

It's all a marketing game, and this is how the game is played. This is why my view is that you only trust objective data. You can't trust anyone's opinion, because you don't know when your playing 3 card monte.

agip wrote:

good god I hate donald trump

I'm buying gold tomorrow. Just some insurance. that guy is a loose canon.

Do you expect the Donald to be inflationary? If so, buy gold. If you expect the opposite, look out! You might consider the implication of this:

We had almost a $100 move in gold the last 10 days. You might be better off chasing Amazon.

coach d wrote:

agip wrote:

good god I hate donald trump

I'm buying gold tomorrow. Just some insurance. that guy is a loose canon.

Do you expect the Donald to be inflationary? If so, buy gold. If you expect the opposite, look out! You might consider the implication of this:

http://www.investing.com/news/commodities-news/u.s.-oil-industry-bankruptcy-wave-nears-size-of-telecom-bust-399700

We had almost a $100 move in gold the last 10 days. You might be better off chasing Amazon.

I think it's been proven that gold is not an inflation hedge most of the time...for example we had lowish inflation during its big rise in the 2000s.

I mean it *can* be an inflation hedge, but I think gold is better thought of as a crisis hedge. Or a fear hedge. And I think the next 6 months have the possibility of pretty serious crises and fear. It will be so ugly...

"Analysts that work for brokerage companies are part of equity marketing. Their job is to come up with ideas for stock brokers to sell to clients: That's how they get paid. Their bonuses depend on how much stuff gets sold. So when those guys go to companies to analyze them, the objective is to be able to market the company to brokerage clients, not necessarily to provide objective information for those clients. The analysts utilize "inside" information to write reports to promote their careers, and companies utilize analysts to lowball expectations, so they can beat those expectations."

EXACTLY.

Here it is again, in case you didn't get it:

"Analysts that work for brokerage companies are part of equity marketing. Their job is to come up with ideas for stock brokers to sell to clients: That's how they get paid. Their bonuses depend on how much stuff gets sold. So when those guys go to companies to analyze them, the objective is to be able to market the company to brokerage clients, not necessarily to provide objective information for those clients. The analysts utilize "inside" information to write reports to promote their careers, and companies utilize analysts to lowball expectations, so they can beat those expectations."

As far as technicals go, the problem is not the data, because the data are, unless you believe there to be fraud, objective, available, reliable, robust, and accurate--the problem is what to DO with the data. They LIVE in the world of data, and the best do not discuss any ideas, motivations, etc. outside the data themselves. They look for trends IN THE DATA by parsing and manipulating ONLY the data.

This works to varying degrees of success depending on the intentions of the technical analyst, and his skill at data manipulation and analysis, but only works so long as 1) there is no fundamental change in the system that generates the data, and 2) there is no fraud, or no inconsistent fraud, in the generation of those data. For some, it's been a good ride for the past while.

What could fundamentally change the system generating the data? Centralized control, or a greater degree of control offered by market manipulation. Once the data are controlled volitionally, the only ticket is to understand the motivations of the controlling agent--in advance, if possible, but post-hoc also works as long as the controlling agent is consistent.

This is one reason why many fear market manipulation, obviously. In the current environment the market consists of essentially only institutions, hedgies, sovereign wealth, and some large private concerns. HFT has thrown a small wrench into some of the data, but it hasn't proven to be that much of a problem. Centralized control, such as the possibility of the Fed's portfolio occupying an ever-greater volume within the trading space, is a topic of great concern, with revelations coming from Japan, and the inauditability of the Fed here in the USA.

Of course other things could change the system, such as rule changes and regulation, and those are significant, but have proven to be knowable, and slow enough to implement that their effects do not generally appear as sudden shocks.

Oh, did I mention this?:

"Analysts that work for brokerage companies are part of equity marketing. Their job is to come up with ideas for stock brokers to sell to clients: That's how they get paid. Their bonuses depend on how much stuff gets sold. So when those guys go to companies to analyze them, the objective is to be able to market the company to brokerage clients, not necessarily to provide objective information for those clients. The analysts utilize "inside" information to write reports to promote their careers, and companies utilize analysts to lowball expectations, so they can beat those expectations."

agip the best thing that could happen to market participants would be a win for the nutjob Hillary.

The best thing that could happen to businesspeople would be a win for the moron Trump.

It's a trade-off. Markets have carried the day over business now for a rather long time. You have had your day in the sun, and the time may well have come for you to collect your prodigious harvest and change gears--I know I have, but I tend to be in advance on these things, at the expense of profit maximization. The upside is that I'm never in panic mode, so I gain a bit in terms of efficiency and priority.

Don't be scared of Trump. Yes, he's an inarticulate moron, but much of your gains have been achieved during the administrations of those 2 other inarticulate morons Bush and Obama. If he achieves office, there will be a "smoothing effect", imposed upon him by, among other things, the public sector workforce. There is considerable power in the bureaucracy, and it knows how to use that power. Not to mention Congress. It won't be a cakewalk for him, nor are current conditions in his favor to the degree that they were for, say, Reagan, therefore any "upside" change won't be so radical.

Trump is a moron for sure, but he's not a fool. He's an uneducated, unsophisticated idiot, but on the bright side he's not trusting--he's suspicious and unafraid to attempt to use power. But he seems to be a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. His entire life has been spent in the pursuit of lining his own pockets, and in that goal he has succeeded. The dog is now too old to change. His only vision appears to be that of running the country like one monolithic company, bringing prosperity and good returns to its shareholders--i.e. the citizenry--and beating competitors, i.e. other countries.

To a pragmatist, prosperity is synonymous with money, because any individual can do what they want with their money in a relatively free society. Look for him to concentrate on things like trade balances, embargoes and tariffs, the ITC, trade pacts like NAFTA, IP conventions and enforcement, tax rates, and regulation, sometimes at the direct expense of off-balance-sheet items like environmental quality.

During any reign of Trump, if he ends up actually having any degree of power, you can expect that it will be those with JOBS who benefit more than those with PORTFOLIOS, which would be exactly the opposite of what has happened in the past 2 decades--which is why I have sold my portfolio, and given myself a job.

The good thing for me is that I can change that back at the drop of a hat, which is a position that few are in, so that I can roll with the punches. But IMO the bottom line is that those with JOBS (other than public sector union hacks) have had a rather tough time over the past 2 decades relative to those with PORTFOLIOS, and it is reasonable to expect that it is now time for the tide to change.

Which is precisely why Trump is the Republicrap candidate, and why Sanders would be the Democrap candidate if their nominating process wasn't rife with fraud and corruption.

Hillary will win and Bill will be in charge of female interns. The "war on women" continues.

The value of limiting investment losses:

http://nebula.wsimg.com/881d97f2f5579111e40485c81fc0f55a?AccessKeyId=372BE07F51497C9CD088&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

Igy