Financial Sarcasm Roundup for 02/13/16

Most people go out for fun on Saturday nights. Staying home to publish sarcasm is my idea of fun.

Apple is about to throw new versions of its hottest products at consumers. I believe Apple's most fervent customers are the same kinds of too-rich, too-dumb people I meet at San Francisco VIP events. Only a moron pays a premium every 18 months for an updated product with only incremental capability upgrades. Young urban trendies have to show off shiny gadgets because they live for today. They will have no retirement portfolio for tomorrow.

More banks will face Libor manipulation action. The ones that were too dumb or too greedy to settle early with regulators are going to bite the bullet. Only dummies and crooks try to rig markets anyway. The lack of Libor transparency cries out for an international regulatory solution. The World Bank and IMF are welcome to call me anytime if they want my help.

Greece's weak pension plan jeopardizes its chance for more bailouts. The story never ends. Greece ran out of game theory options last year and is now prostrate. Angry farmers who don't like contributing more to their pension funds will be even angrier when their future pensions won't even buy a gyro. I don't mind making jokes about gyros because the rest of the world makes fun of American hot dogs and hamburgers.

Sunday may shape up to be even more sarcastic than Saturday.

Financial Sarcasm Roundup for 01/31/16

Sarcasm on Sunday is way better than attending church. You could listen to some preacher lie about the nature of the universe, or you can listen to me tell the truth about finance.

Alphabet and Apple battle it out for the valuation world heavyweight championship. Both companies are symptoms of the Silicon Valley tech bubble. Investors have chased these stocks because ZIRP made savings accounts look stupid. Apple's (AAPL) P/E is deceptively low at 10 and Alphabet's (GOOG) is really high at 31. Both companies depend very much on smartphone users replacing costly phones more often than necessary in the developed world's saturated markets. Financial advisers who toggle their portfolio optimization searches with "high risk" aren't doing their risk-averse clients any favors by selecting overpriced tech stocks.

The IMF and its lending cartel will review Greece's bailout progress. It's really sick how the world's most important financiers play "extend and pretend" with a country that has no interest in paying its debts. Forcing losses on creditors would clear up credit quality questions a lot faster than extending maturities. I would have hung the foreclosure sign on the Acropolis by now but the IMF never called me to ask for advice. Athens should hire me to fix their problems if they can pay me in something other than gyros (which I really like to eat BTW).

Big SIFIs are cutting the biggest deals with the SEC to settle dark pool allegations. I have always wondered why investors deliberately walk into something they know is dark. The banks telling investors they will get the best execution in dark pools are also the same source of prime brokerage credit for HFT hedge funds trading in those pools. Willfully blind investors, duplicitous banks, and greedy HFTs all jumped into those dark pools to rip each other off. The traditional investors are always the dumbest money in the room, so of course they got taken to the cleaners.

I told you this was better than a church sermon. I'm more entertaining and honest than any religious leader. I should start my own religion so people can properly worship me.

The Limerick of Finance for 07/26/15

Greek faction had crazy bank plan
Parallel payments into a pan
Drachma would return
Greek savers would burn
No one in Brussels is a fan

The Limerick of Finance for 07/12/15

Eurozone and Greece haggling for deal
Delaying has lost its appeal
France and Germany cross
Let's see who's the real boss
This stuff is about to get real

The Haiku of Finance for 07/06/15

Charity for Greece

Send free food so no one starves

Bankers can serve soup

Financial Sarcasm Roundup for 07/06/15

The big thing driving the news cycle since yesterday is of course Greece's stunning rejection of further European diktats.  It just goes to show that you can't get blood from a stone.  There may be blood in the streets of Athens if someone doesn't airdrop some cash into the Balkans.  Alfidi Capital is here to offer some helpful suggestions for a few sovereign governments.

The EU needs to expel Greece immediately.  Broke banks holding unpayable bonds as collateral do not belong in a Continental currency union.  France and Germany can't publicly agree on which one should push Greece off the euro cliff.  They should both team up and give the little country a good shove.  I suspect the splatter at the bottom will resemble tzatziki sauce.  Spain and Italy are welcome to cliff-dive of their own volition if they think euro membership is a free ride.

Greece needs to clean up its act.  Retiring young and getting a bigger pension is not a recipe for productivity.  Gyros are not collateral for loans and an unstable society will not attract tourists.  The pensioners desperate for their daily 60 euro withdrawals can find work rounding up all of the illegal African and Middle Eastern refugees in the country.

The US has studiously maintained a safe distance from Greece's mess.  Any eleventh hour plan to dollarize the Greek economy or extend the Federal Reserve's swap lines directly to the Bank of Greece needs to be enacted now if such a plan exists.  Greece is welcome to apply for statehood in the US if it needs a new club to join.  It can sit right next to Puerto Rico in commonwealth status until both governments' unpayable sovereign debts are obliterated.

Global financial markets have yet to take the full measure of this crisis.  A few hedge funds are about to get totally clobbered in short order.  Quite a few more will bite the dust if Spain and Italy follow Greece's lead.  The smart money (including me) got away from most of the developed world's equities and bonds long ago.  Everyone else is in for an unpleasant taste of "broke sauce" assuming store shelves remain stocked.

The Limerick of Finance for 07/05/15

Greek voters reject Europe's deal
More austerity held no appeal
The euro is done
After one more bank run
Expect Grexit soon to be real

Financial Sarcasm Roundup for 06/29/15

Wherever there is hope, there is also sarcasm.  A place without hope is the realm of despair, but it can also make room for sarcasm.

Greece walked away from Europe's debt deal.  The Tsipras administration threw down a gauntlet and threw the world's financial markets into turmoil.  Athens has no money, no plan, and no hope.  Many Greeks will have trouble paying everyday bills while their banks are closed for a week, or longer.  The new drachma printing presses may already be plugged in somewhere and ready to run hot.  Once they do, and the new drachma hyperinflates, Greeks will have a hard time paying the electric bill to light the Parthenon at night.

China's stock market is crashing.  The PBOC thinks cutting interest rates will prop up stock prices.  The language they use is even more blatant than what the Federal Reserve says to justify monetary stimulus.  China's hard landing will be even harder than the one due for US markets.  The Chinese stockbrokers who will soon be unemployed can all go live in one of those empty ghost cities springing up outside Beijing.  There's plenty of room.

Puerto Rico cannot pay its debts.  A whole bunch of US investors fell in love with the "triple tax free" narrative when their financial advisers sold them Puerto Rican bonds.  Now they have the pleasure of opening their brokerage statements to see verbiage like "bond in default, payments in arrears" for the foreseeable future.  Way to go, wealth management firms.

All this talk of financial trouble in Greece, China, and Puerto Rico makes me want to hunt for bargains.  Here's a thought.  I'll go to my nearest imported grocery store and load up on discounted pita bread, shrimp dumplings, and plantains.  I even have a name for the meal I could make . . the Black Swan Feast.  Get it?  A bunch of financial black swans are coming home to roost.  It calls for a culinary celebration, because I've been waiting for this opportunity to go short and then buy bargain assets all of my life.

San Francisco still keeps me entertained throughout this financial trouble.  A couple of useful idiots brandished their support for anti-Israel boycotts at the Commonwealth Club tonight.  One of them was a hot babe, and I thought it was a shame to waste such a lame brain on such a gorgeous body.  Give me a hot nerdy babe any day who can think for herself.  I'm certain they inhabit the Commonwealth Club.

Financial Sarcasm Roundup for 06/22/15

The markets are on edge about Greece's fate, and my sarcasm is far edgier.  Investors can pull all the money they like from bond funds, because my sarcasm will always be there to fill the hole.

Greece throws some new proposals at Europe.  Only the dumbest journalists and analysts believe anything Athens says these days.  The Greek leadership goes through the motions and Europe's leaders act like they've earned another few billion euros.  Neither party believes in the process but they're both too terrified of what may happen in the markets if they don't keep up pretenses.  Anything Greece does to fulfill its austerity commitment will force a snap election that brings real radicals into power, and then the world watches an instant default.

Caterpillar plans another round of layoffs.  I'm glad I don't own that stock.  Bad times in the mining sector will hurt more than heavy equipment.  A whole bunch of truck stops and flophouses in Idaho, Montana, and Nevada will go under at some point.  Guess how much more the heavy equipment sector will hurt once the next housing market downturn comes along.

Amazon has incentives for vanity press authors.  Wow, now there's a reason to accelerate my pipe dream of self-publishing my financial tomes through Amazon's Kindle.  Content marketers are increasingly measuring user engagement in smaller increments.  Every instance counts.  It pays to change the metric from broad downloads to something like a la carte pricing.

I have to blast out a sarcastic missive at one loser who claims to operate in the tech sector.  I won't embarrass him by name.  This dude wouldn't listen to me a few years ago when I told him what he needed to do to make a minimum viable product (MVP).  He also demanded that I pretty much write his business plan for him and do a whole bunch of things he was too lazy to do himself.  I recently noticed that this guy is back in startup mode, running through the same accelerator program he's done before.  He has never succeeded in commercializing any of his claimed inventions.  Dude, sometimes you just need to know when to quit, so quit already.  I'm so glad he's not cramping my style anymore.

The Haiku of Finance for 06/20/15

Greece predicts Grexit
Grab for last minute lifeline
Too little, too late

The Limerick of Finance for 06/14/15

Greek debt talk teams now breaking down
Lenders telling the world why they frown
Default on the way
Athens will never pay
Europe's banks holding debt should just drown

The Haiku of Finance for 06/12/15

Debt talk team goes home
Repay delay means downgrade
Greece in bigger hole

The Haiku of Finance for 05/30/15

Greece open to deal
Give in to austerity
Voters will object

The Limerick of Finance for 05/24/15

Greece says it can't pay its June debt
It's the most serious warning yet
Creditors are fed up
Filling this bankrupt cup
Europe can't make a case for this bet

Financial Sarcasm Roundup for 05/04/15

In some parallel universe, sarcasm does not exist.  I would hate to live there.  My universe's sarcasm calibration makes life way more interesting.

Warren Buffett cautions against a minimum wage increase.  Every once in a while he spouts some common sense like the small business owner he used to be.  The guy may not be going soft after all in his old age.  He's a step ahead of the federal policymakers who don't read their own CBO and CRS reports showing clear relationships between a higher minimum wage and lower job growth.

Greek bond trading volume just went down a big hole.  No one in their right mind wants to buy Greek bonds while the Tsipras government must go hat in hand to Brussels.  Hedge funds still buying this junk are insane.  The dumbest private investors hope debt relief will hit the troika's Greek bond holdings first.  Good luck with that plan, idiots.  The troika has every right to throw private investors under the bus when the time comes.

The SEC is dragging its heels in paying whistleblower rewards.  That figures.  The SEC couldn't catch Bernie Madoff and other fraudsters, so they spite the ones who do catch them by showing passive-aggressive behavior with payouts.  I can think of a couple of local phonies I'd like to nail if it would get me some of that payout money.  Waiting years for a claim would cramp my style.  That's what they mean by "close enough for government work" when the check clears three years late.

Another bunch of smarty-pants studies show how men and women approach investing differently.  It looks like women have a leg up by choosing target date funds and making fewer changes to their assets over time.  I always like it when women get a leg up, especially when that leg is over my shoulder.  Have confidence in yourselves, ladies, and you'll get rich faster than men.  I look forward to seeing more rich babes in San Francisco who will buy me dinner.

Sarcasm is a freebie, just like romantic dinners from those rich babes.  The Alfidi Capital philosophy incorporates as much free stuff as possible.

The Haiku of Finance for 04/27/15

Greek uncertainty
Hard to pick Grexit timing
Many still pretend

The Haiku of Finance for 04/18/15

Message to the Greeks
Pay debts or exit euro
No more stalling game

The Haiku of Finance for 04/09/15

Greece made a payment
Creditors still kicking can
War claims make no sense

The Haiku of Finance for 03/30/15

Greece still needs a deal
Can't sell off Acropolis
It's too big to move

The Haiku of Finance for 03/04/15

Euro is so low
Await the easing to come
Greek bonds waiting first