Newsletter Archives - Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Is France the Next PIIG?

All eyes are now focused on Spain, where last week?s failed bond auction took yields back over 6% for ten year paper, and the pain is clearly not confined to the plain. But longer term focused analysts are wondering if France is really the next big over ripe piece of fruit to fall in Europe. Is France really a PIIG in sheep?s clothing?

The structural economic data are not good. Public debt is now at a nosebleed 90% and rocketing. Public spending soaks up 56% of GDP, more than any other Eurozone country.? Banks are severely undercapitalized. The unemployment rate has been stuck over 7% for more than 30 years. Nor has the country had a balanced budget for three decades. Exports are feeble compared to robust Germany. When was the last time you bought a Renault, a Hermes scarf for your significant other, or an Yves Saint Laurent suit for yourself?

The presidential election, which will be held in two rounds on April 22 and May 6 is not giving investors any cause for comfort. The embattled incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, wants to ramp up protectionism, soak French tax exiles, restrict immigration, and withdraw from Europe?s passport free Schengen zone.

Socialist Fran?ois Hollande, who is now ahead in some polls, wants a larger government, to hire 60,000 teachers, cut the retirement age from 62 to 60, and raise the maximum tax rate to 75%. Communist Jean-Luc M?lenchon is picking up support and insists that France should withdraw from NATO, instantly raise the minimum wage by 20%, and raise the top tax rate to 100%.

Please excuse me if I sound like I am stupide, an imb?cile, or a b?te, but aren?t all of these proposals guaranteed to send French deficits soaring, requiring them to dramatically increase their international borrowing? Don?t you think the LTRO has its hands full enough bailing out Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain? This would be hugely equity negative.

Is it possible that the candidates are willing to sacrifice the French stock market in order to get elected? That has already been the case in the bond market, where investors have been fleeing en masse, sending yields spiking once more. Perhaps this is in response to Moody?s yanking of the country?s AAA status earlier this year.

This all sets up the land of Gitanes and Gauloises chain smokers as an enticing short for global fund managers. The easy play for US based investors is the France iShares ETF (EWQ), which you can sell short on margin, or buy puts. Wait for a rally to get a decent entry point.

For those amphibian readers who wish to debate my long term outlook for Gaul further and perhaps throw some stale croissants and some overage camembert at me, please buy a ticket to my July 17 Paris strategy luncheon by clicking here. Hopefully, you will be over your Bastille Day hangovers by then.

Are These Potential Shorts?

China GDP Data Sends Bulls Fleeing

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The market hung on tenterhooks all last week, waiting for the Chinese Q1 GDP figure. As recently as Thursday, rumors swept the market that the number could be as high as 9%, well above the consensus figure of 8.4%, taking the Dow up a red hot 181 points. When the flash hit in the afternoon Beijing time confirming 8.1% the equity futures flipped into sell mode. By the time the crying was over on Wall Street, virtually all of the day?s previous gains had been wiped out.

There are a few lessons to learn here for the aspiring trader. Never believe rumors, especially when they are supposed to originate from governments on the other side of the world. They are almost never true. They often originate from someone trying to unload an unfavorable position. Whoever dumped their portfolio of US stocks Thursday afternoon at the close did exceedingly well.

The second is that all is not well with the global economy. I heard China experts speculating that this quarter might be the bottom of the Middle Kingdom?s slowdown. But they are China experts to the extent that the probably ate in a Chinese restaurant once and watched one Bruce Lee movie. So much of what you hear about China in this country is nothing more than guesswork and I never pay attention to it.

I have a somewhat different take. There is no sign whatsoever that China?s growth recession is ending. Sure, domestic loan growth this month rose from ?700 billion to ?1 trillion, but much of that increase is due to carry over demand from the lunar New Year holiday of the previous month.

The biggest problem is that China?s main export customers are in distress. Its biggest, Europe, is in a serious recession and we have no idea how long that will last. The weakness of the Euro certainly says longer. Japan is falling off a cliff. Demand from a weak, 2% a year growing US is recovering, but is a shadow of what it once was. You can see that is the rapidly improving American trade surplus, which dropped from an eye popping $51 billion to $46 billion last month.

Think of the Chinese economy as a battleship. It is not going to turn on a dime. To complicate matters, China is only at the opening stages of a serious real estate bust. You can count on low end housing starts to plunge from 15 million to 5 million this year as the air comes out of the real estate bubble. That why copper has been so dead this year.

Two small easings of reserve requirements since November are not going to halt this slowdown. In fact, I think that Q2 could be even slower than the last. This is a big reason what I am looking for a prolonged ?RISK OFF? scenario over the summer.

Perhaps my old friend, Steven Roach, the former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asian and now in retirement as a Yale professor, put the best lipstick on this pig. The 8.1% report is down only 3.2% from the peak 11.3% growth rate. The 2008 crash saw the growth rate fall 8.2% from the top. We are a long way from that, thankfully.

There is a far more important message in the quarterly figure. This is not a temporary slowdown; it is a permanent one. There is never going to be a return to a continuous, white hot 11% GDP growth rate of the past. Recent years have seen the Middle Kingdom lose many of its competitive advantages.

Runaway wage inflation is rapidly eroding the country?s cost advantage. Oil over $100 a barrel is probably hurting China more than any other country. Remember, much of America?s infrastructure was built at $1 a barrel. This is why ?onshoring? will become the new economic trend of the decade (click here for ?Onshoring: The New Global Trend?).

But, as I never tire of pointing out in my meetings with the Chinese government, slowing the country down to a steady 8% rate is a good thing. This is a more sustainable and achievable rate that the country can live with. It reduces the volatility of the economy, not just for China, but for the world as a whole. Still, I often get back concerns about the country?s ?bicycle? economy that has to move forward quickly or risk falling over. These are leaders well aware that their country has a history of retirement in front of a firing squad instead of at at country club.

The whole affair also shows how important foreign developments have become for US financial markets. Look at the news flow driving markets these days and it all about China and Europe, with 5 minutes left over to wonder about whether Ben Bernanke is going to bring us QE3. That?s why you have to pay attention to someone like me who has been playing the game for 40 years and has pipelines straight into the key foreign ministries.

I think there is going to be a great buy in China sometime this year. Right when traders are jumping out of windows, managers are rending their hair, Merrill Lynch puts out a call to sell everything, and the Dow is down 2,000 pints? you want to back up the truck and load up on Chinese stocks.

This excursion should include international names like Caterpillar (CAT), Freeport McMoRan (FCX), BHP Billiton (BHP), and Rio Tinto (RIO), as well as domestic ones like China Mobile (CHL), China Telecom (CHA), and Baidu (BIDU). These are the companies that will far outperform everyone else in any sustainable Chinese recovery. You will also want to pick up some ETF?s like (FXI) and (CAF). But that time is definitely not now.

China?s Bicycle Economy

Bidding Up the Market

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A few years ago, I went to a charity fund raiser at San Francisco?s priciest jewelry store, Shreve & Co., where the well-heeled men bid for dinner with the local high society beauties, dripping in diamonds and Channel No. 5. Well fueled with champagne, I jumped into a spirited bidding war for one of the Bay Area?s premier hotties. Suffice to say, she has a sports stadium named after her.

The bids soared to $11,000, $12,000, $13,000. After all, it was for a good cause. But when it hit $13,200, I suddenly developed lockjaw. Later, the sheepish winner with a severe case of buyer?s remorse came to me and offered his date back to me for $13,200. I said ?no thanks.? $12,000, $11,000, $10,000? I passed.

The current altitude of the stock market reminds me of that evening. The higher it goes, the more people love it, until they don?t. As the bidding becomes more frenzied, not an hour passes without another technical report hitting my inbox screaming that the market is overbought, high risk, and cruising for a bruising.

When I did the research for my webinar this week, I had to struggle to find a single positive economic data point over the previous two weeks. The only one I found was the weekly jobless claims, which fell 5,000. Well guess what? This morning jobless claims rose by 13,000. That was the last fundamental economic point the bulls could hang their hats on.

If the current rally fails in the next few days, it could set up the head and shoulders top needed to drive managers more aggressively to the sell side.? After all, they have to be seeing the same thing I am, that the economy runs off a cliff at the end of the year.

For a more sobering view of the market, take a look at the two charts below for the Dow Average. If we don?t clear the old support at 13,000 in the next few days, which is now resistance, we may have the makings of a serious head and shoulders top setting up. The fact that this is happening in the run up to May makes them even more interesting.

Who was the hottie in question, you may ask? She shall remain nameless, since she is now happily married to a tech titan and with kids, and gentlemen don?t talk. Suffice it to say, she has a San Francisco Bay Area sports stadium named after her. I?ll let you figure it out.

Taking profits on Apple

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I am getting a lot of emails about how to come out of the $450-$480 Apple bull call spread, which I advised readers to go into on March 2. Now that we are deep in the money, what is the best way to take a profit?

Well, the first thing for me is to say congratulations. My expectation that Apple stock would continue grinding up has paid off handsomely. The entire position expires next week, on April 20. So the best thing to do here is nothing. You are so far in the money that you are almost certain to expire at the maximum profit point.

So just leave it alone. You don?t have to do anything. The $450 and $480 calls will cancel out each other, and your broker should post a cash credit to your account the following Monday, thus freeing up the margin requirement.

If you try to come out here the execution costs could unnecessarily eat up a chunk of your profit. Since there are two call options involved, that means paying a double trading spread. There is no need for you to pay for a bigger yacht for your broker this early in the year.

The only reason to come out earlier is that you think Apple might fall $150 in the next seven trading days. Given that the Justice Department announced an antitrust action against the company this morning an only knocked the stock down $10, I think this is unlikely.

Your net profit on this position should be $1,855, or? $1.86% for the notional $100,000 portfolio. I include my calculations below. Well done.

Execution

March $450 call cost?????... $97.60
March $480 call premium earned?-$70.25

Net Cost???????.........?. $27.35

Profit Calculation at Expiration

Expiration value???????..$30.00
Purchase cost ?..??????. . $27.35

Net Profit????????.??.$2.65

Total profit = ($2.65 X 100 X 7) = $1,855 = $1.86% for the notional $100,000 portfolio.

Thanks, Steve

The QE3 Myth

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The prospect of a runaway printing press at the Federal Reserve has been the overwhelming factor driving risk assets in 2012.? Being the sober, cautious guy that you all know me to be, I did not join the party. I tell people this is because if I lose all my money I am too old to start over again as an entry level trader at Morgan Stanley.

There is the additional complication that they probably wouldn?t touch me with a ten foot poll anyway. I never was much of an organization man, and in any case the firm has changed beyond all recognition from the small, white shoed, private partnership I knew during the early 1980?s.

Not that I am a party pooper. In fact, I believe that the prospect of further quantitative easing is a complete. The LTRO, Europe?s own quantitative easing, also known as QE3 through the backdoor, with a foreign accent and without a green card, never made over to the US. It poured into European sovereign debt instead, then yielding 8% to 15% for investment grade paper. On my advice, the Chinese government lapped it up.

You can see this clear as day by looking at the chart below prepared by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, which tabulates a broad, adjusted monetary base. It has been flat as a pancake since QE2 ended on June 30, 2011. That is the day the $75 billion a month in government bond buying abruptly ended. It also was the day that the meteoric assent by the broader money supply came to a screeching halt.

The implications of this for the stock market are not good. It means that the entire rally in global equities from the October lows has been faith based. As I never tire of telling my guests at my strategy luncheons, faith based actions are religions, not investment strategies, and the church down the street can do a far better job at this than I can. Take away that faith, turn traders back into the mercenary agnostics that they really are, and all of a sudden stocks look very expensive.

Listeners to my biweekly strategy webinars already know that we have a 4% GDP stock market and a 2% GDP economy. We also have PE multiple for stocks expanding just when analysis are chopping forecasts as fast as they can. Outside of Apple and Google, who is really going to announce a blowout Q1, 2012, with China and Europe in a race to see who can get into recession the fastest, the source of 50% of S&P 500 earnings?

Now that I have had my say, I?m taking the rest of the afternoon off. There is a major storm approaching the US west coast and with luck, I can surf some 50 foot waves at the nearby Mavericks, dodging jagged rocks along the way. Like I said, I was always a sober, cautious guy.

Looking for Shorting Opportunities Among the Homebuilders

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As we continue flirting with a final top in equities for the year, I am stepping up my search for the best ways to participate on the downside. At the very top of the list are the homebuilders, one of the top performing sectors since the October, 2011 bottom. The performance of individual names has been absolutely blistering, with Pulte Homes (PHM) clocking a 245% move to the upside, beating the (SPX) by 210%.

You do not need to engage in any sophisticated financial analysis to see how expensive this group is. Spend a day visiting open houses put on by the big companies, like Pulte Homes (PHM), KB Homes (KBH), Ryland Group (RYL), Toll Brothers (TOL), and Lennar (LEN), as I did yesterday. Then scan the real estate pages of your hometown newspaper with a calculator in hand. You will quickly find that new homes are selling for double the cost of existing homes on a dollar per square foot basis.

This is a lot to pay for that black granite kitchen counter, built in vacuum system, flashy gas barbeque in the back yard, and solar panels on the roof. You may also notice that the homes are shoehorned so tightly on to their plots that you will become too familiar with the intimate details of the lives of your prospective neighbors. In fact, new homes are trading at the biggest premium over used in history.

I am loathe to bet against those lucky ones selling to the 1%, or anyone who earns close to them, whose wealth and spending power are expanding exponentially as I write this. That knocks out Lennar (LEN) and Toll Brothers (TOL). I am very happy to short stocks of companies saddled with selling on an increasingly impoverished 99%.

That trains my sites over to Pulte Homes (PHM) and KB Homes (KBH), the old Kaufman & Broad. (KBH) has already fallen 38% off of a poor earnings report. At least Eli Broad had the decency to give away most of his money after selling out at the market top. The Los Angeles art world is all the richer for it. That leaves Pulte (PHM) as the next overripe piece of fruit to fall.

I know that many of you have been getting calls from real estate brokers insisting that the bottom is in and prices are on their way up. I get the same calls from stock brokers too. Here are the reasons for you to let those calls go straight to voicemail.

There is still a huge demographic headwind, as 80 million baby boomers
try to sell houses to 65 million Gen Xer?s, who earn half as much money. Don?t plan on selling your home to your kids, especially if they are still living rent free in the basement. There are six million homes currently late on their payments, in default, or in foreclosure, and an additional shadow inventory of 15 million units. Access to credit is still severely impaired to everyone, except, you guessed it, the 1%.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which supply 95% of all the home mortgages in the US, are still in receivership, and are in desperate need of $100 billion in new capital each. Good luck getting that out of Washington, which is likely to be gridlocked for at least another five years, and maybe more.

The home mortgage deduction is a big target in any revamp of the tax system, which would immediately yield $250 billion in new revenues for the government. How do you think that will impact home process?

There are undeniable signs of life in best prime markets, where the pent up demand can be substantial. Here in the San Francisco Bay area you are seeing bidding wars for anything that is commuting distance from Apple, Google, and Facebook, or the rest of the booming tech world. Real estate is more local now than it ever has been.

The best case scenario for home prices is that we continue bumping along a bottom for as long as ten more years, when the demographic picture shifts from a huge headwind to a major tailwind. The worst case is that this is just another bear market rally and that we have another 20% on the downside.

Show me the Rally

Yes, But Does It Have Solar?

Payroll Bombshell Give Market Technicians Heart Attack

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I am sitting here on Easter weekend sifting through pages and pages from the various technical programs I follow warning that the roof is about to cave in on the stock market. Friday?s nonfarm payroll bombshell was dropped right at a key, make or break level for the S&P 500 and the Dow Average. Hold here, and we grind to a marginal new high in weeks. Fail, and it is all over this year but for the crying.

The action in the futures market immediately after the release of the dismal numbers showed that the outcome of this contest has already been decided. S&P 500 futures gapped down from plus 4 points to down 15 points in minutes. The Dow saw a net swing of a gut churning 170 points. Ten year Treasury yields gapped down from 2.22% to 2.08%. The safe haven dollar soared against the euro. It was all, yet again, another harsh lesson on why you don?t take big positions before monthly nonfarm payroll figures, and why you should never listen to the ?experts?.

I couldn?t be more amused watching analysts? reactions to the figures on TV, who had been forecast as high as 250,000 and noticeably blanched when the flash hit the screen. In fact, this is one of the biggest head fakes that I have seen in sometime. The Thursday weekly jobless claims hit a four year low only the day before, pointing followers to the exact opposite direction. So did Canadian job gains, which hit a 30 year high for the month. Extrapolate that to the US and we should have seen of blistering gain of 750,000, not the feeble 120,000 we got.

A closer examination of the numbers offered little solace. The headline unemployment rate fell from 8.3% to 8.2%, but only because there are fewer job seekers. Manufacturing showed the biggest gain, +37,000, followed by food and drinking services, +37,000, professional and business services +31,000, and health care, +26,000. The big hit was taken by retail, -34,000. There are 12.7 million total unemployed, and the broader U-6 unemployment rate dropped from 14.9% to 14.5%.

It looks like the good winter weather bump we saw in February disappeared after possibly pulling as many as 50,000 jobs forward from the spring, generating the great payroll number for the previous month. That explains why the February correction in the market I had been expected never showed.

These unwelcome developments call into question the survival of the entire 35% bull move. It will be very interesting to see how many traders flip to sell every rally mode this week after spending the last six months buying every dip. Watch Apple. It will be key. So will the raft of data releases about the Chinese economy, which will be tricking out every night this week.

I was hoping for a healthy payroll number on Friday to give us a nice two day rally which I could use to reestablish my short positions. At least I covered my yen short, which is also bouncing hard. Now I have to decide if I want to sell into the dip. Welcome to show business.

The Payroll Figures Did Not Come in as Expected

Cross Asset Class Analysis Warned ?RISK OFF? Was Coming

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Last week saw a dramatic deterioration in the economic data that has been the foundation of the Great Bull Market of 2012.

First, we read minutes from a Federal Reserve meeting suggesting that QE3 has been put on a back burner. Then the Department of Labor?s Friday nonfarm payroll report poured gasoline on the fire, coming in at 120,000, versus an expected 210,000. Until this week, the best you could say about the data flow was that it was mixed. Now it is decidedly negative.

Whenever we see sea change events like this bunch up over a short time period, I like to show readers my cross asset class review, which I conduct on a daily basis. This discipline is great at showing which securities are trading in line with the rest of the world, and which ones aren?t. And guess what is looking outrageously expensive right now?

The charts show that trouble has in fact brewing for a few months. Asset classes have been rolling over like a line of dominoes. This is the way bull markets always end, and this time should be no different.

The Australian dollar (FXA) saw the weakness coming first, which peaked on April 6.

The Australian stock market (EWA) followed, peaking on February 28.

Copper (CU) warned that trouble was coming, peaking on February 12.

Then Gold (GLD) faded on April 12.

And Silver (SLV) on February 28.

Bonds never bought the ?RISK ON? on scenario. The ten year Treasury ETF (IEF) is down less than three points from its 2011 peak, instead of the 15 points we should have gotten if the economy had truly entered a sustainable stage in the recovery.

Only equities (SPX) didn?t see ?RISK OFF? coming

Because it was all about Apple (AAPL), which added $225 billion in new market capitalization this year. That amounts to creating the third largest company from scratch, right after Exxon (XOM).

The final message of all of these charts is that equities alone have been powering up for months while every other asset class in the world has been dying a slow death. Experience shows that this only ends in tears for equity holders. I?ll let you adjust your own positions accordingly.

Has Gold Had It?

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With the Federal Reserve signaling yesterday that QE3 is off the table, many traders are now betting that the barbarous relic is about to take a prolonged vacation.

Without a dividend or an interest yield in a world desperate for cash flow, the yellow metal suddenly doesn?t have so much to offer. Take away the fear of inflation that our deflationary reality assures, and gold is suddenly left wanting, along with all other hard assets. Uncle Buck becomes the big man on campus.

For the first time in many years, gold is ranking high on the list of preferred hedge fund shorts. The US Treasury?s sale of America eagle one ounce gold coins is down 70% from last year and is now plumbing a four year low. Open interest in the gold futures market has hit a 2 ? year low, indicating that capital is fleeing the market. This is usually what happens before prices die.

Physical markets in Asia, long a bulwark in the gold bull case, are suffering from declining volumes. India, long the world?s largest buyer of physical gold, just doubled import taxes, causing widespread strikes among jewelers.

Industry experts have been warning me for some time that the scrapage rate was soaring, thanks to retail gold buying shops popping up on almost every other street corner, and it was just a matter of time before this would have a major dampening effect on prices.? Remember those stories about gold coin vending machines popping up around the world? You don?t hear those anymore.

Indeed, the gold miners have been signaling for some time that the gold bugs were about to suffer a healthy dose of insecticide. Look no further than the chart for Barrack Gold (ABX), the world largest producer of the yellow metal, and a woeful underperformer compared to its benchmark product. Other miners have fared far worse.

Take speculation about future gold price appreciation away, and all of a sudden miners don?t have such a great business model. The problem is that they are not making gold anymore. Companies are having to dig deeper in more dangerous and inaccessible parts of the world, and pay bigger bribes to get there. (ABX) isn?t opening a new mines at 15,000 feet in the Andes because their like the fresh air and the scenery. Freezing water, and essential ingredient in the mining process, has become a major problem.

There is the added dilemma that the inventory sitting in the back of the shop is now falling in value instead of increasing. Barrack has made a big deal about abandoning its gold hedging strategy. That worked great for the past three years, but may not do as well going forward.

Cost inflation suffered by mining companies is the highest in the industrial world, and is now running at about a 20% annual rate, be it for labor, heavy equipment, infrastructure development, royalty fees, and so on. The tires for those giant trucks used in mining now cost $100,000 each and have a three year waiting list. The secondary market for them is booming.

It doesn?t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the technical picture for gold has been rapidly deteriorating. Gold has suffered an 8% sell off since the end of February, and is now up only 6% in 2012, underperforming most other asset classes. Look at the chart below, and the most charitable thing you can say is that with are approaching the bottom end of a $1,500-$1,925 range. But look at the longer term charts and it is clear that we have just witnessed a head and shoulders formation that has dramatically failed.

The chip shot on the downside for gold here is $1,500. More aggressive traders may want to reach for $1,450. Bring a double dip scare for the economy into the picture, which I expect to see this summer, and $1,100 is a possibility. If you get a real stock market crash in 2013, as many analysts are predicting, and you?ll get another chance to buy at $750.

Use the periodic short term bursts of buying, that are increasingly being seen by the trading community as a contrarian trade, as a great chance to leg into short dated puts on the SPDR Gold Trust Shares ETF (GLD).

Long term, I still like gold and expect it to hit the old inflation adjusted high of $2,300 during the next hard asset buying binge. But remember also that long term, we are all dead.

Watch Out for Gold?s Fatal Attraction

If You Sell in May and Go Away, What to do in April?

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That is the conundrum facing traders, investors, and individuals as we enter the new quarter. For some hedge fund managers, Q1, 2012 was clearly the quarter from hell.

I have been in the market for four decades, long enough to collect an encyclopedia worth of words of wisdom. One of my favorites has always been ?Sell in May and Go? away. On close inspection you?ll find there is more than a modicum of truth is this time worn expression.

Refer to your handy Stock Traders Almanac and you?ll find that for the last 50 years the index yielded a paltry 1% return from May to October. From November to April it brought in a far healthier 7% return.

This explains why you find me with my shoulder to the grindstone from during the winter, and jetting about from Baden Baden to Monte Carlo and Zermatt in the summers. Take away the holidays and this is really a four month a year job.

My friends at StockCharts.com put together the data from the last ten years, and the conclusions on the chart below are pretty undeniable. They have marked every May with a red arrow and Novembers with green arrows.

What is unusual this year is that we are going into the traditional May peak on top of a prodigious 12 % gain in the S&P 500, one of the sturdiest moves in history. History also shows that the bigger the move going into the April peak, the more savage the correction that follows. What do they say in golf? Fore?

Being a long time student of the American, and indeed, the world economy, I have long had a theory behind the regularity of this cycle. It?s enough to base a pagan religion around, like the once practicing Druids at Stonehenge.

Up until the 1920?s, we had an overwhelmingly agricultural economy. Farmers were always at maximum financial distress in the fall, when their outlays for seed, fertilizer, and labor were at a maximum, but they had yet to earn any income from the sale of their crops. So they had to all borrow at once, placing a large call on the financial system as a whole. This is why we have seen so many stock market crashes in October. Once the system swallows this lump, its nothing but green lights for six months.

Once the cycle was set and easily identifiable by low end computer algorithms, the trend became a self fulfilling prophesy. Yes, it may be disturbing to learn that we ardent stock market practitioners may in fact be the high priests of a strange set of beliefs. But hey, some people will do anything to outperform the market.

Are the Bull?s Days Numbered?