Thursday Homestretch
I’m off to eat curried goat brain at some filthy Halal joint with Donnie this afternoon for a “Whoa, That’s Weird!” segment, so squeezing in an early Homestretch.
People outside of finance may or may not be aware that at the close of trading yesterday the stock market made an impressive milestone… The record for the longest bull market in history.
A bull market generally begins when the market rises 20% from the low set at the end of a bear market, which itself is measured by a 20% fall from a previous peak. There are other ways to measure all this, but this was the easiest definition for me to cut & paste.
I’m sorry, but I like these bull-riding gifs.
The last low set by the S&P 500 was on March 9, 2009, so it’s been nearly 3,500 days of fairly steady growth since then, with the S&P climbing by more than 320% over that period. The previous record bull run was set between Oct. 1990 and March 2000.
The company whose share price gained the most during this current bull market has been Abiomed, which makes medical implant devices. Its share price has climbed almost 7,000% since March 2009. I only mention this because you know there is some poor bastard out there who sold their $50,000 position in Abiomed in April of 2009 to buy a bitchin’ Chevy Cobalt and a couple really sweet Billy Joel with special guest Elton John concert tickets… That position would be worth $3.5 million today.
I don’t recommend stocks often, and today is no different, but I do like a “picks and shovels” story. Therefore, I love seeing a headline where a subsidiary of Scott’s Miracle Grow has teamed up with Canadian pot producer Flowr Corp to build a 50,000 square foot research facility in British Columbia.
If you make fertilizer, but don’t want to jump on the cannabis gold rush by providing fertilizer to pot growers, then I don’t know what to tell you. SMG is a piece of shit stock… We covered it back when I traded consumers, and I remember it being the kind of high share price/low liquidity-type name that position guys hated trading. The CEO is a loose cannon at times, and it is down over 1% today… Down 30% YTD… But at 18x forward EPS, maybe it’s cheap enough to buy as a cannabis related name and stash away. And a 2.7% dividend yield helps a little.
If it doesn’t work out, don’t come at me. Just making conversation.
In Entertainment News- This year’s MTV VMA Awards were the lowest rated installment to date. I actually watched part of it, and walked away equally angry and confused. Maybe my parents felt the same when I dressed up as Gene Simmons… Not for Halloween, but just for a random Tuesday.
Lady Gaga said it best on Twitter…
No Lady Gaga
No Beyoncé
No Rihanna
No Katy Perry
No Taylor Swift
No Lorde
No Lana Del Rey
No Christina Aguilera
No Britney Spears
No Janet Jackson
No Miley Cyrus
No Pink
No Shakira
No Mariah Carey
No Adele
No ratings
The problem was that they had no older artists there to appeal to viewers even in their 30’s… Outside of J-Lo (who did a great job being J-Lo), and that universally conceited clam, Madonna, who at this point looks like she might be available to host the Grand Opening of a Bronx car wash.
In Sporting News- Hawaii fucking horsepounded Staten Island in a Little League World Series game last night… Mercy ruled them 10-0. After the game, every Italian grandmother went home and prayed a rosary that God would punish those filthy Pacific Islanders for embarrassing their precious overweight grandkids like that.
“A fanabla!”
In Unrelated News- Category 5 Hurricane Lane barreling towards Hawaii today. All schools cancelled there today and tomorrow, with Friday night into Saturday morning looking like the hardest hit time right now. Meteorologists are calling the sudden appearance of such a deadly storm an act of (Italian) God.
Take a report.
-Large